[Kensblog] Construction Update and more

Greetings all!

All is going fine with the construction of our new boat. Surprises can still happen, but we’re on track to take delivery of the boat sometime before this coming summer.

Our cruising plans

We now know our cruising plans! Or, at least we think we do. Cruising plans are always subject to change But, our current plan is to take delivery of the boat next June in ALASKA and then mosey our way south down the inside passage. This will allow us to do our first summer of cruising in waters that are fairly known to us. Grand Banks assures me the new boat will be perfect on delivery, but it doesn’t always turn out that way. Boats are complex beasts and it usually takes a season or two for them to stabilize. At the end of the summer season we’ll load the boat on a freighter and ship it to the east coast. Grand Banks has a shipyard in Stuart Florida, and will be able to address anything that needs fixed. Then in Spring 2021, we’ll start cruising north along the east coast. Where we’ll go, or the route we’ll take, is 100% unknown. We have lots of time to figure that out.

Even though we are building a Grand Banks boat I still keep track of events at Nordhavn (manufacturers of our prior boat, Sans Souci). 

Nordhavn recently held a film festival wherein owners submitted videos of their cruising adventures. All of the videos were incredible. It is impossible to watch the videos and not wish you were on a boat.

Here is a link to the winning video, and it is well worth watching (preferably on as large a screen as you have):

    To see all of the other amazing Nordhavn videos from the film festival, CLICK HERE

We are getting much closer to resuming our adventure!

It won’t be much longer. We’re expecting the boat to be factory complete as soon as March of 2020; only three or four months from now. That said, factory complete is only the first of a few milestones. Once it is complete at the factory in Malaysia they need to ship it to the United States for commissioning. Finding a freighter and transporting the boat can easily take a month or two. Then, once the boat arrives there will be some final commissioning to be done. We’re trying to get the boat as complete as possible in Malaysia, but some things, like the drapes and bed coverings, won’t happen until the boat is in the US. My guess is that Roberta and I won’t be on the boat and cruising until mid June 2020.

Our new boat! Cygnus! It’s all put together in one piece!

Barely visible in the picture above, at the bow, just above the person in the green jacket, is a steel plate we had added to the bow. It is our first line of defense against hitting a log in the water.

The top deck of our boat is now mounted on the hull! This video (CLICK HERE) shows the process of assembling the boat. They wait until all of the heavy equipment is in the boat prior to putting on the top deck.

I watch all of this with some amount of nervousness. Whereas the factory is concerned with being able to efficiently construct the boat, my focus is on, “How will I maintain the boat?” With the top deck off the boat placing the engines, the generator, the washer/dryer, even the mattresses, is easy. Whereas I’m looking at it thinking, “Someday the dryer is going to fail. How will I get a new one?”

I often remember an incident when we had our boat at the Nordhavn factory in Taiwan. I was concerned that the fresh water pump was located under the floorboard in the hallway where it was impossible for me to access. I explained the issue to one of the senior guys at the factory and he clearly wasn’t understanding the issue. He saw no problem in accessing the pump. I said, “OK. Let’s see you get in there for replacement. Show me.” He summoned one of his technicians and a little guy showed up who was no more than five feet tall and probably weighed less than a hundred pounds. He could easily crawl under the floor to access the pump. To make a long story short, I had them move the pump.

And, for those who have no fear of watching sausage be made, here are some construction photos

If you don’t understand what I am referring to above, remember that even the prettiest of butterflies started as a caterpillar. And, thus shall our new boat emerge from the photos below as the swan (Cygnus) that flies across the water it is destined to be.

Looking forward in the engine room

The picture above shows the bulkhead at the front of the engine room. Grand Banks pays a lot of attention to equipment placement and is great about working with me to see that all the equipment is placed for optimal maintainability.

Here you can see one of the many detailed diagrams they send showing their suggestion for equipment placement.

The engine room forward bulkhead layout

Looking to port in the main salon

On the port side of the main salon will be a dining table. Along the window will be a pop-up television, and beneath the seating will be storage.

