Boat in build pics (Squadron 78)

mjf said:
Paul - you are 100% correct ; actually boating on the tideway is a tough old buisness when all is said and done and maybe thats why not many do it.

Certainly from pix i have seen there is no way anything like it used to be even in C. Dickens day there was considerable leisure use.


Once clear of Wandsworth i usually wizz at 25/30 knots to just before Westminster and then under 10knots to past Tower Bridge then off again on as conditions dictate.
Problem is between Westminster and say Greenwich the ruddy ferries make such a wash that I cannot 'sight see' but am generally forced to go fast as more comfortable and certainly safer...

30kns under Tower Bridge is fun :-)
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just the thought of this is soooooooooooo cool!!!:cool::cool::cool::cool::cool::cool::cool::cool::cool::cool::cool:

as for the flight jfm when you have some dates let me know i will book the plane up however flying is very very very restricted in a small aircraft too much wind, too much cloud, too much fog, too much rain, wind in wrong direction the list is endless!! but lets hope for a lovely clear quiet day and see what we can do. would be pretty cool if we could get a third party picture with MATCH and the plane :)
 
jfm said:
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Those engines sound great!!!
Those engines sound great!!!
Those engines sound great!!!
Those engines sound great!!!

and

Those engines sound great!!!


Was slightly surprised to hear of the start-up smoke, but easy to be too fussy as you say....and me being an engineer could always easily be accused of being first in the queue for being too fussy (or 'over analysing things' as it's usually put!).

My experience of CAT C12's though has been very very little smoke (hardly noticeable at start-up).

Really sad I wasn't able to come to LIBs and see Match and of course meet you. As said countless times, it's a great thread and many congratulations :)
 
CMJ said:
Those engines sound great!!!
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Agreed, nice and smooth, as the vessel deserves.
Great bits of technology indeed, and coupled with an excellent exhaust system too.
It would be very interesting to shoot a video from the e/r, all the way from idle to WOT. Now, that would be some music!

Re.the smoke, I suppose that the 20 additional liters of displacement alone can probably justify some more smoke, compared to C-12s.... :)
 
jfm said:
Thanks for the pics MYAG – missed you by a day: we left Excel Sunday. Great idea 16ftPhil for the plane! Let’s see if there’s a date in March, as the boat is stuck in Ipswich now till late Feb. We’d need sunshine too but you never know :). Locki, yes hope to see you in a while at EBY, and as you know how gorgeous Eze is you know it makes sense to get your sq55 on a ship and do a couple of seasons down there :D; let me know when you decide to do it for help with moorings etc

Here’s a quick update of trip back from Excel to Ipswich. First, here is the mega crane that was set up just for the saturday to lift the prin 32m (157tonnes I believe). It also lifted my boat which, at 57-59tonnes, didn’t cause it much trouble
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My boat as I found it on Sunday 9am…
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We were booked firmly to leave Excel thru the lock on Sunday at 11.30, in a mini fleet with a sq65 and princess 64,78 and 32m. But the sodding lockkeeper cancelled the booking and told us all at last minute that it would be 4pm, even though that meant it was nearly dark and we all had to get places, including a meet with the fuel barge for the prin 32m. I thought this was a maritime nation? Not a Sunday it isn’t. Anyway here are a few shots of the London bit and the fleet of 5 boats
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I have no idea about the city airport rules and I note the comments above about flights needing to stop while the boats pass by, but while we were there loads of flights landed and took off…
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Anyway after we got out of the lock we headed out down river about 4pm, while the princess fleet went upriver westwards to St Kats. Here is a Youtube vid, and the boat at the end of the clip is the LIBS sq65 that we were in convoy with. I was quite surprised there is no speed limit on some bits of the Thames. And the water isn't very blue.




