Shipped!

Today we got the news that Blossom has been loaded onto a cargo ship and is bound for Florida!

The ship she is loaded on is the M/V Trinityborg, operated by the shipping line Wagenborg.

She's a new ship - launched November 14th and this will be her maiden voyage the US. She's spent the last month running up and down the Asian coast - all the way to South Vietnam - and is currently heading to Taiwan. Her expected arrival date ion Florida is the 25th of January.

You can track her progress using the following link:

http://www.vesselfinder.com/?imo=9546485

Tank Tested

One of the last steps the yard performs is tank testing. There are a few systems on Blossom that can't be run until she is sitting in a nice pool of cooling water. When run, these systems suck in some of this water and use it to keep cool. Very much like air passing over the radiator of a car. The systems on Blossom that needed to be run were the wing engine, both generators and the air conditioning. We opted for chilled water air conditioning - the first on a 55/60/63 for some time. Enough time, in fact, that Dometic had to re-engineer the system and then chose to send some engineers out to Xiamen to make sure all worked according to plan.

The good news is that all worked well. There was excessive wear on the main engine's alternator belt, most likely due to the up-sized alternators. This was easily resolved by installing a heavier duty belt. We'll just need to remember to stock the larger belt in our spare parts bin.

One other test was Blossom's trim. How was she going to sit in the water? As it turns out, nice and level. This is with empty tanks, so that may change as the fresh, grey and black tanks fill and empty, but at least we shouldn't need to use fuel for trim ballast. At 5 pounds a gallon, that's not the cheapest material to use. The tender, weighing in at 400 pounds or so, will sit fairly close to centerline so that shouldn't upset things too badly, either.

Lots more pictures after the jump!

Even closer...

Another set of pictures came in the mail today.

Blossom is nearly done!

You can see that the inside and outsides have been cleaned up. That's usually one of the very last things that's done, as it doesn't happen until all the dust making activity is over. She's also been moved to the end slot, where dust from the other boats under construction is less likely to blow over Blossom.

In other news, I've been working with our electronics installer and the electronic package is almost defined. Just a few minor tweaks before we start to order the gear.

We're also working with Yachtsign to finalize our boat name signs. I asked an old school mate to help with the design and happily, she agreed. She does really great work. I have high hopes. No pressure C. :-)

Blossom's so close that I'm going to point out the things still waiting to be completed in each picture, rather than the things that have been done. If a picture has no comment then, as far as I can tell, that's how she's going to look!

Lots of pictures after the jump!