A Final Visit and Inspection for Selene 60-50 "Full Circle"
Some of you already know that I've been working with Chris and Elisabeth Powell for a few years now, advising them on the myriad of choices and options that go into building a new semi-custom Selene Trawler yacht. There's a great story in PassageMaker about their journey. Here's a link to that story.
I have really enjoyed working with Chris & Elisabeth and building another Selene! I enjoyed the process of building the two Selenes we've owned, and the Selene shipyard has come a LONG way since we built our first boat in 2004 and then our current Selene 60, 18 years ago.
How Things have Changed!
When I first visited the Jet Tern shipyard in ZhuHai, China during the construction of our second Selene, Zhuhai seemed to be a relatively sparsely populated industrial down. My how things have changed!
For one thing, in the earlier days, we flew into Hong Kong and spent the night there. Then we boarded a fast foot ferry that took us from Hong Kong to the port of ZhuHai. By the time we got done with planes, trains (out of the airport in Hong Kong), automobiles, and ferries, it took pretty much a full day to get from the Hong Kong airport to the ZhuHai shipyard.
Now, there's an amazing 35-mile long bridge that connects Hong Kong directly to Zhuhai, crossing the shallow Zhujiang river (english: Pearl River) estuary. Now, I can be in the ZhuHai yard (or better yet, the hotel) within a couple of hours of landing in Hong Kong! Even better, Cathay Pacific just started new direct, non-stop service from Seattle to Hong Kong. It's still a 14-hour flight, but at least there's no connections!
Chris and Elisabeth's flight and my flight were scheduled to be only a few hours apart in landing Sunday afternoon local time. Unfortunately, my flight was delayed over 2.5 hours even before we took off from Seattle and then we were further delayed getting to the gate in Hong Kong. As a result, Chris and Elisabeth had already gone over to Zhuhai. However, they very generously arranged for a driver to meet me at the airport and drive me straight to the new Marriott hotel in Zhuhai. It was wonderful. I got there about 10 pm, which was nearly perfect because it meant I could go to bed and get a good night's sleep to help me adjust to the 15-hour time change! The Zhuhai Marriott is a beautiful, modern hotel right in the heart of the city.
ZhuHai has grown up incredibly in the years since I was there during the build of our second Selene (60-20) in 2008. It's now a thriving metropolis with high rise hotels and apartments, and a bustling business district. There was even a Las Vegas-style lighted "dancing" fountain just a couple of blocks from our hotel. We stopped to watch one evening on our way back from dinner. I'm sure there's a ton more to explore in ZhuHai, but I'm usually completely focused on looking at a boat.....so I haven't seen much of the city.
Chris, Elisabeth and I spent three full days at the yard, crawling over every inch of their boat. I focused on inspecting and checking systems, so I spent quite a bit of time either leaning into or crawling around in bilges.
The boat was swarming with workers every day as they push to complete and test systems installation. Meanwhile there was one lady who was there every day doing nothing but cleaning--inside and outside. I felt bad for her because often the workers (or us) made a mess where she had just cleaned, but she never seemed to complain and just kept cleaning.
On the third day, we were able to take the boat out into the river next to the new yard and put her through some basic sea trials. Unfortunately, the prop had hit something in the shallow river near the yard before we arrived, so we weren't able to run it up to her full capabilities.
One unexpected surprise happened as we were returning from our sea trial. We went down another branch of the river to an area where Jet Tern uses another shipyard's travel lift to launch boats (their own is still in the planning stages).
There's a new Selene 49 that's just a few months behind 60-50, and the boat had just been launched. The main engine hadn't even been started yet, so we nestled up to this new 49 and tied her alongside to tow her back to Jet Tern's dock less than a mile away. So....60-50 did her first duty as a tow boat and she hasn't even officially been commissioned yet! There's always a surprise in visiting the Jet Tern yard. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of the towing operation!
Over the three days, we created a substantial "punch list" of items that needed to be corrected. Fortunately, nothing major---just lots of small things and additional testing. As I write this a couple of weeks later, Brian Taylor of Pacific Northwest Yachts is over at the yard checking our punch list and doing another complete inspection to see that everything is complete before the boat ships. Brian has lots of experience with Selenes, and he's very thorough in his inspections! Thanks, Brian!
On our final day at the yard, Chris and Elisabeth had made custom T-shirts with the Selene logo on the front and a line drawing of the boat with the "Full Circle" logo on the back. They made enough for all of the shipyard workers--which is quite a crowd! Just before their lunch break, Howard called all the workers together for photos and speeches. All of the workers had the "Full Circle" T-shirts on. Chris and Elisabeth thanked them for their hard work and craftsmanship in building the boat (while Howard's daughter, Arina, translated for the workers). It was a really special celebration!
This was my eighth visit to the Jet Tern shipyard (two for my first Selene, four for my second, and now two with Chris and Elisabeth). Howard even commented that I'm only one visit away from tying the record for an owner who visited the yard nine times of the course of his Selene 66 build.
One of the highlight of this visit was seeing the new 38,000 square meter (409,000 square foot) assembly building that just opened a few months ago. It's massive! There were about a dozen boats under construction in one of the two large bays, with room for at least that many more!
I love the fact that the yard is really busy again building new boats with two new boats being delivered to the US over the next couple of months!
Now the fun really begins as Full Circle should arrive in the northwest around the 1st of June and we begin final commissioning and helping Chris and Elisabeth get used to cruising their new boat!
What a treat it's been for me to walk through this process with them!
