New Additions to our boat...

In 1994 or so, I bought my first boat.. I guess I was around 23... I was a dreamer, and didn't have much money.. lived on a lake with pontoons and bass boats everywhere.. yet I didn't want one of those.... I started looking at big old wooden boats and fell in love.. As I discovered, I loved projects. I found a 42', 1954 Matthews Sedan Bridge that was barely floating. It needed 'a little work' and still I could barely afford it.. I bought it, pulled it out of the water, and started pulling rotten boards off. 2 years later, it was still on jack stands, motors still needed rebuilt, I had incredible problems finding anyone qualified to work on it... I had put about 40K in it, wasn't even close to completion, and it would never see the water again... Got rid of it, and for the time being was pretty disenchanted with boats in general.. at the time I looked at that as one of my biggest failures.

(pictures aren't my original boat unfortunately, just ones I found online)

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Three or four years later, I had bought a nice house on that lake, with a dock, and it was time again to figure out a boat.. Again, a bass boat or pontoon wouldn’t do… so I found a 31’ 1987 cruisers sea devil similar to the picture below.. Not in the best of shape, but it did float and was fiberglass.. two big upgrades already!

It had a small cabin, head, fridge and nice stereo… Mercruiser inboards 350’s - and they broke all the time.. But I didn’t care… life was good and the live wells made for great beer coolers. We will pile friends on board and head out for the weekend on the boat. Great times and it was during this time that I met my wife.. Then, the lake dried up with a bad 2 year drought, making it impossible to use the boat or enjoy the water at all.. This would have been around 2001/2002, the economy wasn’t so great, and I was figuring out that I needed to leave my sales job and probably start my own company.. Sold the boat, the house, and moved to the beach just a few hours away…oh, and and got married to my beautiful wife of almost 17 years now..

Then life happened, started our own company , built a house, a new factory, had two girls, and forgot boats for quite a while..

Again, picture is just similar to the one I had..

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Last summer I can’t remember why, but started looking at boats online.. Started small of course, 40’, just big enough for diesels I remember.. then 50, 60,. 70, and then 100’+ searches.. Scared my wife and she got her friends to convince me to just charter a boat - ‘don’t buy one - just charter it when you want to’ - made sense - so I chartered one for Thanksgiving weekend 2018- took the family and we fell back in love with boating..

It wasn’t a month later, 3 weeks exactly, we had picked out a boat, negotiated the amount, did a survey, sea trial, hired a crew, and had a boat of our own. A 125 Heesan. A very well built dutch brand I had never heard of..

A full time crew of 4 and when we are using the boat or chartering it, it takes a crew of 7.. 277 tons,125 length, 25’ beam, holds a tank truck of diesel, 3 water makers, 2 generators, 18 air handlers, etc etc.

This one not only floated, it is in great cosmetic and mechanical shape, needing virtually nothing… Except I’m a project guy and see opportunity more often than I care to admit..

So now I’m embarking on 5 projects on the boat that I though are worth sharing details on for those interested.

So here's "Sea Axis" -

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Stunning boat. I love the lines.
Heesan is first rate custom.
Congratulations!

 

So the first project - Center bar on the 'Lido" deck -

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From the pictures, one might wonder why it's a project?

The bar itself looks like it was re-done not too long ago, but it wasn't done that well.. The material of construction appears to be plywood with some kind of gelcoat over it, so while it looks fiberglass, it's actually rotting in several interior places...and the under counter appliances aren't in the best of condition, and it's overall just not of the same quality as the rest of the boat's finish work.. Next, the bar stools are fixed and the bar top isn't that wide, so it's a pretty awkward sitting arrangement when you sit down.. my knees hit the bar if I try to sit straight on... and the stupid speakers are mounted at your knee caps and they are crappy Bose speakers.

 

What we are trying to accomplish:

Music - Need some great sound on this top deck of the boat - where we find ourselves hanging out most of the time... So the fusion stereo and Bose speakers will be replaced - that's the nicest way I can say that..

B&W 8" in ceiling marine speakers - (x 8) , mounted in the fiberglass roof section, and 4 JL audio W series subs mounted in the bar - powered by 1500 watt rack mounted amplifiers and for B&W speakers, 200 WPC Crestron amps/controllers/processors with Mirage music server...

While it's typical to see, streaming music is hard on the boat- Bahamas and areas like that just don't have good WIFI so I am going to rely mostly on the Mirage for playlists and downloaded content.

Appliances - The round extruded 'sonic' ice - machine, Beverage refrigeration, lots of it,

Better bar stools and more of them..

Best in quality engineering, building materials and construction execution.

Really cool countertop to create a neat visual feature.

So my genius carpenter guy flew down, took measurements, and made a scaled model of the existing bar.. it's outlined on the paper.. Then we made a wooden model of the new bar to scale..

Sorry pictures are so blurry - they are screenshots from a phone video that wasn't in focus to begin with..

The one picture shows the overlay of the smaller existing bar vs the new one..

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Subwoofer design - adding 4 - JL 13" W series woofers in a sealed enclosure design, hidden in the corners of the bar. The bottom corners of the bar will be ported for sound.. The rack mounted amp for these is in a equipment rack on the level below this deck, so runs won't be long at all.

I'm a little concerned about the vibration in the bar with it's stored contents, etc. but we will see...

