Welcome to Our Blog

Thank you for sharing in our journey of building and sailing a Fusion Catamaran! We are so excited to be able to chronicle our adventure for family, boat and land friends, and supporters, from the initial decision to our cruising life "down island". Please post your comments, questions, and cautionary tales-we love to hear from you!







Monday, November 24, 2014

Post Launch

We are happy to announce XYZZY has been officially launched!  Work continued on Friday up until the very last minute while the crane set up, preparing to lift her into the water and then started up again soon after.  Both of our sons and their families arrived, along with friends and family from nearby, to watch the big event.

Everything went according to schedule with no major hiccups.  Below are some photos of our big day, to share with all of you who wish us well and were with us from afar.

Lifted from her cradle by the Crane

Swinging to the Water
 
Up goes the Mast!
 
Rigging the Mast!
 
Now add the Boom
 
It's a Boat!
 
The Jansma Family Together for the First Time on XYZZY
 
The next goals are to finish off the many details to get her ready for a debut in St. Pete and to schedule a test sail - still quite a few mini-projects to finish up.  But certainly having her in the water is a huge step!
 
XYZZY
Ready for an Adventure

 
Thanks to everyone whose hard work and constant effort have made this possible thus far, and to all the well wishers who are following along!


 

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Friday Is SPLASH DAY!!!

At long last our Splash Day is here!  Friday November 21st is the day XYZZY will be launched, after much anticipation, hard work, and rescheduling.  The puzzle pieces have slowly been falling into place and there are only a few left on the table.  Engines and sail drives are in, props are arriving tomorrow, the bottom is painted, the graphic for the hulls is being put on this week, and the sails are ready!  Wiring is being run, headliner and countertops are installed, the solar panel mounts on the coach roof are done, and batteries are in.  We ALMOST got held up by not having the through hull for the forward looking sonar; this is a brand new electronic product by B&G just released, but the units are not yet in production (delayed, of course).  Not that we need the forward looking sonar right now, but we need to install the through hull before the boat can go in the water.  With no units in sight, we thought we'd have to delay yet again, but Steve Hamber of B&G generously FedExed his personal demonstration unit after the Fort Lauderdale Show, so that we'd be able to put the last hole in the hull!  Thanks Steve, this favor means so much to us! We will be your B&G show boat at St. Pete and beyond!

 

What happens on Splash Day? Besides the actual work of lifting the boat with the crane, placing it in the water, and raising the mast, there is much pomp and circumstance that should accompany the day. And of course, no celebration could be complete without food and drink.

Traditionally, the naming and launching of boats is fraught with  ceremony.  According to legend, every vessel must be recorded by name in the "Ledger of the Deep", and is known personally to Poseidon (or Neptune) the god of the Sea. But there is more to the naming than just the champagne!

 First there is a dedication, traditionally performed by someone who can sound like Richard Burton: "Oh mighty and great ruler of the seas and oceans, to whom all ships and we who venture upon your vast domain are required to pay homage, implore you in your graciousness to take unto your records and recollection this worthy vessel hereafter and for all time known as XYZZY, guarding her with your mighty arm and trident and ensuring her of safe and rapid passage throughout her journeys within your realm."

Following the dedication, libations must be offered, and the gods of the winds and sea must be honored.  This will assure the owner of fair winds and smooth seas.  There are four wind gods (one for each direction) and although they may be invoked altogether, during the ceremony they must be addressed individually.  The invocation usually used reads like this: "Oh mighty rulers of the winds, through whose power our frail vessels traverse the wild and faceless deep, we implore you to grant this worthy vessel XYZZY the benefits and pleasures of your bounty, ensuring us of your gentle ministration according to our needs."

After the invocation, champagne must be flung in each direction, asking permission of each wind god to use his powers.  Boreas, ruler of the North Wind, Zephyrus of the West, Eurus of the East, and Notus of the South-each must be acknowledged. 

Lastly, a final supplication to Aeolus and Neptune completes the ceremony: "Hail! Aeolus and Neptune! We seek your benevolence upon this vessel, now to be known as XYZZY!"  Of course, participants are also encouraged to imbibe, preferably long and often, in between each step.

