We have friends that cruise in the (B.C.) Broughtons and just love it. One of the aspects of anchoring there is that it can be tight, and can be deep. So you need lots of rode, but you don't want to swing. The solution is to tie the stern to the shore. There are plenty of trees, and even iron rings pounded into the rock walls for this purpose. You can of course just use a line, but I found out about the Ultraline Reel and wanted to utilize that. It's a large reel with floating flat line. I chose the 263' version. There are several web pages out there where people talk about how they attached the reel to the boat. I knew that by working with the factory we could come up with a super slick method. We decided we would wait until our factory visit to actually decide. Once there, we played with the reel in several locations of the big stainless staples on the swim step. Here is the location we chose. The mounting is easy, and the line will stay reasonably away from tender operations. But in the first iteration, there wasn't a locking mechanism. So I asked them to take care of that, which they did. It's amazing to see this work done literally in minutes. I was laying in bed that night kind of thinking about the times I would deploy this reel, and all of a sudden I thought "wait, where will I store this big, somewhat heavy, thing? I have to find a place in the lazarette I guess." I was thinking about areas that were big enough, and then had a brainstorm. Just put one of the same mounts on a free wall. (Without the locking mechanism.) Another cruising detail dialed in!
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If you have been on a Hampton, or watched the videos, you know most of them are built with very luxurious and functional crew quarters in the aft section. I'd be totally happy staying there, it's that nice. However we don't plan on crew, nor enough guests at one time to warrant crew quarters. OTOH, I'm a guy that loves his garage/workshop space. So we built out this area in that fashion. Without further ado, let's take a tour! I took these pictures on the last day of our Shanghai visit. The laz was not quite finished, but probably at the 95% level. There are two ways to enter the laz, in this case from the swim step. There is a large "aircraft style" door. Here the engine room door is open and we look all the way through it as well. As there are steps down as you go through the door, minimal ducking is required. POV: I'm backed into the starboard aft corner, looking forward to port. In the center you see the other way to enter the space, via a nice set of stairs from the salon. This means accessing the laz and the engine room without having to go outside the boat. It's deluxe. In a crew quarters build, there is no door at the bottom of the steps. (There's a way to close off this area from the top of the steps.) Hampton had never designed a door here before, so during our December Shanghai visit we all put our heads together to work this out using plywood mockups. Due to the wide angle lens, the perspective is a bit off in this image. At left, that stainless steel bit, that's the trash compactor. We didn't want to give up the cabinet space in the galley, so we located it here. Just to the right you can see there is a small sink. Above the compactor is one of many storage cabinets located here. Then the doors to salon and engine room. And oh yes, the tool box and workbench! Above the workbench is a stainless backsplash, currently covered for protection. The entire design of the laz began with the workbench, since it is the largest single element. Here's a shot I took in December when we were designing the space! Seems like yesterday. POV: I'm standing in the doorway coming down from the salon, looking aft/starboard. In our contract, I specified a vice on the workbench, but left it up to the factory to pick one out. You can see it there on top of the workbench, it's a very cool low profile unit. Does the job without being a gigantic piece. You can see there is a large empty space to the above/right of the workbench. This was sized for the watermaker. I'd rather have this hidden somewhere else, but you have to fit everything in somewhere. In the middle of this picture you can see the 40 gallon water heater, the (ahem) stripper pole, and the motor/bin for the glendinning power cord (there are two, one is in the other corner). It will be easy to change the zincs in the water heater, they are right on top. The factory really paid attention to headroom in this space, and for American size people! The ceiling above the standing area was reworked to get another 1.5" of headroom. The area in the middle of the shot with the two steps are really the only place where we don't have full standing headroom. Below the the taller step, and under where the compactor is, those are prop tunnel spaces. In case you were wondering why the compactor is elevated a bit. POV: On top of workbench, facing aft/port. At left you can see two storage cabinets. The lower one has been sized for a storage unit with slide out drawers I found on Amazon. The space right behind the tech is a "wet locker." In crew quarters builds, this is the