Passing under the M25!
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I was a passenger btw and my boat was being nav’ed by two pro skippers who knew every inch of these waters in great detail. Very impressive to watch, and very nice guys. We decided not to press on in the dark because there was risk of floating debris due to spring tide, so we turned right and moored up on the end of Queenborough jetty, and had some beers in both pubs there. Next morning we had fine weather all the way to Ipswich. Here is Harwich in the sun
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Starting our run up the very nice River Orwell...
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These big hull windows are very nice I gotta say…
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Then Ipswich Haven lock
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And finally on our berth at Fairline’s facility in Ipswich
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I really enjoyed the trip. It was my first time at sea for several months, and we were lucky to have nice weather. I had great company made up of a couple of Fairline folks, two excellent delivery skippers, and a mate from Essex Boatyards (on the Sq65) who delivered my Sq58 to Antibes with me the year before last. I also had a blast from the past by visiting Queenborough and walking past old haunt of mine Abbott Laboratories. The boat was fantastic. Veeeery quiet: nearly silent on the flybridge, and surprisingly quiet at the lower helm too. We blasted along at 30kts admittedly gulping lots of fuel, yet at 11kts the data showed 1000nm range even allowing for fuel reserve, and all the time we were stabiliser-flat (I still don’t quite see what a slow trawler yacht offers?) The boat was solid as can be; no creaks or rattles. And my first impressions of the Garmin kit are that it is fab, and the radar was very good indeed. The Cat32s were very nice and the boat didn’t half surge forward as the sticks were pushed forwards (you really need to hold on if standing), though they seemed to smoke a bit on cold start, at least to me who has been spoilt by ultra-smokeless Volvo D12s. The Fairline guys told me this was normal and thought I was being fussy:-) Apropos a discussion several pages above in this thread, I also found out the C32s have built in coolers on the fuel return lines :-) And there is a retrofittable water jacket 230v heater kit available, which I might fit to reduce start up smoke. Not that I'm challenging MuckyFarter in this department of course :-)

More updates later, and I’m keeping this on one thread as requested, until the boat gets to France
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:cough: bump

Sorry, was having withdrawal symptoms, had to go and have another look!! :D

Al.;)
 
Hi Al. I was out at sea on her yesterday, in the North Sea off Harwich, for set up and trials of the stabilisers. We had the Sleipner team on board. I'll post some pics and youtube soon, maybe this evening, when I get a spare 1/2 hour
 
New to the forum and have spent my first few days catching up on what has been an amazing journey, i cant believe i missed this at the LBS, i spent too much time on the sunseeker stand, next year maybe not (you live and learn) .. amazing amazing amazing JFM you must be made up with the result.. im off to see my first purchase and foray into boating tomorrow she's at osmotech having a refit, I'm very humbled and very jealous after seening this superb finished result, you have given me some great ideas but alas the stabs wont fit a forty footer :D !! ... enjoy Match ..
 
wow

jfm................I have just read every single page from start to finish, and I`d just like to say "Simply stunning" words fail me.

I`ve seen some gorgeous boats in the marina at Benalmadena and Peurto Banus but this beats them all, imo.

Dave
 
Aye, she is gorgeous for sure.
I wonder how many 'standard' 78's Fairline will sell in the future, now that Match has been created?
If I was asked by a future 78 Owner to be involved in the design and build (one can dream.....) I would simply suggest 'lets build a JFM Special - just like that one written up on the YBW Forum'.
As you know it will be amazing.

JFM, I hope you dont mind if most (all?) of the future 78s blatantly plagiarise your design...... at least yours was the first one.
(Shouldn't you now get a royalty for each flying bridge console that is built? :) )
 
Thanks folks for the kind comments. Sorry I couldn't show you around at LIBS johnny :) Taz, it would hold its own in Puerto Banus (if I were to go there; it's not highest on my list of Med nice spots) but there are many bigger boats there. Bajan, you know what, the funny thing is that most customers just order the basic boat and a few easy options like a big TV or whatever. Hull 71, the one after mine, is moored alongside mine at the handover facility in ipswich and it's a perfectly nice boat but totally bog standard. Going to China. Not many customers are as geeky/fussy/interested as the folks on here, and they tend to limit their selections to the standard options list. No worries, each to their own!