In early ship-launching times, a beautiful chalice was used, and wine substituted for modern day champagne.  The costly cup was usually flung overboard after the successful launch, but that got
quite expensive and so the ritual of smashing the entire bottle against the hull was adopted instead.  Alas, during Prohibition, apple cider was the strongest offering allowed! Makes one wonder how many ships might have foundered because Neptune wasn't satisfied...

Another launch tradition involves placing a gold or silver coin under the mast.  This custom goes back thousands of years, and derives from the ancient Greek belief that when a person died he had to cross the River Styx to get to Hades (which in those days was simply regarded as the Underworld, the home of the dead, and not a bad place). However, a coin was needed to pay Charon the ferryman, and without payment, the soul might be trapped between worlds. So, in deference to any possible connection to truth (why tempt fate?), we have a 2014 minted 1/4 ounce gold Krugerrand to place as the mast is being stepped.  (2014 because it has to be minted during the model year of the boat.)

 
 
We also have a logo and a hull design, both courtesy of my younger son and his girlfriend, who are Photoshop mavens.  The logo will go on the mainsail as well as throughout the boat, and the hull design of course, goes on the sides of the hulls.


Hull Graphic Mockup

Boat Logo
 
Of course we will have additional finish work to still be completed after launch; the carpenter situation continues to lag behind schedule, so the two weeks before the St Pete show will be very, very busy. Systems will need to be tested and final touches completed.  But the end is in sight, thanks to hard work on everyone's part.
 
 
 
 
If you are in the area, please come by the Yacht Center on Friday around noon and help us celebrate.  It will be a day-long process, but sometime during midday we should have XYZZY in the water! We hope to see you there!

Sunday, September 21, 2014

Puzzle Pieces

Since our last post, the XYZZY build has made tremendous progress, albeit in the face of numerous small detours.  The best sailing advice I've ever heard is to never, ever sail to a schedule.  Don't promise to be in a port, at an airport, or on a plane at any scheduled time when the means of travel is by sailboat.  Do not attempt to use any prepositional phrase that commits you to a schedule in the same sentence as "sail". And the same goes for building a sailboat, as well, I have discovered.

Shortly after our last post, we met with our carpenter to review the installation schedule, only to find that his projected costs had somehow left out a number of steps that we'd counted on, including the installation and finishing of the carpentry in the boat! Not sure how you bid a project and leave out the installation, but now our antennae were raised. Now he wanted additional amounts to really finish the job. So we pressed a bit more to obtain a final cost commitment, and at the same time began looking for another carpentry firm to take over in case we ran into a dead-end. What a surprise to find when we walked into DoveTail's shop, that they were already working on our project! It seems that our carpenter had taken on another (apparently more lucrative) job, and subbed ours out without telling us!  The good news was that they were already familiar with the project and their work is the work we'd been seeing all along.  The bad news was that they were unaware of the schedule. (There's that word again...) When all was straightened out, we found ourselves several weeks behind where we need to be to make a late September launch date.

Our sights are now tentatively set on bringing XYZZY to the Ft. Lauderdale Boat Show at the end of October, which means a mid-October launch date. Stay tuned on this; I refuse to use the word "schedule" in conjunction with this plan.  Oh yes, "plan" is another word to avoid when discussing sailing :) .

We did a test raising of the mast and rigging on July 7th; here are some of the photos from that day:

Riggers from Mack arrive right on time!
Our mast and roller-furling boom
Where do all these lines go??
   

Success!!

