January 13, 2010: haida

My work with the Haida (HI-duh) project is both interesting and slightly sad. The yacht was beautiful in its day. Haida was built for Major Max Fleischmann in 1946. At the time, it was the largest pleasure yacht ever built, with an overall length of 168 feet. Major Fleischmann built 22 yachts over his lifetime; Haida was "America's Oustanding Seagoing Diesel Yacht."

The owner of the offshore company acquired Haida in 1999 from Malaysia. The vessel was towed to the Arabian Gulf and Port Khalid in Sharjah. Since her acquisition, a lengthy restoration and retrofitting project has progressed, albeit slowly. The yacht's captain has overseen the work for the last 10 years. He has been instrumental in maintaining the aesthetics and beauty of the vessel. The project team has been open to many questions, but one topic is strictly off-limits: the timeline. The captain said today that two years ago he thought he was beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Today, he doesn't see the light anymore.

That's a pretty big statement considering that Haida left Port Khalid today for a drydock in Dubai. She was beautiful even under tow and in her mothballed state. This will be the first time Haida has been grounded since she was acquired 10 years ago. You can expect her bottom to be in a disgraceful state -- 10 years of warm, Arabian Gulf waters will have cultured marine growth and corrosion like no other. I'll be going on location to photograph the docking.

In the meantime, here are two pictures of Haida leaving Port Khalid this morning. The first picture was right in front of the berth. The second picture (now my desktop wallpaper - I'll be emailing it to a marine engineering professor this evening, too) was taken through the manmade rift-raft (edit: rip rap) that protects the port from erosion.

The tow is set for Haida near her berth in Port Khalid.

Haida through the rip rap as she leaves Port Khalid for Dubai.

I hope to take more pictures tomorrow of the port and the offshore supply vessels. Aside from the opportunity to take these pictures, I've also been working on schematics of the HVAC system's chilled water circuit. It appears that a lot of my job will be redrawing the old prints into AutoCAD for updating and submitting to ABS.

Posted in: haida,haida photos,work photos