This is the frame that will form the bed in the Master stateroom

Our two dogs (Toundra and Keeley) sleep between Roberta and I at night. Six inches on the right side of the bed are reserved for me exclusively and six inches on the extreme left for Roberta. The doggies aren’t big, but they take up a LOT of space.

We upsized the bed in the Master Stateroom to a full King size. There won’t be much room to walk around the bed, but we figure, “How much time do we spend hanging out in the bedroom when not sleeping, anyhow?”

The hole in the center of the bed is for access to storage.

This picture is somewhat interesting in that it was taken only one week after the prior picture. Wow! They are starting to move fast

The cockpit, standing on the swim step looking forward

There are a few things to note about this picture.

• The cockpit is actually much larger than it appears in this photo. There is an entire sitting area and table that is hidden from view by the camera angle
• In the transom there are two large holes. The one on the right in the picture is for an electric barbecue. We’ll have a true propane barbecue on the top deck, so the electric barbecue may never get used. We don’t know yet which we will prefer.
• The other hole in the transom is for storage. Good! We need all the storage we can get!
• Looking to the forward port corner of the cockpit there is a counter protruding. We think this will be a popular place to hang out. The window there is much larger than it appears and fully comes down (like a car window) just by pressing a button. There will be two barstools beneath the counter. I’m lusting for the day when I’ll be sitting on one of those barstools sipping an adult beverage while watching Roberta in the galley making dinner. Because of our aft galley arrangement the galley is immediately on the other side of the counter
• In the lower right side of this picture (the aft starboard side of the cockpit) you see an access hatch with plywood below it. Normally that would be storage, but on our boat it is where the passarelle (automated gangplank) resides. There actually is some good storage under there but to access it will require crawling through a small opening inside the lazarette

A better look at the counter area in the front of the cockpit. Here you can see the start of the cockpit drive station at port side

   

Here you can see the access door, inside the lazarette that gives me access UNDER the passerelle to the storage under the starboard side of the cockpit

Looking forward inside the storage on the starboard side. I’m not sure what, but I suspect we’ll find something to put on top of the fresh water tank in this picture. That’s the side of the passarelle we see to the right side of the picture

The bow of the boat. Note that there is only a small glass window on the fly bridge, and it is open above that. A friend pointed out yesterday that it can be quite noisy on the fly bridge of a boat at 30 knots. Also, some parts of the world it can be cold outside while cruising. A full height window there or an enclosed fly bridge makes sense. That said, I saw pictures of a GB60 with an enclosed fly bridge and didn’t like the look. You may see us close in the fly bridge someday, but .. probably not

I’m not positive, but in the picture above I believe the wooden boxes stacked on the hatches may be fans. I would imagine it is hot in Malaysia and that working inside the boat would be miserable without some sort of air flowing.

The stairway up to the fly bridge. Note that there is storage beneath every step, and there will be an extra refrigerator beneath the stairs

We will have a gas barbecue, refrigerator and sink on the fly bridge. We have a long history of preferring to dine outdoors. The view while having dinner from the top deck will be incredible

This is the bed in the Guest Stateroom

Guest Stateroom Bath. It’s interesting to see how the factory posts diagrams of each room as a reference for the team during construction

To view the picture above in super high resolution, CLICK HERE. If you zoom in on the upper left corner of the picture you can see the diagram showing how they are building the room. (It’s not that interesting, but .. Roberta and I liked it)

At first I thought this was the galley and someone was already making spaghetti, but I was wrong

Wow! There are a lot of wires involved in a boat. I really did focus on simplicity in building this boat and did all I could to not over-complicate things, but there is still an amazing amount of wires and plumbing around the boat. The gentleman in the green shirt s sitting on what will become my desk, installing wiring for the helm drive station, which is on the other side of the wall.

In the background, the gentleman in the blue shirt is standing where there will soon be our washer and dryer. Or, maybe they are already in place, and just not visible in this picture. I would assume they were placed when the top deck was still off the boat.