Everything went very well and the riggers from Mack Sails completed all of their preparations for a later, final mast-raising without issue.  It seemed too good to be true.  It was; a few days later, with the mast safely tucked away along the yard fence, Dennis decided to measure it.  (He has had a burning desire to know the eventual height of the boat off the water since Day One, to reassure himself that we'll be able to navigate under the 65' fixed bridges of the ICW without a problem.  To accomplish this, we had ordered the mast to be 54' tall.)  Guess what?  The mast was NOT 54' feet; it was 59'!  It had been ordered through Mack from Selden, in France, and somewhere along the way the height detail was lost, and they made it the "standard" Fusion 40 height.  Fortunately, we realized it now, and not when we were approaching the first bridge, so we were able to have them trim it by 4 feet and bring it within acceptable range.  Another bullet dodged.  But after a few of these, you begin to wonder about what you don't know or haven't thought of, and confidence gets shaken (at least mine did).

Since the majority of the labor-intensive fairing, fiberglassing, sanding, buffing, polishing has been completed, now the biggest challenge is to manage the vendors who are arriving to install their portion of the project.  Each sub-project requires the right parts, the right completed materials, and often, the right weather to proceed.  There is a daily dance of readjusting what will happen next and who will be working at the yard as we deal with rain, mis-delivered parts, unavailable parts, etc.  Watching this from our vantage point can be frustrating, and we've learned to sharpen our meditation skills, to achieve a degree of equanimity about the situation!  But bit by bit, the whole comes together from the pieces, and as fewer and fewer puzzle pieces are left on the table, the way forward becomes clearer and more certain.  (As my kids will tell you, I've never been much of a puzzle person; just don't have the patience!)

Here are some pics of recent progress:
Front salon windows
Galley Window
Sliding Door
Hull Windows and Rub Rail


Salon Windows from Inside
Bamboo Veneer being Installed
More Veneer
Hatches and Headliner Preparation Inside

 

 
Hatches from Outside

Targa Bar Goes Back On Permanently - Last Piece of the Kit
Deck Hardware Being Mounted



Installing Sail Tracks

Cork Flooring Gets Installed
 
Cork with Grout - Master Bath


Salon Flooring Being Installed

Cockpit and Helm Station
 


 
Bow Pulpits


Handrails along Sugar Scoops

Stanchions for Lifelines


Laying out Helm Station
Helm Station

Corian Countertops
Guest Bath Sink & Cabinet Door

In the coming weeks, we will be finishing the interior, exterior, systems and rigging, getting ready for a launch date.  Did I say "plan"?  Nope! But the tentative date is October 9th or 10th, so if you're in the area, let us know and we'll tell you when the show begins.

What a View!

 
 


 

Saturday, June 21, 2014

Sarasota Summer

As Spring blossoms into Summer, the pace has picked up on XYZZY and it seems that new, exciting steps are happening almost every day. Crews of five and six people are now working six days a week. With our sights set on an early fall launch date and a debut at the Fall 2014 Annapolis Boat show, we meet several times a week with our builders to measure progress and stay ahead of what needs to be purchased and installed next.
 
The best ideas happen on napkins with drinks!
 
Living just down the street from the boatyard has had definite advantages, and Dennis goes off to "work" there almost every morning, doing whatever tasks and errands Rian will give him!  Leaving in the morning, he'll promise to stay "just an hour or two", and then walk back in around 7:00 in the evening, covered in sweat and fiberglass dust, but grinning from ear to ear!  Clearly, programming has lost its siren call!
 
We've been seeing a lot of Mike and Shawn of Cabinetry by Mike Reed lately; now that most of the messy sanding and gel-coating inside has been finished up, it is time for them to step in and begin fitting the beautiful cabinets and frames they've been working on in their shop these past few months.  True artists of wood, their considerable skill and craftsmanship is evident in each and every piece they create, and there are no shortcuts taken.  Once these cabinets are fitted to the openings, they will be whisked away to the finisher for final staining and sealing.  In the pictures below, the trim is a wood called Anigre, while the panels are carmelized bamboo veneer over super-light plywood.  The Anigre will receive a light stain in addition to the semi-gloss sealants, to make it blend with the bamboo.  The result will be a light, yet warm wood interior topped with creamy soft walls and headliner. 
 
Finished Sample, stained and sealed
 


Giving life to bare walls, Mike is a master
Here trim is still unfinished and appears much lighter
  
Mike and Shawn are an expert team
 
Looking down the stairs into starboard hull
 
Starboard side cabinets
 
Mike is also crafting a cockpit table for us as well, and here Mike and Rian are discussing shape and placement of the design.
 
