Wow, what a process! Last September we sold our 34 American Tug to a nice couple from Port Ludlow. Boatless in Sumner, we put all our efforts over the winter into building our new boat.
Our new boat will be an American Tug 485, hand built in La Conner WA. Some people hate the process of building a new house or boat but Julie and I love it. It’s a lot of work, so many decisions, problems to work through and elements to design but it’s a lot of fun and very rewarding in the end. It took at least 15 trips up to La Conner (4-hour drive round trip) to complete the project and countless hours making decisions and working on projects. The end result is a beautiful boat designed exactly how we wanted for our family.
All the folks at American Tug are extremely talented at their craft but we would like to give a special shout out to Kurt Dillworth the head engineer. He was fun to work with and an amazing engineer. He had the hard job of making all of our “ideas” come to life in the real world, and we had a lot of them. Thank you for all your time and energy working with us on the many special projects. Steve and Mike were also instrumental in a successful project, thank you for all your efforts.
Below is a photo timeline of the build process. Its amazing how a boat goes from raw materials to the finished project!
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Moulds for hull. They are split then put together to form the entire hull.
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This shows the underside of the deck mould (top of the boat). Its still in the mould here while they lay the fiberglass. When it comes out of the mould it will be set on top of the hull. Kind of like those plastic boats you played with as a kid that snap together.
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The hull is out of the mold
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See the blue line down the hull side? Thats where they are going to cut this thing in two.
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The hull is now cut all the way through and stretched 5′. American Tug only has a mould for a 43′ boat but they build a 48′ boat. The mould is cut and stretched 5′ to get the additional length. I was a little nervous about this at first but its very common in the boat building world and produces a boat just as strong or stronger.
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Here the bottom of the hull is cut. Notice how its at an angle. This makes it stronger when the two are joined back together.
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The white material they are installing is the grid system. Makes the hull very strong and provides mounting points for things like the engine and fuel tanks.
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Ava is ready to go out on the factory floor!
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Just like the hull the deck needs to get stretched another 5′. This picture shows the deck before its cut.
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Here is the deck after it has been cut and stretched. The wood you see on the sides is the temporary mould.
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The finished stretched deck. All the extra length is in the salon. A 43′ boat has 2 window in the salon and the 48′ has 3 on each side.
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The factory gets a head start by building some components in modules. This allows them to build items like the second stateroom in this picture before the boat is ready. When the boat is ready they just pick up the whole finished stateroom and set it in the boat.
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Here is the start of the master stateroom. You can see the bead platform, nightstands and the aft bulkhead.
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The engine is here!
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Engine installed in the boat.
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All the major mechanical and most of the wiring must go in before the deck goes on. In this picture you can see the fuel tanks on both sides. They are 320 gallons each for a total capacity of 640 gallons.
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A stern thruster is nice, especially with a single engine boat.
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With all the major mechanical installed the salon floor is now installed.
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Bow thruster install
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This picture shows the salon area looking up into the pilothouse
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Pilothouse dash is all roughed in. We made a lot of changes in this area trying to clean up the lines and reduce the depth of the dash.
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The galley is starting to take shape.
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Engine room is looking really good. Its amazing how much room is down there. They make it very easy to get to all the equipment.
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Watermaker is installed. This sucker will make just about 1 gallon per minute of fresh water and fills up two 110 gallon tanks (220g total). It pulls sea water and forces it through a membrane at 800psi. No more needing to find a dock with fresh water to fill up the tanks, we are self sufficient!
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The stock boat only has one starboard transom door. We wanted 2 doors with stainless steel gates leading out to the swim step. With the stainless gates made out of tubing and 2 wide doors, the cockpit will feel much more open and the swim step will become a livable extension of the boat.
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Transom doors seen from cockpit. Notice the custom propane locker/seat between the doors.
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We extended our swim step to 48″ so they had to make a custom mould seen here in the picture.
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The custom swim step is done. This is really going to extend the living area outside the boat.
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Washer/Dryer installed. This is a game changer. No more hunting for laundry on land.
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The galley is looking really good!
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This custom settee will pull out to form an inflatable queen bead.
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Pilothouse is coming together nicely.
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Electronics are now installed. 2, 16″ Garmin chart plotters, Garmin autopilot, Meratron monitoring system, Icom VHF with class B AIS, Cummins engine management system, Garmin GMI20
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Here is the 2nd stateroom bunks. Ava gets the top, she is so excited!
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2nd stateroom head almost done.
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Master stateroom.
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Master stateroom head.
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We opted for a small A/C unit that will cool the master stateroom or the pilothouse.
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Engine and thruster controls mounted in the cockpit starboard fwd bulkhead. Very nice for docking the boat in tight spots.
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Ava chilling out while we meet with the folks at American Tug.
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Pilothouse wood floor going in.
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Notice how clean the electrical work is!
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Extended swim step is on!
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With an extended swim step comes larger support brackets.
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Finished engine room. Clean and organized!
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Fuel filtration system.
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The finished product!
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Galley
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Pilothouse
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This was a custom stainless steel anchor inly we did in the stack.
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Kids bunk
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Kids Head
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Master stateroom bed. Sleep Number bed makes it very comfortable.
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This is a custom built panel wall with stainless steel on the aft wall of the master stateroom. Turned out beautiful!
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Master Head
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Swim step with teak decking.
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We did a double hinging salon door. This really opens the boat up to the outside.
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Cockpit with teak decking
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The finished transom doors.
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Two anchors just incase you loose one.
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1000lb crane to get the dinghy up and down from the upper deck.
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