shower. I decided to basically keep it that way. There is a drain and a hose bibb. I have adjustable shelves. I expect to store crab/shrimp pots and things like that in there. You can see the louver at the bottom, and there is also an opening/screened porthole for fresh air (you can't see this in the picture). Behind the sink you can see an area with louvered doors and empty space above. That's where the freezer is going. It's a SeaFreeze unit that has the motor/coils separated from the box. They will go in the louvered area below. At the right you can see there is an electrical panel. There's actually another one to the left that is hidden in this shot. These are for the generators and inverter service. Here I have moved closer to the same area. Peekaboo view of some equipment in the port/aft space. This aft/port area is mostly dedicated to electricity. At left what just looks like a counter top is one of two boxes full of AGM batteries. There are some temporary cables there. The Glendinning I mentioned. FYI at center/top, those are the stair steps coming up to the cockpit from the swim step. Luckily Hamptons come with an excellent owner's manual so I'll know exactly what all this equipment does. Solar pre-wire: four #8 AWG wire. This routes through the boat up to the fly bridge hard top. I will probably do solar panels next year. POV: standing in the aft end of the engine room, looking straight aft. Under the sink, you can see two separate cabinet storage areas. Looking at the steps, you can see they lift up for access to a couple of pumps and the rear thruster. At left you can see the starboard rudder. Access is very good to all that kind of equipment. One last shot. At the rear exit of the laz, the techs mounted these handrails, and if you look to the left of the current location you see screw holes. When they were mounted there, the knuckle clearance on the right was pretty tight. Deb pointed this out, but I had asked for so many changes over these days I felt bad about asking them to solve it.
I was mulling this over when owner Jeff Chen went to use the handrail and then stopped in his tracks. "Clearance is too tight, this isn't working!" he said. He said we could either move them to the wall as shown here, or grind off the inside portion of the flange to get more clearance (i.e. be able to mount them closer to the door frame. We opted for the wall mounting. Just one example of how dedicated the HYG people are to building the boat, and especially this space, to be as awesome as it can be. Hope you enjoyed the tour, feel free to comment / ask questions. Can't wait to start using this man cave! [This picture needs a little orientation. We are on the flybridge deck, looking aft. That huge wooden beam is part of the building the boat is sitting in.] Mahalo has a large flybridge, and a large hard top over the flybridge. On top of the hard top are located the various antennas, radar mast and so on. I have pre-wired for solar panels, so eventually there will be some of those located there as well. Once in a while you need to get up there for some kind of maintenance/update/etc. When I have solar panels, they will need to be cleaned in order to retain efficiency. Hampton gets a lot of "the little things" right. In this case, they provide a ladder, with it's own cool storage space. This ladder has perfectly angled feet, hooks for sliding into eyes mounted on the hard top, and a folding mechanism. And not a funky one, really sweet hinges and then collars that slide down over them so the ladder is just as sturdy as if it was one piece. (The collars are just above my knees in the picture.) But of course most of the time the ladder will be stowed, right? Here it is folded, being slid into its own little home on the flybridge. This location is between the settee and the cabinet that has the sink/bbq. With the "door" closed you would almost not even know it is there. (Sorry for blurry picture.) These small touches add up to a lot of convenience and functionality, that I really appreciate.
In the flybridge, the standard Endurance comes with three helm chairs as you see here. We eliminated the one with the blue arrow, and spec'd a bench seat where the arrow is pointing. This was taken a couple of days ago in Shanghai. The entire area underneath is available for storage. Once the boat is here, it will get a nice cushion. Looks like an awesome spot to read a book while on the hook, doesn't it?
We are just back from our two week trip to China, including four days at the Hampton factory in Shanghai. This was our view as we drove into the factory grounds, and I can tell you it was quite a thrill. Turning the corner was even better and we were blown away how beautiful Mahalo looks.
The visit was incredible on many levels. I only managed one blog post (the anchor one) while we were in China, due to their internet issues. I will be resuming near daily postings for the next week or two. There is lots to show and say. As I type this basically all the work on the boat has been completed and they are in clean up mode, for shipping to the US at the end of April. We are pretty excited! |
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