 

 
 
 
Our wrap-around front windows have finally arrived from Australia, but will need to wait crated until almost the very end, as they are one of the last items to be installed. 
 
 
 
Our hull windows have arrived and are ready to be fitted into the custom design we opted for, rather than going with traditional small portholes.  These tempered glass windows have the portholes set into them, and will allow the hulls to be bright and airy, yet strong enough to withstand blue water passages.
 
 
 
 
The engines, which have been here for several months already, can now be fitted into the engine compartments (Dennis euphemistically calls them "engine rooms", but they're really NOT rooms, believe me!) to ascertain where all the mount points and connections will be.

 
Tim carefully lowers the engine for final fitting before completing the compartment
 The helm seat has arrived, and it looks like our eyes were a bit bigger than the space allotted for it!  When we hoisted it up, the seat back just barely fit under the coach roof, and would not have been able to move at all!  Looks like we should have ordered the petite size!  But after a bit of (tense) collective head scratching, plans were made to lower the base plate into the generator compartment underneath, enlarge the opening for the mini-roof above, and send the helm seat legs back for a slightly shorter version.  With a bit of thinking outside the box, the day was saved.

 
Uh oh!
 
 
Ingenuity at Work!
 We encountered a similar problem when we realized that several items (AC unit, Lithium ION batteries) were slightly too tall to fit under the salon seats as we had intended.  For equipment we didn't already have, we mocked up replicas to determine positioning, but alas, we were short a couple of inches! However, another round of brainstorming brought an easy solution: cut the seating unit and lift it up to the required height, to gain back needed room. 
 
A Battery Mock Up

Another Uh Oh!
You may be saying to yourself, "didn't these people have drawings, didn't they measure?"  Well, of course we did, and 95% of the build has come to fruition exactly as planned, but there are always a few surprises, and the true skill of Rian and his team shine in their ability to adapt and rework as necessary, without any compromise to the integrity and quality.  I remember building models from kits when I was younger, and how frustrated I was when my completed (horse, airplane, dollhouse) never looked like the picture on the box, even though I'd followed the numbered instructions exactly!  Any builder worth the title can follow plans, but it takes a craftsman to confidently tweak, adapt, and adjust to achieve perfection even better than the "picture on the box". 
 
One of the next big projects will be wiring the boat, and with our combination of Mastervolt C-Zone units (kind of like electrical routers, for my networking friends) and lithium batteries, we felt investing in a professional electrical design team would be money well spent to have the electrical/electronic system function as it should.  We have engaged Boksa Marine for this effort, and although XYZZY is probably the smallest "yacht" they've ever worked on, we are really impressed with the level of professionalism and attention to detail they bring to the table.  Since we have both a DC system and an AC system, we had to supply lists of equipment and placement for both, and then let Mr. Thomas Boschart work his magic to produce wiring diagrams and load analyses for us.  We have something close to 700 wire leads between the two systems! Once the theoretical design is complete, then of course the challenge will be to install it as per the drawings! And hope the lights turn on :)

 

In between all these projects, we've been getting to know the Sarasota Bay area with our new little dinghy, putting her through her paces, each time happier with our choice!  Plugh is a quiet, dependable tender, and her 20Hp Honda outboard gets us where we want to go while staying dry and comfortable.  We've been able to anchor off the beach to snorkel, or zip across the bay for dinner and a sunset.

 
 

 
Lastly, July 7th will be a milestone day in our build: Mack Sails is delivering our mast and rigging, and will be stepping the mast to test the rig and measure for sails.  While I know it will then come back down again until time for launch, this will be a major step in turning XYZZY into a "real sailboat"!  You all can count on another blog entry devoted to that day!  And if anyone plans to be in the area at that time, please plan to come by and watch!
 
 

Summer Storm over Sarasota Bay
                        "Ships are the nearest things to dreams that hands have ever made."
                                                                                                             ~Robert Rose