Ten days since my last article. I am sorry for having let you waiting for so long, but the year´s end business is really eating away my days and as it is the same almost every year, just before Christmas the clients remember that … there´s Christmas upcoming. So loads to do and less time for blogging. Anyway, expect a barrage of new articles coming out over the next two weeks until New Year´s Eve as I´ve collected a few very interesting and diverse topics I want to talk about. First up: The Omega 42.
I´ve finally been able to visit the shipyard just yesterday and was very happy to fit the brand new bathroom gratings. Apart from these news, you may also ask yourself what´s going on with the Omega 42-project in general, so I will weave in an update about the building progress into this article as well. By the way, there also had been some improvements to this website … subtle, but I think they work. For example: I´ve increased the height of the pictures to pay tribute to the fact that more than 50 per cent of you guys read my stuff on a mobile phone, hence, pictures are much better visible on phones.
The current status of the boat in the shed
So, back to the Omega 42, what´s the status? To be honest, not much has changed really as I had asked the shipyard to slow down a bit. This has something to do with some “hazardous waste” from my past life as boat dealer and such, so I preferred not to receive further invoices from the shipyard all too fast. That said, I am really thankful and appreciate their attitude so much! But that´s a thing of the past, issues are solved and now work has resumed with full force. I hope I can publish the final schedule with a definitive finishing date very soon.
Apart from me “hitting the brakes” with the building process, the guys nevertheless here and there went on with minor projects so that the building never stopped for good really. Also, something I appreciate very much! So, what´s the current state? The guys are painting and lacquering the different furniture-parts. That´s the reason why all wooden parts – if movable – are scattered around in the workshop. Also, the last shelves, cupboards, doors and push-trays are being built. Electric wiring and piping is installed, works have started on the fresh water-circuit. Last open “big” items: Engine room, electrics (batteries above all) and electronics. I estimate that around end February to mid-March the deck will marry the hull.
Why gratings in the yacht´s bathroom are so important. To me.
Back to the tiny – but very important – detail I want to talk about specifically in this article: Bathroom gratings. Maybe I am a bit special in this respect, but my inner Monk is really grinding my gears when it comes to this. Maybe you have noticed this when I write about other yachts, for my boat show walkhroughs for example, but I always look if the manufacturers have invested in a grating or at least some floor-board in the bathrooms of their yachts, or not. Why this is so important to me?
Well, I don´t know what you think about this, but I just hate it to walk barefoot in cold, raw Gelcoat. Especially when it´s a bit fresh (in the early morning or when you take a pee during the night), it´s just so cold and kinds of uncanny really. It feels awkward and uncomfortable. Moreover when you take a shower, especially in the series production cruisers, where you have to push a button before the shower pump will drain the cabin. It´s just awful. So, a grating, in my opinion, is a definitive must on any boat´s head!
Digital model for the boat´s gratings
Back in the day when I used to sell Beneteau boats, I secured a deal with one of the ship carpenters I knew to custom make gratings for the Oceanis yachts of my clients. It´s a product of beauty that I offered to them and it really worked. Such a grating is an instant upgrade for the otherwise “naked” and cold white bathroom. But of course, people are price-sensitive and so am I personally as well. It was out of question to make gratings the old-school handcrafted way: Inestimable.
Not just because of the manual labor and level craftsmanship required, but mostly because modern boat head´s floors and shower bilges aren´t rectangular. These are mostly rhomb-style shapes, very elaborate and complicate forms. Hence, making gratings the way it is done since centuries for those shapes would be far beyond anyone´s pain threshold. That is why we moved to CNC-milled gratings, which is a great way to achieve the look and feel, but to save a lot of money. And time.
Once the gauge model (in the case of my Omega 42 head it was two simple cardboards) had been digitalized by means of Prodim proliner technology, the outline of the future grating is now a computer model. Then you define the thickness of the outline (which would have been the embrasure when done by hand) and now you add the simple pattern of the “holes” of the grating. All I had to do was to define the measurements of the holes and the thickness of the material between them. Voilá! After an hour the two Omega 42-gratings were finished. On the monitor at least.
