Here we are in beautiful Lake Union Seattle on a brisk December evening December 2013 behind me is
the 92 meter 303 foot Sahara it is back on the market It was in the middle of a conversion It
needs to be completed It is an astounding vessel shape on this ship is beautiful and it is very
very expensive to reproduce because it's not just visual that's built into the structure of the ship
the flare of the bow and the in the rake of the bow and the rake of the stern and it's a molded
hull you know most vessels nowadays are a hard chine haul and this is a mold at home you know a
lot of the ships that were built in the you know in the last 30 or 40 years they've chosen the
least expensive build method which means straight lines no rake no shear everything is square so
they can build it with You know you could have home builders I'll actually build the ships and
so with this ship you needed to have real ship fitters and there was a real art going into this
the shape of the bottom and the bow and the way the vessel has a rake and camber even the decks
are cambered so there's a lot of a lot of shape and a lot of style to this which you do not get
today. It's just not built in the ship's because it's just so expensive Probably doubles the cost
of the vessel and it was designed structurally so that it could be have quite a few different
interior configurations without having to worry about structure. So you have a lot of flexibility
there. The ship was always maintained inside in fresh water and once NOAA sold the vessel
she's been moored and maintained continuously in freshwater Her steel hull is in practically new
condition. I mean just very little wastage if any at all. She's heavily built. She is ice classed.
So that means she's got special framing for the first third of the ship special hull plating along
the waterline in critical areas. Very heavily built vessel that is in structurally as new
condition. I've had the vessel to 18 knots and that was without pushing anything. She has a very
efficient hull. These are a slow turning props, very smooth when she is running and when we were
running at 18 knots you couldn't even feel her. There was no vibration and it's so quiet. When you
get into vessels over let's say 60 meters 200 feet and you start to get up to the size of this vessel
which is 92 meters 300 feet I think you're really not talking about a yacht anymore, you're talking
about a ship finished to yacht quality. So I just want to make that distinction and point out that
here in Seattle they are very adept at dealing with ocean-going ships. well this is one of
the areas and one of our facilities here here in Seattle and we work on metal ships we have about
1500 feet of deep water mooring and a drydock. We can work up to 150 men here. Steel, electrical,
finish and we're in the heart of Seattle which is one of them Western Hemisphere's top maritime
ports. It's great for material trades. Great contractors at all fields, some hydraulic,
electrical, air-conditioning to up finish paint fairing. I'm in the engine room down one deck
below me here are four Fairbanks-Morse engines. Three of them are near new. They were put in by
the US Government just before they disposed of the vessel. This is the propulsion machinery control
room for the diesel electric system. Has a whole tank sounding systems for all of the tanks, main
engine monitoring of temperatures and pressures and of course all the propulsion motor controls.
It was set up for a unattended engine room or remotely monitoring for ship this size to have,
you have enough monitor points have enough data checkpoints where you could really run the ship
engineering wise from this control space. You'll see that these walls have been taken back to the
insulation overhead . Going to show you some details of the wiring. They actually stripped
out the plumbing in here but they left the base of the showers and the sink piping. Why
do any plumbing when you've got the sewage lines and all of that here. At least in all
these cables there are markings on them, they've got tags on. In these tanks right here - numbers
equate to all those circuits, so it's relatively easy to use a circuit or to reuse the circuit.
The thing that you'll notice in these open spaces on Sahara is that there aren't a lot
of structural walls. These vessels were built of to the highest government standards with
the best steel and the thickest steel. This is an ice-class vessel, but because of that,
you can actually gut the interior and you can create huge open spaces that have great structural
integrity and there are lots of portholes and they can be made even bigger no problem.
Very stable. There is no stability issue, that's for sure. Look at the way this flows up. It's just
beautiful. I mean a completed vessel, I bet you would take about four years from the time
the plans were developed and I suspect a cost substantially over two hundred million dollars.
The simplest would be to put new ship's auxiliary generators in which would be late-model auto
starts, all fully automated and you could leave the existing propulsion generators and propulsion
drive motors. The propulsion drive motors are good for the life of the ship. Then the next upgrade,
if you really wanted to go to the full monty, would be to change the ship's propulsion drive
generators to AC generators dual fuel. It could be the diesel and or LNG I suspect you could do this
in the shorter timeframe as a year, 12 months, and if you're going to go more extensively a more
extensive refit with full fairing and changing up main propulsion engines and so forth you would
need probably another year about 18 to 20 months. But come to Seattle check out the boat and you'll
see and you can make up your mind but I tell you you must come and see this boat. There's no other
way to appreciate it You've got to come see it for yourself because there's nothing quite like it,
come on, sixteen staterooms plus crew quarters and then new galley and all of that it wouldn't
take much to have a boat like this kicking ass and doing well operational and out cruising.