boogiediver
Veteran Member
- Joined
- Oct 7, 2007
- Messages
- 80
Good day all. Been outta touch for a while, but can report we are still enjoying our days out on "Beluga" every weekend. The kids are a bit bigger now (twins 5 yrs and little guy just turned 2), and we spend every long holiday weekend cruising a little further afield and overnighting on board - usually at anchor. The boat is 2.5 years old now and we have over the last half year made a few improvements and incurred some cost of fixing things that have started to die, such as anchor winch solenoid which is in the chain locker and suffers from much salt water humidity that we have here in HK. Am doing what I can on my budget to keep the boat reasonably maintained to avoid such problems, but some things will inevitably get overlooked and a few bits and pieces just don't seem to last. But I guess that's boating, right? Improvements include fitting of a second AP control head at the flybridge console (where I drive most of the time) which is infinitely better than using the Simrad remote control for accurate and speedy course adjustments. We also now have a Ray55 with RayMic upstairs which inter alia means I can communicate well with the Admiral downstairs (ie order cold beers) via the intercom function! (see pikkie)
Was just reading a PMM newsletter piece about a couple taking delivery of their new Fleming 55. Not sure if I will ever have the good fortune of owning such a special boat or if it will ever make sense for me to order a newbuild again. Nevertheless, I'm curious to know what goes into the "commissioning and outfitting" process following shipping from the yard, which according to the author took four months.
My rather smaller and less bespoke boat left the yard in southern China (quite close to my home in HK) in ready-to-drive condition (though I did then identify various issues that builders needed to fix locally in HK), which is more or less how I would expect a boat to leave almost any shipyard. Is it that they generally leave the yard in such shoddy shape that they need a lot of extra work to put things right? Or is some of the equipment only installed on arrival? Washer/dryers, I guess, and communications equipment, gas appliances, etc? Does that really have to take 4 months for a 55' boat?
Thought it would be interesting to hear what such process might typically entail.
Cheers,
Mark
Was just reading a PMM newsletter piece about a couple taking delivery of their new Fleming 55. Not sure if I will ever have the good fortune of owning such a special boat or if it will ever make sense for me to order a newbuild again. Nevertheless, I'm curious to know what goes into the "commissioning and outfitting" process following shipping from the yard, which according to the author took four months.
My rather smaller and less bespoke boat left the yard in southern China (quite close to my home in HK) in ready-to-drive condition (though I did then identify various issues that builders needed to fix locally in HK), which is more or less how I would expect a boat to leave almost any shipyard. Is it that they generally leave the yard in such shoddy shape that they need a lot of extra work to put things right? Or is some of the equipment only installed on arrival? Washer/dryers, I guess, and communications equipment, gas appliances, etc? Does that really have to take 4 months for a 55' boat?
Thought it would be interesting to hear what such process might typically entail.
Cheers,
Mark
