Hello. Today we're going to talk
about a conversion of a 250 foot concept design for a global expedition
yacht. This would be a full-displacement. Probably a 10 to 14 knot hull that
is equipped for long-range maximum endurance , say 30 to 60 days. And
in terms of range - it's got to be anywhere from four to eight thousand miles so
you can get across an ocean and still have fuel. This is Grant Maughm's design. I really like it.
He's calling it the Raven. So, this is about a 240 foot hull here with probably a 10 foot extension
on the back, so we're calling this a 250. The 240 foot class of OSV and PSV is very popular
and there are a number of these hulls available that are different age different price points and
different configurations. We''re going to actually go aboard a couple of these. In almost all cases
you're going to have a touch and go helipad and you can talk about having a hanger
this vessel is big enough to have its own hanger . It has a big opening here for the
tender garage. It has another opening here that probably goes into a spa or an area for
boarding and access. And then you've also got the Euro transom. This is an important
door here and you should pay attention to this because if you've got guests on board
or the owner on board and you have to load in your stores, spare parts, all the things
that you need to keep the boat going; this door here will go right into an area
that will lead to the walk-in refrigerators, the reefers, your pantries and will also have
access into the engine room. It has a nice big bridge that will not all be business. There is
space up there for the owners and guests and you'll see on the conversion vessels that we're
going to look at, the commercial ships that more than likely they're going to have a bridge that's
further forward, because that's the way that those boats are built. In this instance, we're going to
bring the bridge back. We'll keep the deckhouse, but we'll probably bring the existing bridge back
on the hull. This area of the vessel that looks like the the back end of an empty pickup truck is
actually full of equipment and weight and this is ideal for building out for an expedition
yacht. In this particular layout here, it looks like they have a hot tub in there and that's
probably also a screening room because you've got lay down pads and what looks like a screen.
Now on some commercial boats this actually is the helipad up here and I don't see any reason
why you couldn't do that if you wanted to have a different configuration on the stern. This
creates some protection from sun and weather for an observation deck here for guests and owners
to sit up on the bow. One thing I like about this and that I don't like on some other boats, is
that you've got the the whole crew up here and it's nice to have a little bit of privacy up on
the bow, entertaining or hanging out, and not have the crew there lurking. But that's a matter
of taste I guess. For some people that have large needs for toys- and they're talking
about SUVs and ATVs and submarines and motorcycles and all kinds of stuff that they want
to bring; having a big beam, full displacement boat really does have a lot of advantages.
So I have a lot of footage of the boats that I visited down in Louisiana the last time I was
down there. But I actually didn't have the right footage for these 240's and so I decided to jump
on a flight and go back down to Louisiana. It was a little toasty. I landed at midnight and it was
88 degrees and it only got warmer during the day. But it was well worthwhile and now I'm going to
show you a little bit of what i found down there. Today I'm inside of what is probably the largest
shed that i've ever seen in Fourchon, Louisiana, about to go aboard this vessel behind me here -
a 240 foot OSV. I'm going to be taking my cameras aboard three of these 240 foot OSVs which are
just tremendous workhorses for in the offshore oil fleet. This one is a 1998 hull. It was built
in Louisiana - C CARRIER. It has a 54-foot beam and the defining feature of these OSV's is
the expansive open aft deck which can be about 180 feet of open deck by 54 foot on the beam and
not only is it a lot of space but it has a huge amount of load carrying capability. This hull is
almost 25 years old and these rugged steel hulls hold up extremely well and you won't see
much difference in this hull when compared with a hull on a vessel that's maybe eight or
ten years old. We managed to get aboard just before a passing thunderstorm doused the decks
and actually helped cool things off a little bit. We're fortunate to be able to get aboard
this vessel as the crew was just finishing up preparations and setting off for the Gulf of
Mexico. The bridges are fairly vast compared to yacht standards. You also immediately notice that
you have a 360 degree vantage point. All these vessels are equipped with very robust DP2 systems
along with all of the class required redundancies. Walking aft to starboard you have
your tank management and all the pump systems and then the
alarms and the fire systems. And despite everything being digital
these days, you would still have on all these vessels full sets of manuals. On
the aft of the bridge is the command station for all of the operations when out off
the rig with the redundant DP2 system and full control of the vessel and tremendous view
of the workspace from this aft side of the bridge There's a nice big nav station here which
has all of the normal digital input and data points coming in that you would expect
and then a really nice traditional sized chart table here with all of the
chart drawers for the printed charts and you can see that they are using these in
addition to all of the GPS and the digital readouts. I wanted to make note here that although
these are us-built CAT engine vessels, you'll see all Ulstein equipment here and Rolls-Royce. Those
suppliers are in Norway and on top of that, the interiors that we're going to inspect now are also
fabricated in Norway as well. For an expedition yacht conversion' these facilities are turnkey and
ready to go to sea. With temperatures in the 90s, where I wanted to be was here in the cold stores,
and even better in the large walk-in freezer compartment which was chock-full for the trip.
