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Our 8 Biggest Yacht Building Mistakes.

No one likes to question their judgment; why should we when we are all possibly perfect? Such reflection could perhaps be used to create a few road signs, guiding others away from the same potholes? As we near the completion of our hull, it's time to do just that. Here are a few examples; there are plenty more where they came from. Forgive the artwork, "Dall-E", artificial intelligence, as in "a Redneck carrying a book.".


Personalities

I'll start quite close to home, understanding the characters in the play. I'm a bit impetuous, have a chronic dislike of detail, and am primarily unmotivated by finance, though, to be fair, it's a good measure if not a good reason for work.

These are not the finest qualities one would seek in a project manager, so I avoid the role. My English vocabulary can also land me in unexpected trouble. All those colloquial words and phrases do not translate well across the Atlantic or to an overworked Turkish shipyard owner. So in dealing with matters procedural or commercial, it is best to stick to plain English and to follow up to ensure an understanding exists, "yes" may not mean "YES."


Timing

We had some excellent advice from a Yacht Broker early on in this journey. He intoned that if a couple has not previously sailed and wait until their mid 50's before starting, then it's probably too late to enjoy the experience. A good part of your life expectancy will pass just learning what it is you want or like. We had a chance at this journey 12 years ago when selling a UK-based company I had started some 20 years previously. Maybe I should have leaped and had a different life journey. However, here I am at 62 and just passed my yearly medical, so there is still time. But think about it, building a yacht is a time commitment. A few compromises might get you on the water far faster.


As another example, we specified the navigation and communications equipment early in the build process.


Comms seem to be changing by the minute. In the intervening time, both Starlink and OneWeb appeared on the scene. We now have both Iridium Sailor 4300 and OneWeb satellite communications systems. That's probably an unnecessary duplication and pending results with OneWeb; we may remove the Iridium system at some point. We could have avoided this by waiting until the last six months of the build timeline.


Verification

Did I say that Project Management is not my favorite sport? Our yard, Naval Yachts, has four or five builds in process at any time. Priorities shift, and there is a tendency to answer the loudest voice in the room. My mistake was believing in progress when it slowed to a near stop in the fall of 2022. That has probably cost us some four months on the project timeline. A time that is impossible to claw back so close to completion. The answer is to monitor more regularly in a "trust but verify" scenario. There is no need to shout, but make your voice heard regularly.


Impetuosity

The word always reminds me of a song from Walt Disney's Jungle Book. It manifests in need to do something in the belief that it's both justified and valuable.

So I found an excellent instrumentation company in Belarus. They supplied four CAN Bus-enabled diesel fuel flow meters at a great price. Drop shipped to Praxis in the Netherlands for integration into the monitoring system. The only issue is that there is already a fuel flow rate signal in the John Deere J1939 engine CAN Bus signal, so they were unnecessary.


$1200 of funds "down the pan". Be careful what you wish for.


Delusion

Believing one's own mantra is a minefield for the unwary, and just such an event happened with our steering system.

What started as a simple idea became ever more complicated as features were added, and the scope of various suppliers became better understood. "Complicated" and "steering" should not be in the same sentence; it should not be that way. When one key supplier introduced late-stage change, the edifice crumbled, and complications became apparent because there was no easy, quick fix. I then compounded the mess by indecision and leaving our Owners Rep to try devising a fix. The solution was to take a step back from the detail and develop governing rules around what was needed. Only then could we logically reconfigure the components and obtain sign-off from all the contributing parties. Sometimes, we have to clean up our own mess.


Expediency

Vanguard will look different from all the FPB'esq designs; she does not have the iconic derricks used for paravanes and launching the tender.

So the simple answer is to fit a knuckle crane like many other small commercial vessels. But think about it; they are heavy, something like 900kg on an already packed hull. Secondly, and perhaps scarier, at some point, Sebrina or our 14-year-old son, Rhys, will have to operate it. The crane cannot freely rotate 360 degrees, there is a lot of structure in the way, and one robust whack from a 900kg hydraulic crane supporting a 1,400kg tender will not be pleasant. We caught this one in time and researched further. The solution is now a 60kg reinforced carbon fiber derrick with a bi-directional electrical winch. Take time to think about more than functionality; consider how your selections will be misused in practice.


Painting!

We are painting the hull. Of the 18 FPB and now 14 Artnautica designs out there, only one is painted. Ours, Vanguard.


