It’s been some time since my last post.  Been busy with other things like the Balboa Inn (www.thebalboainn.com) among others but things are moving. 

The big news is that we are going to move the vessel from Cartagena Colombia to Panama and do the conversion under own management.  The Navtech shipyard in Colombia is being sold and we’re not quiet sure what the new management will bring.  One of the reasons we decided to go to Navtech was their Dutch owners who have been very cooperative with our project.  With them out of the picture, we feel Panama is a better option.  We have learned the logistics of living in Panama and doing the conversion in Cartagena brings its own set of challenges.  

Being in Panama, supervising things just gets a lot easier.  We’ve built a great time of experienced people to make sure the conversion can be executed successfully.    Bringing people, parts and equipment into Panama is a lot easier and cost effective than doing this in Cartagena and living a 45 minute drive from the conversion site is a huge positive as well.

We plan to anchor out in the protected bay of Colon while we get all the work on drawings and engineering done prior to the start of the conversion.  The good things of this location is that it’s free and safe.  And, the Panama Canal shipyard is just 1 mile away.  It has an 1.100 ton syncho-list and a 50 m. drydock.  A very nice and clean facility.

We plan to go to Cartagena in the coming week to prepare for departure.  I soon hope to post some more news about the developments.    I also have about 20+ draft posts about a variety of interesting stuff but well,  patience please .

I just returned from Cartagena with some updates in the ‘Pictures‘ section (top menu).  Work has fallen a little behind but they are working hard to catch up.   Converting a trawler into an expedition yacht is BIG job in all aspects.  It feels like it only gets bigger .  But the largest part of the 1st phase is done. We still have to remove quite a few items from the engine room (mostly DC-related equipment and a complete generator set but that should be wrapped up in next 7 days.

When all this is done, we’ll do a new inclining experiment to establish a new base line for our current situation and feed the numbers to our computer.

Below our project supervisor on site who’s job it will be the next few days to get this auxiliary engine with AC and DC generator out of the engine room.  We plan to burn a hole in the forward bulkhead.  This will be the safest and fastest way to get this equipment and all the DC-equipment out of there.

I also met with the Lloyds Register country manager and his staff who had visited the ship previously and they are all very enthousiastic about the project.   There’s certainly a good vibe with these guys. Very helpful and friendly and we look forward to working with them.

In the next phase, while we get our drawings made and approved, we’ll advance some steel work like creating a new fuel oil day tank, convert the midships fuel wing tanks into stabilizer rooms, add a new bulkhead and start planning on moving the engine room forward bulkhead.  We’ll also plan some changes on the fresh water system and the floor of the former fish hold.

Work enough for Navtech in the near future!
(see pictures at end of this page)

Finally the insulation foam is gone and we are seeing the bottom of it – quite literally.   The yard crew now started the partial removal of the concrete floor in the center part of the fish hold.  This will allow us to gain enough head room in this area when it becomes a storage area underneath the staterooms.  The drawing below better explains what we plan to achieve.

We plan to go remove about 50 cm. (1 1/2 ft.) which is when we hit the top of the frames. This operation also means we are removing some ballast from the bottom of the ship. We plan to add weight again but at a higher location and more forward.  This will help to reduce our roll time (more comfort), compensating for all the weight removed from the main deck.  By moving it more forward, we also get the bow down a little which will give us more speed.

The 2 masts are now gone and so is all the fishing related gear on the front deck.  The removal of the main winches has also started and the removal of the isolation foam in the fish hold continues unabated.

In the forward engine room work will start to remove the harbor generator and remove all the related piping.

We also have important visitors from ABS and Lloyds – see the post below.

I just got back from the shipyard in Cartagena were they have started the removal of fishing related gear and materials.   It’s a lot of work, that’s for sure.  Check the pictures section (top menu) to follow up on the conversion process.

My visit also allowed me to look into the complexity of moving the engineroom forward bulkhead a few frames backward.  While it’s not a piece of cake, it’s certainly doable and will go a long way in making the engineroom space smaller in order to get us MCA compliant when it comes to damage stability.  More on this in a separate post.

Below is how we want to make it, using the same pieces that were used before.  The main advantage and reason to do this was to get rid of the equipment on the deck.  The potential disadvantage is that we may get more water below deck.  While the anchor covers the anchor box when it’s totally pulled in, the water from the jets cleaning the chain when it is hauled up will have less time to fall of the chain and unlike before, it will now wall into the guide pipe going downwards.  So we have to make some kind of provision there to collect water.  I also intend to make the guiding pipe removable so it can be replaced more easily.

For instance, our electrical system.  We already figured out to change everything to AC power. We have DC-powered bow thruster.  There’s a lot of  equipment just to feed that bowtruster once in a while.  So, we will power it with an AC slip ring motor and get rid of all the bulky and more trouble-prone DC equipment shown in the picture below.

OK. But that’s  a 125 hp truster.  We have a nice big Deutz delivery 375 HP, now powering an AC and a DC generator. We don’t need the DC generator anymore.  What about changing its AC generator (140KVA) and make it 2x as big so we can add a sterntruster as well??  Because one thing we learned during the trip, that big (enclosed) prop doesn’t have much prop effect.

Brilliant idea!  Affordable and we get to keep a great engine (put in new in 2001) that can run everything on board.  When we’re not maneouvring we run one or two Northern Light gen sets (which replace our port gen. set). 

Another great example of how one thing leads to another: MCA rules on damage stability.  Our engineroom is pretty big and it has this pretty big engine with prop too.  Heavy stuff. So, it it gets totally filled with water, our main deck – in the back – (not the higher campaign deck) will be about 10 cm. below MCA freeboard requirements.   So we have to make the engineroom smaller.

How??  Well, we can make the workshop a truly water tight compartment.  Simple but not enough. So we’ll have to move the forward engineroom bulkhead to aft.   Moving it backward 2-3 frames is doable (orange line in picture above).  Not too much equipment relocation. Thank God, labor in Colombia is relatively cheap for this kind of steel work modifications!    The added advantage is that we get more space for the staterooms.  That’s actually a big advantage and gives us just a little extra space, about 45 cm. (1 1/2 ft.) extra length in each stateroom.  That’s really nice.

And, by moving the sewage treatment plant to the area below the staterooms, we’ll have space in the engineroom to put in a waste incinerator.    This whole thing is kind of one big puzzle.

I was already planning to have this trawler converted in Cartagena, Colombia to take advantage of the lower wages and well-known quality of the Colombian workforce.  The yard I had in mind and which was recommended is COTECMAR, a government owned ex-Navy yard. 

But two weeks ago  I ran accross a Dutch-owned and managed shipyard…  That sounds even better.   Less bureaucracy, no-nonsense management, better rates and more full-time workforce vs. contract workers. 

So we visited Cartagena last week to check out Navtech SA, an exciting new shipyard option in the Caribbean.  And we were very impressed with what we saw and heared.  No-nonsense management, good value and ‘thinking with the client’ set this yard apart in our opinion and we’re sure NavTech will become a more important player in the near future.    Our project will definitely be a great addition to their portfolio.

 Of course, we may talk differently by the time we’re gone but we hope not!