Hand built vs. CNC-milled quality
The cool thing about a CNC-machine is that it tells you how long it takes to work the form until finished. My gratings took several hours to being milled out nicely. The good thing is: Once you start the process, you are free to do whatever else you want. So the actual production time is just waiting time. If done by hand, you´d lay a much higher price as manual labor is much, much more expensive than machine-labor. Nevertheless, it does not always run as smooth …
Christian, the carpenter who makes these things, told me that he had lost one of the ruffians because the computer had a little malfunction which lead to the destruction of the raw grating. Well, he had to start it all over. But after a few hours, the two gratings for my bathroom were finished and all looked just as fine. A second advantage of CNC over handmade can be seen very clearly in the picture below: Very few offcut and wasted material, which is a good thing, I guess.
Everything that´s left over are these couple of hundred little squares. By the way, here´s how I saved another couple of hundred Euros: Back then when we started to manufacture the gratings for our clients, we used massive wooden boards of real Teak or similar timber, like Sapele-Mahogany. But these raw materials have experienced a surge in pricing with Teak becoming scarce more and more and alternative materials becoming sought after. A nice workaround in is the following: We are using cheap, waterproof plywood as base material and fitted Teak-like PVC decking material on top. You can clearly see the two layers in the pictures above …
… but you won´t notice anything when standing on the very gratings. As you can see, the bathroom is not very big aboard my yacht, so the angle in which people will look in the floor isn´t obtuse enough to being able to clearly see the two layers. For me, that´s completely fine. I saved a lot of money but get everything I wanted in the end: The looks, the comforts for my feet and a nice price that isn´t hurting my budget all too much. Win-win, I would say.
Let´s try if they fit …
When I drove to Christian´s workshop I was so happy when I first saw the finished outcome: From a few meters away, you really cannot tell any difference whether it´s “real” or not. Also, he managed to hit the shape perfectly. As you may know, in my Omega 42 there is no classic pumping or electric WC: I decided to fit a simple, but ingenious, solid separation toilet. If you are interested in this technology, check out this article of my thorough live-test of the no-mix toilet as well.
The aft grating is much thicker as it will be the mounting base for the no-mix toilet. I also figured that I wanted to have it raised a bit (by 2 centimeters) because I am 1.86 meters tall and don´t like the more extreme “squatting” positions of low mounted toilets. This is the reason why this grating is much thicker than the other. You can also clearly see the outline of the toilet, underneath which there´s no grating of course.
The bathroom of my Omega 42 is now empty again. As I have already stated, most of the non-laminated furniture has been dismounted for being painted and lacquered in a separate section off-board. On the other hand, the walls and bulkheads of the head are already completely painted: As I ordered it, in plain white. So I put in the gratings to see how it looks …
And Boom! Don´t you like it? The fit is as precise and without any margin as you can wish for. When the gauge model and measurements are done elaborately and the process of digitalization as well, there´s no risk of deviance or anomalies. Ah, I really like the looks! This is what I wanted! I even got rid of my winter boots and tried out how it felt standing on these gratings with bare feet. A treat! Much, much better than this ugly, cold, slippery diamond “non slip” Gelcoat pattern!
Next steps in the Omega 42 building process
As I said before, the guys in the shipyard are now planning the last manufacturing phase for my boat. I think I will be able to launch her late spring 2026 and sail her during summer and autumn to Sweden. Maybe before Christmas I´ll receive the detailed plan. That said, I´ve ordered the manufacturing of the boat´s sails at Quantum Sails and the making of its rigging at Seldén. Ordered and paid as well is the full boat´s deck – not in real Teak but synthetics – and many smaller bits an pieces, like pulpit, nav-lights and such.
Next up, and the real reason why I came to the shipyard, will be the first of three articles about the making of the boat´s matrasses and cushions, which of course will be custom made by a yacht specialized upholsterer. Very exciting weeks and the last 5-6 months of the building process are ahead! I am absolutely thrilled and happy, you bet. So I hope you bear with me and be my co-pilot during this final and most exciting phase of the making of my legendary Omega 42.
Related articles which might be of interest for you:
Wooden gratings for sailboats – CNC-milled
Could you tell? Synthetic decking material that doesn´t look like cheap plastic.
Teak, but much better: At Tesumo