Great to see the update, Peter! I've been wondering how you've been managing it from here during the COVID period. Quite the curve ball into the process!
Where are you now and where is she being delivered?
Really the only impact Covid has had is preventing me from actually visiting the yard. Taiwan did an excellent job managing the pandemic with very few cases nation-wide, and none amount the yard employees. So there wasn't even a slow down on production. But part of that excellent job involved severe restrictions on foreigners entering the country, and a strict 14 day quarantine with daily health checks and a $30,000 fine for breaking quarantine. But it sure did work.
Other than restricting travel, having nothing else to do back home has actually helped. For about the past 3 months I have been working full time, 7 days a week on the boat. First it was finishing up the heating system design, getting all the parts and shipping them to the yard. Plus I made my own heating control system, so had to finalize the design, build, test, and ship it.
I also decided to handle the AC power switching using contactors and a PLC to control them instead a big rotary switches. The primary motivation was to provide load switching for generator automatic stop/start control, including backup power in case shore power fails. That requires a bunch of automatic switching of loads and power sources which is not a big deal if you have one shore power cord and one generator, like a home with backup generator. But when you have two shore power cords and two generators it becomes a lot more complicated. I finally decided to bite the bullet, use a stack of contactors, and control it all from a PLC. So I spent quite a bit of time on that and will write a full article on it at some point.
Then there was the general boat electrical plan which took about a month start to finish working with Nordhavn's engineer. Fortunately he and I had previously worked through most of the unique things I wanted to do, so the final process went pretty smoothly.
Then there has been an ongoing process of laying out equipment throughout the boat, mostly in the laz and engine room. But there is also the pilot house dash, monitors, and overhead panel. Some of those controls are part of the basic boat, but most of it is part of the electronics package which is done by a separate contractor Well, guess who the contractor is? So there was a process of designing the full electronics and AV package, getting a quote for per-installing at the yard, then buying and shipping everything.
And now I'm working on a related gadget to do station selection for the follow-up steering controls between the pilot house, fly bridge, and wing stations.
So I would have been locked up in the house for the past few months anyway, and am just thankful that I have had plenty to do. And through out all this, PAE (Nordhavn) and Ta Shing (the yard) have been fantastic to work with. Lots of pictures, and lots of CAD drawings which thankfully I can work with. Plus the yard is really good about asking when they are unsure about something, and making suggestions when they think there is a better way to do something.
. I checked the horn specs in advance.