Instead of hiding with all the fishing boats, I will now have to wash and paint a bright, shining orange hull and fret at the prospect of every scratch. My beautiful wife, Sebrina, has a skill set in interior design; I was reminded that it's her journey too.


Love hurts but she will look nice.




Chris & Sebrina Leigh-Jones


We used to build custom homes on the US Atlantic Coast. I would often tell client that the short term trauma of a build will, in time, be replaced by the pleasure of ongoing ownership. Maybe I should listen to my own words?


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Guest
Feb 25, 2023

See if you can Get Clemson to Sponsor your (orange) rig. Maybe a well placed tiger paw print? G'Bach😁

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Guest
Jan 30, 2023

And one more question, is Oneweb pricing for the equipment and plans already public somewhere?


I have now been using Starlink for a while and would keep it as an option. It works great, but the question on pricing is still a mystery. The RV-plan works fine as is and is rather reasonable, but is not really supported for marine use - so we'll see.


I will keeping my HAM radio as a backup, and maybe planning on buying a second hand marine SSB as well, as it could use the same antennas. It will always stay as an ultimate backup, and for GRIB downloads it is more than adequate, with global reach.


Andy

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Chris Leigh-Jones
Chris Leigh-Jones
Feb 02, 2023
Replying to

Hello again Andy! Oneweb was more expensive up front but cheaper monthly. These things change seemingly by the day but last I saw the preliminary quotation OneWeb was $15K set up and $1K pm to run. A bit ticket but we have a homeschool requirement and a business to run from the hull so we can justify it. If just for email I'd not bother. Starlink RV version (my words) is much cheaper as long as you stay in country. Here is my OneWeb contact, they seem to sell through dedicated agencies, in my case OMNIaccess. :


Ernesto Esposito <ernesto.esposito@omniaccess.com>


I'm still waiting final prices and availability of their new flat phased array antennas from Kymeta, lighter and much smaller…

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Guest
Jan 30, 2023

Can you share the brand of the flowscan unit/sensor?


It will not go to waste, for sure. JD ECU based fuel burn is known to be accurate only on a loaded engine and highish RPM - its not a real sensor reading, but rather a reading derived from ECU. Lower loading/RPM aka cruising the readings are way off vs. real fuel burn.


Source: having owned multiple JDs and JD derivates. Also other people have noticed the same.


Andy

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Chris Leigh-Jones
Chris Leigh-Jones
Feb 02, 2023
Replying to

Andy - thanks for the reply. I read a couple of academic articles recently that looked at the derived vs measured fuel flow on JD engines. One was a tractor series, the other 4045. They seemed to say better at higher loads but still about 5% out plus or minus. Lighter loads danced around a lot. I'd be ok using it as long as repeatability is there. I alos have good measurements on the day tanks so can average it all over the long term.


The sensor I found was supplied by Technoton, they are based in Belarus but easy to deal with. This is my contact email:


Maxim Damarad <damarad.m@jv-technoton.com>. .


Good luck. Chris

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Chris Leigh-Jones
Chris Leigh-Jones
Jan 28, 2023

Good morning, I read through your input a couple of times and you make some good points that I'll try to respond to. Blogs go out on the fly in no particular order but the major equipment decisions were made early on, 3 months either side of contracting the build. I also agree that it would have made life easier to have spent more time on the detail to reduce the unknown/assumed. Stability has been a concern to the point that stability calculation have been run by the yard two times now, once when major mechanicals/tanks were agreed and once at the end of 2022 when we were debating the flybridge structure. If anything she is a bit stiff …

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Guest
Jan 27, 2023

I have noticed that you make too many late decisions "on the fly", which also happened on Mobius, or you make modifications that will call for a new stability assessment of the yacht as weight is added or shifted. Probably the self-righting will no longer work - especially as there is no control of the weights ingress during construction. Anyway the self-righting is not being tested as the USCG or RNLI does with the Motor Lifeboat, so it is only a hopeful feature which is expected to work. A yacht needs to be fully out-engineered before construction starts, the money spend on the engineering is well spend money.

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Chris Leigh-Jones
Chris Leigh-Jones
Feb 05, 2023
Replying to

You are spot on that the Sea will find an unexpected way to punish anyone. Most of my seagoing experience was deep sea merchant marine. Size did not matter, they fail too given the necessary alignment of circumstances.

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