Scheherazade, narrator of “The Thousand and One Nights” (or “The Arabian Nights”), escaped death through her resourcefulness, rich imagination and storytelling skills. Her husband, the Sultan, had threatened to kill her at dawn each day, but couldn’t bear to carry out the death sentence because he was so mesmerized by her tales of Sinbad the Sailor, Aladdin and the Magic Lamp and a host of other intriguing characters. He wanted to know what would happen in the next night’s story.
Scheherazade’s namesake, a 154-foot, 7-inch ketch designed by Bruce King of Newcastle, which is nearing completion at Hodgdon Yachts in East Boothbay, is the most recent incarnation of the yard’s own share of resourcefulness, imaginative thinking and vast array of skills. These qualities have made it possible for the Hodgdon family to meet the demands of changing markets and sustain a viable boatbuilding business through five generations of boatbuilding.
Since launching the 42-foot schooner SUPERB in 1816, Hodgdon has built 400 boats, including a 165-foot schooner in 1891, the Arctic exploration schooner BOWDOIN in 1921, 49 William Hand designs and 40 John Alden designs. During World Wars I and II, the yard converted to defense work, building chasers, and during the Korean War, it produced minesweepers and troop transport ships. The yard resumed building wooden vessels from the late 1950s to the early 1980s.
In the late 1980s, Tim Hodgdon and his father “Sonny” realized that their potential large yacht customers desired traditional looking boats built with and run by modern technology. They began to modernize the yard and develop the capability of using cold molded wood-epoxy hull construction. This technique, explains Ted Smith, Hodgdon’s Custom Yacht Representative, builds up a hull by using thin strips of wood and carbon fiber that are epoxied in layers. Each layer is vacuum bagged, eliminating voids and creating a monolithic structure. The hull is then sheathed in fiberglass set in epoxy and post-cured to 140 degrees F. The technique produces a stronger, lighter and more durable hull than earlier wooden hulls.
This transformation began with the 84-foot motor yacht YOREL. Her frames and beams are laminated while her planking is traditional. Subsequent award-winning boats, including the LIBERTY, an 80-foot commuter, and the 124-foot sloop ANTONISA, paved the way for the contract to build SCHEHERAZADE, which is the largest sailboat under construction in the Western Hemisphere.
The venture has provided employment for 82 workers: 21 boatbuilders, 24 joiners, 17 systems installers, 15 painters and five engineers, plus eight other regular employees. A core of about 15 of these workers are from the Boothbay area and have been with Hodgdon for several years. Others commute from surrounding towns, and some have moved to Maine from as far Iowa and New York to join the crew.
Talking with one of the joiners, Rob Nicholl of Bath, helped provide some perspective on the meticulous craftsmanship and painstaking attention to detail that will underlie each aspect of SCHEHERAZADE’s beauty at her launching.
Nicholl has worked at Hodgdon for six years. Before that, he crafted furniture in a small shop. The transition to working first on ANTONISA and now SCHEHERAZADE has required some adjustments for him and other joiners, but, he says, “We still look at ourselves as wooden boatbuilders. Although Hodgdon has been aggressive about incorporating the newest and best technology, it’s all within the parameters of being Maine boatbuilders who spare no detail or effort to make the best product possible.”
Nicholl says when he begins to build furniture for a particular space on SCHEHERAZADE, he has to consider, first, what grain and pattern of fiddleback (European sycamore), the wood being used for most of the furniture veneer, has already been used in that space. Then he has to find wood that will match what is there. The matching is particularly difficult since fiddleback (so-called because it is used on the backs of violins), has a highly distinctive grain and pattern, and the interior design plans by London-based designer Andrew Winch call for complex harlequin book-matching cabinet panels.
“There’s a lot of forethought and a lot of teamwork required to make the matches and to build each piece of furniture,” Nicholl says. “And, everything is interrelated. Every piece of furniture is generally touching another piece and everything is tightly packed and interwoven.
“To be certain that they will mate, I have to talk with whoever is working on adjoining pieces, and I have to talk with the electrician who will need ways for the wires behind the piece, and the pipe fitters who will need to fit in pipes for things like hot and cold water and gas. Endless things need to be figured out.”
Before working at Hodgdon, Nicholl had broad experience with wood lamination, building up layers of wood, but never with the composite process now used, where furniture is constructed by surrounding a super light foam core with two laminates epoxied on each side. Doors and soles have rubber and cork interiors that minimize noise and vibration.
The laminate construction maximizes stability and strength and optimizes the use of the best wood. “We treat the wood like it is gold,” says Nicholl, “using the best of the best for the surface veneer and other pieces for substrate.”
The advanced technology behind building SCHEHERAZADE, the systems being installed to run her and her sheer magnitude have required considerable innovation and evolution at Hodgdon.
The yard purchased land on the Damariscotta River where Goudy and Stevens yard had been located, next to the still active Washburn and Doughty yard. There, Hodgdon has constructed a 20,000 square-foot building with a production bay large enough to hold the massive SCHEHERAZADE hull, and wings that provide ample space for offices and scaffolding to reach the boat on multiple levels. The facility includes a system of pneumatic hoists and straps used to roll the hull and fit it onto the 72-ton keel constructed in Ontario, Canada, by Mars Metal Co. and trucked to East Boothbay. At launching on Aug. 3, 2003, a transfer carriage will take SCHEHERAZADE through the vast doors of the building to a railway now being constructed to ease her into the Damariscotta River.
Hodgdon converted the facility where ANTONISA was built into a two-story joiner shop, with a new resawing machine and heated laminate press. On the first floor, there is space for a CAD Mylar layout of the yacht’s interior, so that the owner (who Hodgdon prefers not to identify at this time) can walk through the layout – the master cabin, his and her offices, guest cabins, the salon, galley and all the rest – and see furniture in place and make any desired changes. Unlike ANTONISA, where much of the furniture was built on board, most of SCHE-HERAZADE’s furniture is being crafted in the joiner workshop and then fitted on board. Since joiners can work simultaneously with boatbuilders, it is possible for Hodgdon to complete the yacht in a shorter time, even though she is 60 percent larger than ANTONISA.
Now that less than five months remain until launch, different crews alternate shifts to minimize crowding on board. Boatbuilders and joiners work 6 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Thursday; painters come in from noon to 10 p.m.; and most systems workers report Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.
All systems of the yacht will be controlled by an integrated bridge technology created in Holland. “A software program controls everything,” explains Smith, “including pumps, hydraulic systems, electrical systems, the engine and sail handling systems. It monitors things like fuel capacity and cabin temperature. Everything can be controlled from most of the 17 computers on board.” This, he adds, has meant a huge change for the systems workers, from installing wiring for a few systems like radar and GPS to the complexity of wiring needed for the extensive technology. Some systems workers have traveled to Holland to learn more about the needs of the technology being installed.
When she is finished, SCHEHERAZADE’s gleaming blue hull and teak decks and her interior with its shimmering fiddleback cabinetry, burled walnut furniture tops, black walnut fiddles, over 300 hand-carved marine life decorations, marble and granite countertops and gold-plated hardware will be amazing to behold. But just as impressive will be the complex technology beneath this painstakingly crafted elegance and the innovative thinking that has made it possible for these two to come together.