This picture is taken from the center of the main salon, looking forward. To the right side is where Roberta and I will be sitting to drive the boat

The orange you see in this picture is the inside of a cabinet which forms the seat for the helm chair

Inside the cabinet will be a LOT of electronics; the satellite tv receiver, satellite internet (VSAT) receiver, and more. Across the hallway from this cabinet, to the starboard side, is the passenger helm chair. It will also be filled with electronics.

Looking forward from the top deck. Where that ladder is sitting will someday be our hot tub.

Here you see the tail end of the fly bridge

In the picture above you can see that the railing is missing the top rail on the port side. Our tender will be sitting sideways here on the top deck, and is long enough that the motor will slightly hang over the rail.

When I was speaking with another GB60 owner I mentioned that we normally tow the tender behind the boat all season. This saves us the headache of raising and lowering the tender as we move from anchorage to anchorage. He pointed out two things to me:

1. It is easy to raise and lower the tender on this boat
2. The GB60 is much faster than our prior boat and towing the tender at 25+ knots is totally impractical

You can see in this picture that the hot tub is not on the top deck yet. Rather than custom constructing a hot tub we shipped over a fully complete fiberglass hot tub from the United States. To heat the water quicker we are plumbing the hot tub into the boat’s hot water tank. I’ll be able to dump 40 gallons of 135 degree water into the hot tub to give it a head start on heating up.

Early in the process I decided not to install a diesel furnace. We were spoiled on our prior boat (Sans Souci) in that we had an infinite supply of hot water from the diesel furnace. Heating the hot tub on this boat will need to be done using electricity. We are upsizing the standard 120v 1kw electric heater to be 240v and 4kw.

The next few pictures show the boat that is just ahead of me on the production line being lowered into a test tank. If you look closely you can see the tilting mast in the tilted configuration

I have been in constant contact with the owner of GB60-14 during our construction (Grand Banks 60 , the 14th boat, ours is the 15th boat in the series).

Our two boats are very different than any GB60s that have been built before. All of the GB60 boats (that I am aware of) have been purchased by owners with extensive cruising resumes, but they have been purchased primarily for reasonably short-range cruising or day trips. Roberta and I are different, as are the owners of GB60-14. We live on the boat for months at a time. This changes dramatically how the boat is designed and equipped. Our goal is a “portable home” which can survive for weeks or months without entering a marina except to take on fuel. Both GB60-14 and GB60-15 are set up for world cruising, meaning that we are preparing the boats to accept both US and European power. Both boats are also the first with the tilting mast which will allow us to keep the boat low enough to go under bridges when river cruising, and with passarelles so that we can get to shore when Med Moored in Europe.

Both the owner of GB60-14 and myself were looking forward to tank testing. We have added a lot of weight to our respective boats. Would the boat sit right in the water? Or would it be too heavy at one end or the other?

Good news! The boat sits perfectly on its waterline. All is good

GB60-14 has twin doors at the stern. Here you can see the tilting mast raised. The actual internet and tv domes are not yet installed

This is just showing a close-up of the base of the tilting mast. The mast will be fully automated, but for safety, and to take pressure off the hydraulic motor, there is a locking pin I’ll need to climb up and remove before tilting the mast

I couldn’t finish the blog without showing some pictures of a recently completed GB-60 (not ours.)

A recently completed GB60

The blue on this hull is similar to ours, except that ours will have a lot less blue in it and a slight tinge of green.[/a

For comparison, here is a mockup showing what the colors on our boat will be. Note: This mockup was done before we added the tilting mast

This picture was taken while standing in the cockpit. You can see how close the galley will be to our cockpit counter and bar stools

That’s it for this edition of the blog. As always, thank you for living this adventure alongside us.

If you would like to give feedback, the best way is to go to: www.kensblog.com and click on the blog, then find this entry and look for the button that says “Post Comments” at the bottom of the blog entry.

Ken and Roberta Williams (and, Toundra and Keeley)

Grand Banks GB60-15, Cygnus
www.kensblog.com