Here's a typical cabin. It's actually a spare cabin because they're using it for storage right
now but this gives you an idea. The engine room is vast with at least two decks of
height and equipment on all two decks, plus there's a mezzanine level there. You
have Caterpillar mains and Caterpillar generators. There's a full inventory of spares on board and
of course workshops. Power management is in the engineering space which is up high affording
a view of the entire engine room space. I just wanted to jump back out of the tour for
a moment here and look at a general arrangement of a typical OSV. This is not the vessel that
we're on right now, but it's a typical layout. In this case, the engine room is all the way
aft, which is ideal because it isolates your noise vibration and exhaust away from the general
living quarters. So realize that on the bridge and the crew accommodations that we've been looking
at- we're basically looking at the front 15 or 20 percent of the hull. That whole world is there
in the conversion, ready to go. So, what we're going to walk through right now - i just wanted to
point out, this is probably about a hundred feet of the interior space in the hull where you've got
your dry bulk tanks and your liquid mud tanks and this is all available to be re-purposed. You can
extend the crew areas in here. You can put in crew gyms. You can put in the cinema. You've got all
kinds of storage. You can have walk-in reefers. Back here is typically, on an expedition
yacht, is going to be part of your garage and your water toys and so that's the space here
. And when i'm talking with clients something that they don't realize if they're used to 160 foot
or 180 foot yacht hulls where they're trying very hard to find space to put things- they don't
realize the incredible open spaces that exist here that we can re-purpose and that is one of the
huge advantages of these offshore supply vessels. So let's go back on board and check it out. Here
are your wire runs out in the open, of course and these are the liquid mud tanks. They are taking
up a space that is probably more than two decks height-wise and you'll see as we
walk along here the pumping station at the center of the hull here and these are all
the liquid mud pumps and piping. All that's going to come out and it's going to become usable space
for our expedition yacht purposes. A glimpse at the independent Ulstein Rolls-Royce Z-drives which
function as part of the DP2 system of the vessel. So here we are on board the 240 foot HOS Sweet
Water. This was built in 2009 at British Aerospace shipyards in Jacksonville Florida, which at that
time was called Atlantic Marine. so it's U.S. built to ABS specs. We've got probably at least
150' of deck, because each deck strap is 10 foot. We're going to turn this inspection over to Darren
Pitre, who has deep experience with these vessels, operating them at sea and maintaining them ashore.
This vessel has got more space now. There is a larger pantry space a lot larger galley. This
is more like it. All stainless steel. It's got, we call them reach-in cooler freezer. Then you
have your walk-in. You could load this freezer from the back door. That's a watertight
door. That's a very good feature. Again you have your chain locker
and then this one's a lot larger, you have a lot more storage in here. You're
running two bow thruster engines. These are C 32 Caterpillars. They're close to a thousand
horsepower- somewhere in that thousand range. On the forward one, it's the same thrust
as the other vessel. It's a Bronnvill. The forward one has an angle drive. then it
has the two hpu units for each bow thruster hydraulics because it's a hydraulic pitch wheel
on the thrusters, which is sweet. Over to the port side is your hpu for your cranes and your anchor
windlass. You got your three transformers 480 to 208. Now we're walking aft on the starboard
side of the hull, past mud tanks on the center line. Huge mud tanks and and on the outside
wall are corrugated tanks of water and fuel. Here we are at the engine room, all the way aft
and everything's run neatly up in the overhead. It's out of the way. It's just so much bigger.
It's a deeper hull is what it ends up being it makes it so much more room. How many feet to that
deck? I think that's some 18 foot hulls. All your fuel manifold tier-two engine. You can tell it's
a tier two engine on this side where you have your two pipes going to your after cooler. Then
when you're going go to the tier three engine, your after cooler is going to be even higher.
These vessels run a raw water cooled gearbox which is really easy to work on. Probably when
you're running the CP wheels is where your fuel efficiency is going to come in versus a fixed
wheel. This is your switchboard. This is the B bus. This is the A bus. That's C18 Caterpillar
engines pushing 340 kw each and split rudder system. One electric motor with two pumps and
you can run the whole ship on one motor. Here we opened up one of the covers looking into the lower
bilge. We're actually looking upside down here. I just wanted to see how clean and well maintained
this ship is . It's like new everywhere you look. CP gearbox- it's a scanner system variable
pitch. This is your leverage arm that changes your pitch. You have a mechanical pump and
an electric pump and as you can tell this vessel's a lot newer than the last vessel
because of the nicer woodwork, the nicer walls. You have another room here with
two-man stateroom. To your right is your captain's day-room. And then you have your engine
monitoring, your fire alarm system, your fire pump panel ,steering failure panel and you have
your Brunvoll, the controls up here for your pitch for your thrusters and then on the right side is
all your engine controls with scanner, your radar. This is part of your GPS, your autopilot,
rand adar screens on each side. Our work is more at the stern station. Yeah,
that's where you're making money. Correct. They hang out on the stern station which
you could probably tell by the chair. The stern chair usually will wear out. The Chelsea
clocks - they're all shiny. How are they so shiny? Because they cleaned them before they got stacked
and they cleaned it. They came out all right. As mentioned at the outset of the video,
the task at hand with the conversion is to retain the valuable assets of this hull
and the systems that are already on board, reposition the deck house and
the bridge to a more practical and more aesthetically pleasing position and to
end up with a wonderful global expedition yacht.