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We are fabricating bar out of syn-board completely - so no chance of future rot... and wrapping the outside with a finished white color..

For barstools, we are using some from seating innovations. These stools swivel, self center and return to stored position when you aren't sitting in them.. They kind of look like they are floating, which in this case is cool because it doesn't clutter up the deck floor. We did have to go through a exercise with the engineers at their company to change their bill of materials to all Stainless or aluminum components for corrosion reasons...

https://seatinginnovations.com

 

For the bar top, we are putting in something cool - a man-made blue agate - and back lighting it..

I found it just internet searching for new ideas.. One of the pictures I found online is below - showing a bathroom sink application with a skirting on the side. We want to emulate that, so our bar side will be 5" deep, affording plenty of room for LED lights in the core area facing up and sideways to light it all up..

The Blue Agate is a really cool material, although I'm a little worried about UV stability outside. The good news is its' under a roof so it won't really get a lot of direct sunlight.. and it will be covered when not in use, which is a lot of the time.. So hopefully we get some good years out of it. It's coolness factor outweighs the risk, and no one can tell me how long it will last before it yellows or starts to degrade due to sun exposure.

The bar height will be around 45" or so and the lower inside bar working counter will be made of a different material - some kind of quartz yet to be picked out, but will be a solid blue or aqua color of some sort that matches the stone but is solid...

You can see in the pictures us experimenting with backlighting the slabs before we bought them to see how they would light up. .. can't wait to see how it looks finished!


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Bar stools are cantilevered via steel tubing that's hidden in the bar's cabinetry. They anchor to the floor typically. but in our case, we don't want to drill 20 holes in the roof of the boat... So I'm making a stainless plate to be the base of the entire bar (under the cabinets) that's bolted to welded angle off the boat. The uprights for the bar stools will be welded to this base, providing a oversized base plate approach to distribute the moment and dead loads.

Another goal of the project was to achieve 26" depth of cabinets so we could get standard under the counter appliances. They had a 'mutant' collection of undercounter ice makers and coolers in place - and I couldn't figure out why until I measured. Only 18" deep - so with affording a bigger area, we can get some great appliances with some room in them and use standard sizes as they need to be replaced over time.

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Wow and wow. This is definitely a double diamond expert run.

 

First CONGRATS on an amazing boat. To call it a boat seems a bit ridiculous to me though..... . I love the lines, very attractive and unique looking.
I like what you have planned, especially the chairs. I like how they hang and don’t require legs. Very smart.
I’m also interested in what you have planned for audio. I’m a bit surprised that someone spec’d $250.00 a pair Bose speakers for that application. While your plan is much more costly, it’s consistent with the application.
Have you considered adding a fountain at the stern?


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Beautiful! Are you going to put your signature Waltzing Water feature and lights in that hot tub? That would be awesome. Someone photoshop that on.

 

Funny- would love to have that fountain playing in those waters for sure ! Not sure the generators have enough power though

I was surprised at the substandard audio on lots of the yachts we saw- and wireless networks and cameras etc were all less than I would have ever thought - but then again lots of nice houses around here are the same way..

 

Thanks for the compliments -

The majority of the marine applications go to JL for their marine Speakers with white plastic grills or bose - just too harsh sounding and not enough fidelity for my taste-

For our boat on the Lido deck I’ve got 8, 8” b&w’s in ceiling speakers drive by a crestron swamp- 200wpc - and for the 4 subs I’ve got them driven by rack mounted amps - 1500 watts each I think -

Source is a mirage media server -

It should sound pretty good...

Rest of the boat are cool custom made James speakers - stay tuned for pics of those soon.

 

[QUOTE="SCFerrari, post: 146448929, member: 145464"

While it's typical to see, streaming music is hard on the boat- Bahamas and areas like that just don't have good WIFI so I am going to rely mostly on the Mirage for playlists and downloaded content.

Wow! Great boat! You'll want a Sirius XM Radio with optional Marine weather data, the Offshore package has better wave height, surface temps and wind data plus about 200 channels of music.

 

Image Unavailable, Please Login Of course we made a full scale model of it today and the existing bar removal was completed -

 

Taped off new bar perimeter - a few tight points so we are adjusting size of bar a little and position as well - will need to re-do floor in the next week and weld new support brackets in place for new bar

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Most people don’t understand the value in making a full scale mock up. You do things right!


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You might consider softening or opening the entrance to the center of the bar a bit. Rather than making the edges parallel, you could open the leading edges. Might look a bit more custom and stylized.


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And you could also add some lights under the counter where the vertical intersects with the table top surface.


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I don't want to speak for the owner obviously but the quality of the "bones" on this boat are pretty amazing. Dutch, built in aluminum and built to ABS standards which are much tougher than normal, if you can call them that, yacht building standards. Think beautiful pleasure boat built to expedition or commercial standards.

 

Thanks very much for your comments and feedback. Yes it’s in ABS compliance and built like a ship without doubt - so much better than other brands we considered. It’s fit and finish throughout needs nothing except the updates I’m doing related to audio/video / IT - and lighting and carpet - and that’s just because I’m prettt picky on that stuff ... it went through a 10 million+ upfit in 2015 and it shows... very happy with it despite the checks I’m writing.

This bar area will be built in the spirit and quality of everything else on the vessel.