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The roof is now on the pilot house of new Dirona, and other exterior work is progressing. But the most obvious progress is inside, where many of the changes that we've specified are taking shape. We'll be visiting the yard in Xiamen in early August to see it in person.
One of our early challenges was to install a day head. The standard day head design was to replace the stacked washer dryer, shown behind the louvered door just starboard of the steps to the pilot house in the top right picture below. Instead of stacked washer/dryer, a combo unit would be installed in the pilot house. We had initially considered this design, but preferred a separate washer/dryer and didn't want to give up space in the pilot house either, so were going to install the washer/dryer on the starboard side of the guest stateroom. This would chew up a lot of storage space however, and getting the units in and out for service would be tricky. Later we came up with a design where the day head tucks into a nook aft of the washer/dryer, with a sliding door that closes off the whole area. We mocked up the space to using tape and a stool and felt there would be just enough room. It looks like it will work nicely.
In the salon area, we added a wall forward of the starboard settee to enclose the day head into a small room. One problem with this design is that location is the standard place for a TV lift. So we instead installed the TV on the port side, as we'd deleted the port settee. With more width available, we were able to install a 46" TV.
We've made a bunch of changes to the galley, some shown in the pictures below. The original design for the aft galley counter has a cabinet starboard of the sink, then the dishwasher, then a stack of small drawers and then the trash compacter. We shifted the dishwasher to be next to the garbage compacter and joined the drawers and the cabinet next to the sink into a single wide unit with a deep, wide drawer on the bottom, a shallow wide draw above, and a single small drawer next to the sink basin (top right picture below). Our last two houses have had deep, wide drawers like this in lieu of cabinets, and it allows much greater flexibility on storage and better use of the space. The bottom right picture is of the stove area. We replaced a stack of small drawers to the right of the stove with a single drawer and a cabinet below with a divider for storing long flat items such as cookie trays and cutting boards.
The pilot house and the settee are taking shape as well. We've not made many change there.
Normally the guest stateroom has open shelves above the desk. We've instead specified cabinets with locker doors to give us more enclosed storage space. We widened the desk slightly to make up for some of the space lost to the cabinets. And we widened the guest stateroom bed to give more room at the foot of the bed.
The engine is in place under a tarp, with the fuel tanks on either side, but not much else has been installed in either the engine room or the lazarette. The lazaratte has a ton of space, but we'll soon have it and the engine room stuffed with equipment. Jeremy Henderson, our project manager at Nordhavn, jokes that we're trying to sink the boat.
Our cruising guide, Waggoner sister publication Cruising the Secret Coast, is available at local bookstores and online. Click image below for book and ordering information.