Peter had a grin on his face the whole time the crew was building the giant head a few weeks ago. Now that grin has been replaced by an even bigger smile as he begins work on the giant ship which will protrude from the tower of the North Star suite. Guests who stay in this luxurious suite will sleep in the ornate stern of the ship.
We started with the concept drawings, then went on to the scale model where we worked out many of the details. Those steps were relatively easy and quick. It took a few tries before we worked out all the critical engineering. Apparently, permanently and safely balancing the full sized hull of a ship on top of a eight foot tall concrete wall is no easy task. But thankfully, our structural engineer, David figured out all of the math (imagine those calculations!) and we received the structural drawings in due course. It sure is good to have an engineer who gets what we do!
Now we have begun the actual building of the ship. We first cut out the thick steel plates which will define the waterline of the ship. This was built in two layers which are bolted together. The upper layer will be the walls of the ship. The lower will be the floor of the suite and the hull. We first assembled these layers on the floor, making sure everything was nice and square. Then we flipped those two giant assemblies and are now building the hull structure upside down. There is a tremendous amount of fitting, cutting and welding in this stage. Everything has to one hand fit one piece at a time because each piece is unique to allow for the curved and tapering shape of the hull. Once this main structure is finished we can go on to the hand formed hull pencil rod armature which will proceed a whole lot quicker. Then we will hand sculpt the timbers and planks using fibreglass reinforced concrete. This is what guests will see. All of the carefully fit and welded steel structure will be hidden inside, never to be seen again.
