Louisa Rudeen Beckett
11/01/2004
Serious toys can pose serious challenges for yacht owners. “I have owned; function voidFunc() { } voidFunc();)
a helicopter for some time. There
is no better way to see the world,” said Duane
Hagadone, owner of 205-foot Oceanco Lady Lola. The Idahoan
real estate
developer
and publisher built his yacht, which
launched last year, to
circumnavigate the
globe (see SBI, May
2003). “I thought it would be an
unbelievable experience not
only to be aboard Lady Lola, but to take it
to a new level by
taking the
helicopter along,” he said. (Click
image to
enlarge)
The only problem was Hagadone deliberately left a
landing pad for a helicopter off the yacht’s specifications. “It
doesn’t add to
the boat to have an aircraft on the back deck.
The sun
deck is very important to
us. That’s the most special
place for sunning
and viewing, and that’s where we
have our
golf course,” he said,
referring to the carpeted tee that rises out of
Lady Lola’s
deck.
Even if he had put a helipad on Lady
Lola, it would not
have resolved the issue of ocean crossings,
which are notoriously
corrosive to
deck-stored aircraft.
“Major ports,” he added, “are not
letting helicopters land
and
take off in the harbor.” In places such as
Monaco, Lady Lola would have
to
leave her berth and run out to sea each
time guests arrived
or left.
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Owner Duane Hagadone at the wheel of his
135-mph Eliminator,
which is garaged on Lady Lola Shadow. (Click on image to enlarge)
Hagadone’s solution was to find a “shadow boat” that could accompany the mother ship on her voyages and house the helicopter on passages. Capt. Stan Antrim, Lady Lola’s skipper, made worldwide inquiries searching for a suitable platform. Last Christmas, he located in Louisiana a 1980 Halter Marine-built steel offshore supply vessel. After purchasing her at what Hagadone termed, “a very economical price,” Capt.
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Antrim, who served as project manager, moved
the vessel to Quality Shipyards in Houma, Louisiana, for a
complete
refit. Boris
Kirilloff of Kirilloff & Associates
signed on as naval
architect. The
project team had its work
cut out for it. After more
than 20 years of hard use
transporting crews, pipes and supplies back
and forth from
offshore oil rigs,
Capt. Antrim said, “She was pretty
stinky.”
(Click image to enlarge)Amazingly, the job was finished in three and a half months, in time for Lady Lola Shadow to join the mother ship for a spring tour of the Spanish Riviera. Nicknamed “The Swan” by Capt. Antrim, the former ugly duckling looked good running in Lady Lola’s wake thanks to a newly faired hull and sparkling paint job.
The biggest change in Shadow’s exterior is her new aft-deck house, designed by Kirilloff. On top is a floodlit helipad with full emergency equipment. Below is a hangar to store the Bell 430 Executive twin jet-engine helicopter on ocean transits. A seven-ton crane on the main deck plucks the chopper off the pad and lowers it to the hangar entrance, where an electric winch pulls it inside. The blades are stored in special sidewall racks. Shadow also carries 2,000 gallons of jet aviation fuel and provides accommodations for the pilot and mechanic.
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“We had to develop a way to get ourselves and our guests
from the Shadow to Lady Lola safely,” Hagadone said. He added a swim platform to Shadow at exactly the same height as the platform on the mother ship. Then he acquired a 32-foot Stan-Craft shuttle boat to ferry guests back and forth. Custom-built in Honduran mahogany, and featuring an electric side door, it holds 10 passengers in its glass-domed forward cockpit and 10 in a circular aft seating area. (Click image to enlarge)Lady Lola Shadow was an instant success as a floating helipad. But Hagadone
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saw
further
possibilities. Her hangar had room for a traveling
fleet of watercraft
that wouldn’t fit aboard Lady Lola. “We’re
a very active family. We
love
watersports,” he said. “No yacht
really gives you the opportunity
to carry a
full complement of
toys.” (Click image to enlarge)Shadow now holds a 135-mph Eliminator 36 performance boat as well as an Amphicar in mint condition; a 24-foot Nautica RIB; two Laser sailboats and two kayaks. The pièce de résistance is a 21-foot, three-man sub built by Seahorse Submarines of Stuart, Florida. With a test depth of 500 feet and an operational depth of 140 feet, it features a communications link to Shadow, a yacht-quality leather interior, underwater cameras with video monitors, hull lights, escape hatches and “bail-out bottles.”
Lady Lola Shadow’s Captain John Greenwood and crew of six all enjoy comfortable quarters on board, refurbished by Mary Jane Antrim, Capt. Antrim’s wife. The pilothouse is equipped with up-to-date electronics. Belowdecks, the welded steel tanks that formerly held dry mud used to pressurize oil-rig well heads have been cut open and lined with storage shelves. Shadow is still a supply vessel, carrying bulk food for the Hagadones’ voyage, including 600 pounds of flour for Lady Lola’s chef, who makes bread every day. The boat also stores spare parts for the entire fleet.
Shadow’s original Caterpillar 399 diesels were completely rebuilt. They give her a 10-knot cruise speed to Lady Lola’s 13 knots. “I send them on ahead, so we all arrive at the same time,” said Capt. Antrim.
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For a fraction
of the cost of his
initial
investment in Lady Lola, Shadow has increased
Hagadone’s
enjoyment of his yacht exponentially. “I think anytime one charts new
ground, there always is some concern as to how it will
ultimately turn
out,” he
said. The results have exceeded his
expectations. “It has
added a whole new
dimension to private
yachting,” he said. “You can
really say we have
three-hundred
and ninety-one feet of boat.” (Click image to enlarge)| Click on the Design tab at top to see interior resources. |