8:55 AM
hampton
Wipe the dust off your luggage! It's time to do this Winter Work thing one last time.
So, while I'm packing my bags to head back to Dubai, I should probably bring you up to speed...
Last January, I flew out to the UAE to intern on a yacht restoration project, henceforth "The Haida Project." Haida was launched in 1947 by Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine, USA. There's a short background on the project here. Shortly after my arrival, the vessel was towed from her berth in Port Khalid, Sharjah to Al Jadaf Shipyard in Dubai. We waited almost two weeks before the shipyard had room to lift Haida. The lift itself was quite an undertaking. Ten years had elapsed since Haida's last docking, and shipyard and dry dock officials were concerned about the vessel settling onto the keel blocks squarely. There's an account of Haida's dry docking here.
After getting Haida out of the water, the shipyard went to work replacing steel plates that were worn from 63 years of cruising the Northern Pacific, Atlantic, and Mediterranean. The shipyard also fitted new stabilizing fins and installed underwater lights. The entire process lasted more than three months, but when they finished with a fresh coat of paint, Haida looked ready to cruise again.
That ready-to-cruise look was merely on the exterior. When I returned in July, the cabin spaces were in the process of a face lift, nay, a deep cleansing, er... stripping. At her launch, Haida was a cutting edge yacht, outfitted with the latest technologies, many fresh from developments made in World War II. The present owner wants to restore Haida to that glory by outfitting her with advanced systems. In order to do that, it was necessary to cut out most of the joinery work on the interiors. My summer work included sizing air conditioning units, taking freeboard measurements, and an assortment of CAD projects. The summer in Sharjah also meant avoiding the outrageous 120° weather.
Since the summer, the consortium of engineers, designers, and consultants have been working on several important projects including the addition of two watertight bulkheads, a new retractable, azimuthing stern thruster, and revised crew accommodation arrangements.
Phew. A semester's worth of dust sure does cake up. So this January, I'll head back to Haida to keep working on the restoration. I'll be joined by one of my classmates, and together we will tackle planning the piping systems. It's like marine engineering class all over again.
Well, you better dust off your luggage, too. Let's do this again.
After getting Haida out of the water, the shipyard went to work replacing steel plates that were worn from 63 years of cruising the Northern Pacific, Atlantic, and Mediterranean. The shipyard also fitted new stabilizing fins and installed underwater lights. The entire process lasted more than three months, but when they finished with a fresh coat of paint, Haida looked ready to cruise again.
That ready-to-cruise look was merely on the exterior. When I returned in July, the cabin spaces were in the process of a face lift, nay, a deep cleansing, er... stripping. At her launch, Haida was a cutting edge yacht, outfitted with the latest technologies, many fresh from developments made in World War II. The present owner wants to restore Haida to that glory by outfitting her with advanced systems. In order to do that, it was necessary to cut out most of the joinery work on the interiors. My summer work included sizing air conditioning units, taking freeboard measurements, and an assortment of CAD projects. The summer in Sharjah also meant avoiding the outrageous 120° weather.
Since the summer, the consortium of engineers, designers, and consultants have been working on several important projects including the addition of two watertight bulkheads, a new retractable, azimuthing stern thruster, and revised crew accommodation arrangements.
Phew. A semester's worth of dust sure does cake up. So this January, I'll head back to Haida to keep working on the restoration. I'll be joined by one of my classmates, and together we will tackle planning the piping systems. It's like marine engineering class all over again.
Well, you better dust off your luggage, too. Let's do this again.
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