Nice pictures John.  I'm curious about the bulbous bow though -- whether I'm
really seeing what I think I am or whether it's an optical delusion from the
photo angle or some such.  It appears to me that you've left a large tunnel
through the bow which I presume is for a bow thruster.  However it looks like
it doesn't go through perpendicular to the keel, but rather at some fairly
sharp angle fore and aft.

Is the hole left for a bow thruster or for something else?  Does it go
straight across the boat as one would expect or is the starboard end of it
well forward of the port end as it appears?  And why?

Thanks for a little education....

Bill

John Gamble wrote:

I got the chance last week to visit Sylte Shipyard and see John's boat live
and in person.  It is truly an incredible project.  Naturally, I an very
partial to the shipyard and its workers since it is where we had our boat
built.

First, I should tell you that we arrived minutes after the Seattle
earthquake.  We were on the ferry crossing the Fraser River and felt
nothing.  The shipyard got a good jolt and the workers jumped off of John's
boat and ran for their lives.  Nothing damaged.  We walked in the door
unannounced and ran smack into Tom, the foreman, who I used to "tangle with"
a bit.  He asked me if I had heard about the quake and I said: "Yeh, nice to
see you again too, Tom."  "No really, it was a big one you should call."
"Sure Tom, glad to see that you are the same how is everyone else doing?"
"Really! We felt it all the way up here, you should call and see if everyone
is OK."  "Right Tom, is Erling around?"  "I'm not kidding, the guys don't
want to get back on the boat because it rocked so much."  That is when I
thought, hmmm, if he is talking about his own pocket book, maybe he is
telling the truth.  I still did not believe it until Erling (Erling Sylte,
the owner) confirmed it.  I was able to get right through to Kim and found
out that she and things were "shaken" but fine.

John's boat is huge.  It is going to have every fun toy a guy could wish
for.  The workmanship is superb.  Erling gave us the royal tour and let us
crawl all over.  As you can tell from his  pictures most of the aluminum
work is done and they are starting to finish her.  I was very impressed with
the metal work.  I have been doing a fair amount of fabrication but I would
not begin to know how to do a spiral staircase out of one sheet of aluminum.
There are several.  Another example of quality work is every piece of  wood
they are using has been dipped in wood preservative.  I can tell you that
many production builders do not do this.  In my old Nordic Tug you could
find plenty of bare wood.

These guys are a hard core working boat shipyard.  I got to see final
pictures of the 70' x 35' tug that they were building when they launched my
boat.  It works every day pushing ships around the Vancouver harbor.  I
asked Erling if the owner was happy with it and in his modest way he said:
"Well they haven't called me about any problems..."

John is going to get a rock solid boat.  My only (small) fear is that I hope
Erling is up to handling all of John's toys.  I doubt that Erling has done
too many hot tubs on flybridges!  Oh well, if he can fabricate a tug out of
raw metal with 4000 hp, twin Z drives and Kort Nozzles he'll figure it
out...

I can't wait to see John's boat launched.  Hey John, gotta name yet?

Eric Thoman
Abyssinia www.seanet.com/~kimeric