Below are two seatrial vids, taken last week off Harwich in a brown liquid known as the North Sea. One is just the wake, and the other shows the stabs working in a sideways sea (which, as ever, was a somewhat bigger sea than the picture suggests). This was early on in the stabs set up and they have tweaked the software (and are still doing some adjustments) to reduce the roll further



 
jfm said:
Below are two seatrial vids, taken last week off Harwich in a brown liquid known as the North Sea. One is just the wake, and the other shows the stabs working in a sideways sea (which, as ever, was a somewhat bigger sea than the picture suggests). This was early on in the stabs set up and they have tweaked the software (and are still doing some adjustments) to reduce the roll further
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Yuk! Cold ****e coloured liquid. It reminds me why I went to the Med:) Stabs seem to work well though. Can you sleep in the master cabin with the stabs clonking away?
 
Deleted User said:
Can you sleep in the master cabin with the stabs clonking away?
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Definitely. The master cabin is a joy noise-wise. Engines are a subdued hum because you're two bulkheads and a metre (fore-aft) of fuel tank away from them. The stabs are one bulkhead away, and under a carpeted floor. They're inaudible underway.

When you walk from the m/cabin into the m/bathroom you're then only one bulkhead away from the engines and there is a step up in the noise level. That leads me to believe a mid cabin boat with just one bulkhead separating master cabin from engines must be quite noisy
 
In the wake vid the central plume of spray seems to blow laterally to port and then to starboard whilst the transom is staying pretty level. Is that owing to the stabs?
 
crazy4557 said:
On those stabs can I hear a slight clunk after each stroke, almost as if there's some play on the connections?
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Yup, it's backlash in the bearings at end of rams (which are SKF bearings so ought to be top notch). Being looked at! Funnily enough, it's not every stroke, just some. Ho hum, it'll get sorted out :-)
 
jfm said:
No I think it's just wind BJB, though I'm not 100pc sure now that you mention it...
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It just looks like there is something mechanical doing it and the boat seems to be driving straight.

Are you still thinking of bringing her round to Lymington between commissioning and shipping to SoF? I cleaned my teak specially on Saturday, in the hope it might pass muster. I have absolutely no idea what it looks like dry as it then rained until I went home on Sunday evening. I did discover that teak cleaner or teak brightener makes an unpleasant wound if one is foolish enough to get it into a minor abrasion and am currently wearing a sterile dressing on my right wrist which has produced the usual puerile comments at work!
 
jfm said:
They're inaudible underway.
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I'm sure they are, but that's not the point.
As we already debated after my post #308, it's while anchored that they might be a nuisance.
Judging only from the clip, I very much doubt that - even if covered - they would unaudible with only the genset running, and the fins operating even more rapidly and irregularly than at cruise speed.
'course, arguably with such ship you should be able to sleep nicely even with no stabs at all..... :)

Re. the rooster tail, BJB raises an interesting a point indeed.
It's hard to tell for sure, but it definitely gives the impression that the fins interfere with the props water flow.

PS: a small suggestion based on personal experience: it's worth putting a veil of grease upon all the nuts, pipes, and any unpainted metal around the stabs actuators. No matter how perfectly they're sealed, the location alone is bound to have a more than average salty and humid environment.
 
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MapisM said:
I'm sure they are, but that's not the point.
As we already debated after my post #308, it's while anchored that they might be a nuisance.
Judging only from the clip, I very much doubt that - even if covered - they would unaudible with only the genset running, and the fins operating even more rapidly and irregularly than at cruise speed.
'course, arguably with such ship you should be able to sleep nicely even with no stabs at all..... :)
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MapisM, they're not bad but looking at the clip again there is a backlash clunk every time it starts an anticlockwise motion, and not clockwise. I'll ask them to supply a new bearing set for the offending bearing (an easy enough job; 30mins with some spanners). It could be the bearing at end of the ram, or the sphercial bearing at the end of the cylinder; not sure which it is. It's not the big axis bearing set for sure!

TBH, if an anchorage needs much stabilser action I wont be spending the night there except by very rare exception. I'd rather drive round to the other side of the headland/island to find flat water. I hate gensets running all night and if I had to do that more than one night in a whole season I'd call that a bad season!

MapisM said:
Re. the rooster tail, BJB raises an interesting a point indeed.
It's hard to tell for sure, but it definitely gives the impression that the fins interfere with the props water flow..
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Looking again, I think BJB is right. The left/right swoop of the rooster tail is quite distinct and seems to have about the same frequency as the stabs action. Yup, I think BJB has it correct
 
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