Talk about a joint effort, with a high-tech twist. The Newport (Rhode Island) Yacht Collaborative is working with Hutchinson Composite in Cushing, Maine, to build a custom Mussel Ridge lobster yacht, with the help of some state-of-the-art design technology.
The result, the 54-foot Pretti Rose, is being built now in Cushing for a Newport Yacht Collaborative client who wanted a recreational version of a lobster boat for his growing family. Mussel Ridge has earned a reputation over the years for building proven offshore commercial lobster boats.
The Newport Yacht Collaborative specializes in fitting new interiors into existing hulls, through redesigns and refits. The hull and deck of Pretti Rose, the new Mussel Ridge 54, are now in the final construction stage at Hutchinson Composite.
The 54-foot hull was built on an existing Mussel Ridge 48-foot fiberglass mold. A transom extension was formed in place and faired with battens. Once the bare hull was molded, Newport Yacht Collaborative recorded the dimensions with a 3D Leica laser scanner; it already had an approved 3D model of the boat’s interior. Then it created production files and sent them to a CNC cutter. The first components were the bulkheads, cut in Newport and installed at Hutchinson Composite in Maine.
All the interior components have gone through the same process. Working at the Newport Shipyard & Marina, Newport Yacht Collaborative set up interior modules on the shop floor. They were fully assembled, including the final paint, plumbing and wiring, ready to be dropped into the hull in Cushing. This shortened the build timeline considerably.
The mechanical space is designed to hold a Seakeeper 9 gyro-stabilizer, the water and waste tanks, a Twin Disc transmission, and a 12-cylinder, 1,550-hp MAN diesel.
The Newport Yacht Collaborative is made up of Ezra Smith, a former designer for the Fontaine Design Group in Portsmouth, RI, who now has his own firm; James Thompson, who’s been building and restoring yachts for the past 25 years, and Ashley Forbes Reville, a veteran blue-water sailor and project coordinator at Newport Shipyard. Read more:
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