|
Newsletter May 2007 by Harold Aune
We are scheduled to receive the first hull parts for the new Whitehall Spirit Solo 14 model early next week, with the interior parts a week after that. For those of you waiting for a delivery – well if you are as ready as we are to see touch feel and row one, we feel your eagerness. Here’s a picture of the interior molding also C&C machined out of a 6000lb block of MDF form material as it appeared last week in our shop in Victoria.
On April 25th the boat buying season started with a deluge of orders from customers across the continent wanting their boats for this summer! We are now in our new facility, and so far have managed to meet most but not all of the incoming orders. Luckily we had a good inventory of new and complete boats but it’s also dwindling fast. So if you plan to order your favorite model, don’t hesitate. Call us, we’re friendly, and will surprise you with our level of service.
For those of you who are considering ways to handle a boat at a waterfront location, a very good online source for boat lifts can be found at www.boatliftwarehouse.com. We like the Tide Tamer swivel lift which is actually designed for PWC’s but will handle a rowboat hull shape fine. The boat can be pivoted inboard on a dock or pier to make it easy to put your boat cover on or do a bit of cleaning up of the boat.
Once in a while we get an order for a boat model that raises the bar a little. A challenge to the design juices that makes production manager Colin Rolls raise his eyebrows and smile. Colin likes a challenge and I suppose so do I. This one involved the whole crew as the custom features involved many alterations starting with the bare shell over in the glass shop.
The boat was a Tyee Spirit 14 fitted out for Muskie, Walleye and Bass fishing as well as slide seat rowing for exercise and fitness. Custom color hull – Forest Green; 12 volt electrical system with the battery in a special locker with a charger enabling easy recharge; running lights; GPS/Sonar/sounder and pumps to fill aerate and empty a live well in the partitioned for’d locker. In keeping with our standard of finish, absolutely clean installations with no visible wire runs or clutter. It was also set up for a small O.B. motor and fuel tank. We laid out the design, engineered the systems and sent the work order across to the old glass shop, their last job in that facility.
What made the job even more challenging was we were moving to a new location at the same time and the boat had to be completed and delivered to Wisconsin for the opening of the season in May 07. Kurt Beacham and Robin Johnson got the bare hull produced in good time and installed the ABS tubes for the wire runs carefully sneaking past the bilge drain outlet. Backing blocks were glassed in for the switch panels, instruments, lights, and thruhulls. The battery locker was pre-fabricated onto the tank moldings and glassed in place, the entire interior faired out and then spray gelled. After trimming and final gelling, the hull was trucked over to the new assembly shop.
There it received the teak gunnels, seats, floors fitted and wire runs installed. The location for the 55 amp Glas/Mat battery was in a waterproof locker under the forward seat. The switch panel was located on the rear tank. Running lights fore and aft. Live tank waterproof light for’d plus two rotary pumps servicing the live well. That’s quite a few wires! All heat shrunk and sealed.
The battery locker door was designed and built on the run and worked out really well with a shore power plug-in for the charger mounted in the door itself supplying a tiny 6 amp charger, located right inside the locker. Wilf Lewis who drives the Whitehall Semi also sports a Power Engineers degree and greatly assisted with the electricals although he maintained that he just wanted to get the hell away on time. Colin put in a couple of fourteen hour days at the end , but the work was perfectly executed and finished with the help of Bobbi Christiansen. The slide seat unit looked beautiful with it’s bronze outriggers. There were six rod holder positions on the gunnels and the rocker switches on the electrical panel worked like a charm.
Best of all we got a great phone call from Jeff Resch who received the boat on behalf of the client. Jeff said he was just blown away by the boat when Wilf dropped it off. Now – will it catch fish? We wait for a report. |
           |
|
|
