How the "Information Age" has changed yachting

Ok, I've quit swearing out loud. There's nobody in the office on a Sunday afternoon anyway.
So the engineering staff on a multi-million dollar build from any of the upper end yards would have to go tearing out panels to find out where the condensation drains on that icemaker actually run?
Sorry if I'm coming across as unusally dense but this just amazes me. Do yacht engineers have to take advanced courses from Penn and Teller in preparation for their careers?

Short answer YES

I have lost track of the hours that I have spent trying to trace wires, pipes, hoses and other stuff to find out if there is a leak, break or if I can use it for something else.

Yes, at least this is my experience. If anyone knows of a shipyard that supply drawings over the actual locations of all systems I would love to hear about it?

After a few years you get to be pretty good with a sawzall

One of the reasons why I have taught myself 3D modeling is that if every I am involved with a build I will document as much as possible in 3D, But as mentioned earlier to employ a company to do so would cost huge amounts

I am absolutely amazed at this state of affairs.
Mister Hartshorn. My hat is off to you.
To my mind there is seriously something wrong with the yacht building industry. I would not even consider buying a complex piece of machinery, let alone a yacht that will spend it's time thousands of kilometres away from it's build yard without having all the information aboard to keep ALL it's systems running or repairable. It's akin to going to a car mechanic only to be told that the manufacturer doesn't produce service manuals.

Most shipyards do supply a lot of information, manuals ect but it's all on paper. Also to be fair on them they build the boat the same way the majority of the work carried out in a yard is from paper drawings and manuals, so they do not see the need to supply 3d drawings to some yacht engineer who is just going to mess up their pretty boat ........... What I am suggesting is not a replacement for paper but more of the fisrt go to for an engineer trying to deal with a problem. To be able to know that the J box for the lighting circuit in the port fwd guest head is behind the picasso in the owners office would be handy at times. And to be able to find that information easily would save many headaches.

Also to be able to zoom in on the area and see that there is also a fuse box there and what size fuses would be pretty handy to.

Just the other day I was trying to solve a mystery, the foyer lights would not come on. Now I knew from the drawings I had that there was a secondary fuse in the switch circuit but no mention of where it was, I only found it through sheer luck when I was tracing some plumbing

Other examples are decisions taken at meetings during construction. You have a binder with minutes from all of those meetings and here you can find funny things like a month before delivery the owner decides to have a central vacuum cleaner installed. No chance to have drawings made up and everything is installed ad-lib where possible. Not to mention when a yacht is in for a refit with some new gadgets installed under time pressure by people in another country, not using your language in manuals or writing.

But all captains and engineers are used to this, and if you are lucky they have been onboard during construction as well...

So at the end of the day it is the captain and engineers responsibility to put together the ships manuals and keep them up to date. In my experiance that is how it has been and will continue to be. Also when coming onboard as a captain or engineer after the fact by looking at how well organised the ships manuals are tells you a lot about the boat.

Are the drawings all manually generated in the first place or prints from CAD programs?

Fuse box? I'm getting scared here? Thermal devices for primary circuit protection? Or are you referring to circuit breaker panels as fuse boxes?
Fuse values? Resettable magnetic circuit breakers are where I live.

I can see the reality of modifications after the fact needing to be entered in to an updated masterdrawing/schematic set. A central vac system being installed almost as an afterthought should be able to be done properly at the original yard since they know where everything else is and what areas must be kept clear of to avoid interference issues. But wouldn't the project manager want photos at the very least as backup to review for potential issues?
Perhaps I'm just to used to a different set of standards and need to chill out a bit.

Regarding my mystery

For some unknown reason when they wired this boat the switches on some lighting circuits operate relays which provide power to transformers then lights, why I don't have a clue. Each switch is protected by a fuse which powered 24 VDC from the house supply, this operates a relay. The relay supplies 115 VAC from a circuit breaker to the transformer / rectifier which brings it down to 12 VDC for the lighting circuit.

WELL YOU ASKED

Sounds like a rather strange system. How many voltages do you have running on this one vessel? 12, 24DC and 115AC. 2 different low level DC voltages seems a bit odd on one installation unless there are required components that are only available in a specific voltage.

Yes it is an odd system. We also run 230 VAC. It's not unusual to see 4 or 5 different voltages used on a large yacht, totally unnessasary but often done.

This boat is now 16 years old, I am not about to change it. But I would never build it that way.

Not that I'd actually ask to see any of your drawings of the wiring system. Just curious as to how you keep track of things. Do you colour code on the drawings to identify the different voltages or how do you keep track of it?

Well I haven't tackled the drawing of this boat. But if I were I think I would do it in different layers, which in effect would be different colors but you would be able to bring up a layer for 12 VDC positive and another for 12 VDC negative and so on. That one of the reasons why I am on yachtforums is there are lots of ideas out there to be incorperated.

Yup. It's an interesting place, more and more information all the time. Great place to do homework.
Think I'll go poking around a couple of yachts this summer and take a look at their guts. Been involved in the design and construction of various highly complex structures with many critical control systems where even the sourcing of redundant components is examined. Modern yachts really are a lot more complex than I would have first thought.
Thanks for the insight.

I recently took the RYA Yachtmaster Offshore practical exam with three other friends, all of us active yacht captains for quite a few years; and couldn't help notice how we had all become, practically, "chartplotter navigators". We had to go through all traditional navigational skills before and during the exam, and we are all definitely very glad that we took the exam though we didn't have to.

How the “Information Age" has changed My Yachting

Crew joining a yacht no longer ask ‘have you got a VCR?’ they ask ‘how many movies does your server have?’
You no longer have to wait 10 hours for a sat fix - you constantly know exactly where you are.
You don’t have to guess what that ship in the distance is - you know their name and what they are doing.
You don’t have to wait until you tie up and run to the nearest post office get a stamp so you can send a letter home.
Phoning home from sea is no longer is difficult one sided conversation via a radio station in Portishead.
The deckhands kit bag no longer contains a paperback book and some audio cassettes it now contains a laptop and an Ipod.
Meeting former crew is no longer a chance meeting in a bar in some distant country you know now exactly what they are doing on a daily basis.
Shopping for that special engine part no longer involves thumbing through worn manuals and spending two hours on a payphone when you arrive in port.
Checking the weather is no longer sat waiting by the radio twice a day.

GPS, Internet, WiFi, AIS, Skype, SatNav, GSM. Satcom VSat. Are all things that arguably have made our world smaller and easier.

Good post Rev!

I was about to say the same thing and add that we no longer have to be in the wheelhouse listening to the home news over a buzzing SSB. We just zap to the news in full HDTV...