Home Office
Here I am, sitting in my home office in a Serviced Apartment in Tin Hau, Hong Kong.
Tugged over my laptop I am studying Gardner engine design, reading through uncountable installation manuals I had downloaded and keep sending WeChat messages and E-mails to the shipyard just two hours travel away. What has happened, how comes a that an airline pilot suddenly has the desire and need to acquire the knowledge as if he wants to open his own shipyard?
Our boat building process has started in July 2016. We had asked a shipyard in Doumen, Guangdong province in China, to build a George Buehler designed Diesel Swan 55 for us.
Seahorse Marine
Seahorse Marine had built many boats of similar design before. That fact plus the reputation of their good steel- and woodwork had not deterred me using this shipyard. I had ignored the warnings from colleagues and previous customers about immense delays and breaches of contract.
I had done plenty of research about the equipment I wanted to have installed on this ocean going yacht. Bill Kimley, the pro-forma owner of the shipyard, had insisted to have major components delivered for the boat building immediately. I obtained the Gardner 6LXB engine from Gardnermarine and shipped other major components to China within the next 12 months.
Long story short: The boat building took much longer as agreed, despite me having dutifully fulfilled my part of the contract on time.
In June 2021 I received the notification that the boat would be finished end of the year. My request at work for unpaid leave or a sabbatical year was denied. So I quit my job as a pilot so I could be in Hong Kong to take care of the boat.
My wife and had I arrived Hong Kong on time. We had spent two weeks in a quarantine hotel before moving to a serviced apartment. We were here, but where was the boat?
Questions, more Questions
The management of the shipyard told me the boat would be ready by January 2022. I believed them, until just two weeks before expected delivery date when I received following questions:
- How do you add a calorifier to the Gardner engine?
- How do you connect the tachometer to the engine?
- Where shall we install the remote control for the water maker?
- Where shall we install the remote for the heater?
- Which one is the alternator for the house battery?
- Which one is the alternator for the engine battery?
- …
This is why and how I have started my home office: I just want the boat to be finished as soon as possible. So I downloaded instruction manuals, surfed the web, looked up different boat blogs. For me, new to boat building, this is a full time job.
The Gardner engine and most equipment the shipyard asked about last weeks had been there for almost five years… and a lot has been neglected until last minute installation. My thoughts are interrupted:
The phone just pinged… A WeChat message with a photo of the cockpit layout: No, I do not want the Bilge alarm panel tugged in between the engine control panel and the engine warning / alarm panel.
The good thing about SHM is that all boats are really built to suit the individual owner. The bad thing is, that due to the Covid-19 travel restrictions I cannot be there when it appears to be most important!
So I better extent my home office duty: re-designing the cockpit layout of the boat on my Mac.