Yup, that's a model in the main passageway on board.
Thanks to an extremely tenuous--and unlikely--connection to the boatbuilder through a friend of mine who happens to be a dentist whose customers include, amazingly, several of the people who work at Hodgdon Yachts, this opportunity presented itself at the last possible moment, after several false starts and reschedulings. With the boat scheduled for departure from East Boothbay for Georgia today, Saturday December 13, we were extremely lucky to finally have the chance to visit this incredible vessel before she left. I asked Nathan Sanborn to come along too, to which of course he willingly agreed.
I took over 100 photos of the boat during our hour-long visit (not nearly enough time, of course). It will take me a while to cull through the photos, but I'm planning to post a large number of them online, so check back here for updates within a few days. To whet your appetite, I've included a few here now.
I'd never been aboard anything like Scheherazade before, and likely will never again have the chance. She is a world class yacht that manages to be incredibly elegant and opulant, while never letting one forget that they are on a sailboat. I was impressed by this aspect of the boat, as I expected more of a feeling of isolation. In various places throughout the interior, though, you can see the curvature of the hull, view visible deck beams, and even see the massive chainplates.
Her mainmast (left, photo) scrapes the sky at nearly 200' in height; the mizzen is somewhat shorter, of course.
She's incredibly beautiful, with exquisite attention to detail and first-class build quality. Those of you who followed her inception at all are surely aware of the rumored hundreds of hand-carved shells and shell motif throughout the boat, and indeed they exist--mostly in a walnut trim band that extends through most interior compartments and offets the gorgeous and unique figured sycamore cabinetry.
The interior is comfortably elegant--all of obviously high quality amd style, but still managing to seem homey and liveable, unlike some of the Las Vegas-style glitzy interiors you might frequently see profiled. (Yuck)
The size, cost, and scope of this vessel simply cannot be comprehended, certainly not by looking at a few photos. Even in person, the scale of everything was dizzying. The complexity and quality of the systems was impressive--yet, underneath it all, she's still a wooden boat, which was reinforced by peering into an accessible bilge compartment, where the wooden construction was plainly visible. These are the views you won't see in the glossy magazine writeups, but to me they are telltale of the uniqueness and quality of the whole project.
Those are two of (32? I forget...) 2" keelbolts you see there. The ballast keel weighs 106,000 lb.
She's huge. She's beautiful. She manages to feel like a sailboat, despite the size. Impressive. And all this from a boatyard that, at first (and second) glance, offers no outward impression of the scope and quality of the work produced therein--a far cry from many of the glitzy yards that typically build such large and expensive vessels. Sure, there's a new 200' metal building (constructed specifically to contain the Scheherazade project), but even this building is somehow barely noticeable in a waterfront area full of other large warehouse-type buildings.
Enough for now--more impressions later. I'll post lots photos online in the near future, and will post the link here in this thread. My head is still spinning from the experience--absolutely incredible.
