Chip Haggett Chip Haggett carves a shell from a block of walnut. More than 500 shells will decorate the trim along walls and furniture inside the Scheherazade. (Photo Desiree Scorcia)

If you thought the Antonisa was something else, meet the Scheherazade.

At 154'7", Hodgdon Yachts' Scheherazade is the biggest sailboat now being built in the Western Hemisphere. She's also the most technologically advanced vessel the company has ever built.

And then there's the ultra-luxurious interior, adorned with over 500 hand-carved black walnut and sycamore shells and eight - yes, eight - bathrooms.

Hodgdon Yachts moved from its Murray Hill location to a new 20,000-square-foot facility on Church Street three years ago to begin work on the sailboat.

The 155-foot, state-of-the-art ketch is due for launch on August 3. It was designed by Bruce King, who also did the Antonisa and several other boats with Hodgdon Yachts.

Tim Hodgdon, the company's owner, thinks the whole region should be proud of the Scheherazade, since so many outstanding local craftsmen have helped build the yacht.

But the Scheherazade also means a lot to the shipyard. It represents the ten-year transformation the boatyard has undergone - from building commercial boats in the '80s to world-class luxury yachts today.

"We've had a huge growth spurt," said Hodgdon Yachts owner Tim Hodgdon. "Ten years ago we were a company of six, and now we're a company of 96 on the tail end of a 155-foot sailboat."

Applied to Scheherazade, "sail-boat" sounds like the understatement of the year.

The shipyard began construction on Scheherazade in 1999. Building such an enormous ship in three and a half years has been challenging, says Hodgdon. But extensive use of computer modeling, and a lot of thought and talented workers, have made the complex job go as smoothly as can be expected.

One idea that saved time was having furniture built at the old Murray Hill workshop. Full sized mock-ups of the sailboat's interior allowed workers to build furniture "in place" before the hull was finished. Furniture will be installed completed in place, saving a lot of time.

No one at Hodgdon Yachts will say who the boat is being built for or how much it will cost. They will, however, confirm that the owner is an American who does not live in the Boothbay region.

The yacht is named for the heroine of the ancient tale 1,001 Arabian Nights, who avoids death at her husband's hands by telling him stories, but not revealing their ends, for 1,001 nights. A rendering of her is carved above the headboard in the master stateroom.

It was designed and carved by local woodworker Greg Rollins after designers from Europe failed to satisfy the owner's wishes. Rollins read three books on the tale and then sketched his interpretation with input from the owners.

In addition to the master stateroom, the yacht houses two guest staterooms, accessible through a central rotunda, two crew rooms and the captain's cabin.

On board are also two offices - his and hers - a crew dining area, an unusually roomy engine room, and a galley complete with granite countertops, head, four ovens (convection, steam, standard and microwave), two sinks and two dishwashers.

The largest room in the boat is the main salon, at 378 square feet. It houses a dining table and chairs on one side, and couch, coffee table, and plasma TV on the other.

The interior of the boat was designed by the London-based design firm of Andrew Winch. Everything, from walls to doors to tables, is being done in American black walnut and fiddleback sycamore. The fiddleback sycamore, so named because it's commonly used on the back side of stringed instruments, is cut in a diamond-shaped harlequin pattern. With the sycamore's characteristic pattern of vertical and horizontal grains, the look has an elegant geometry.

A walnut line of trim runs over the walls, around the edges of furniture, and across countertops, desks, and dressers. More than 500 shells, relief carved from single blocks of wood, decorate the trim.

Many of the shells are being carved by Chip Haggett, who works in the Murray Hill shop. He says it takes about a day to carve each one.

All of the furniture, except the dining table and chairs, is being built by workers at Hodgdon Yachts.

In fact, the boatyard is taking care to build as much of the boat as possible itself. For many of the details that define the yacht's high quality, from the hand-carved shell trim to installing a state-of-the-art integrated bridge system (IBS) with 15 touch screens, Hodgdon has found that the most skilled craftsmen can often be found right here in Maine.

"A lot of our guys come from this region, as well as a lot of our sub-contractors," said Hodgdon. "We've made an effort in trying to get Maine people first."

Every aspect of building such an enormous vessel is fraught with different challenges. What makes Hodgdon Yachts a world-famous builder is the unique and state-of-the-art way it has engineered solutions.

But before the IBS or any other systems could be installed, Hodgdon Yachts had to build the hull.

Hodgdon chose to do so using a cold-molding, multi-layered construction technique pioneered by the shipyard.

The hull was built upside down inside the 164' x 50' center bay of the shipyard's Church Street facility. It was made from more than 600-year-old Douglas fir and 300-year-old western red cedar.

In boat building, it is commonly understood that older wood makes stronger boats. But wood that started growing before Christopher Columbus was born can be hard to come by.

And because of their concern for old growth forests, Hodgdon Yachts and the boat's owner decided to use only salvaged lumber - lumber from trees that had fallen through natural causes, such as forest fire and wind.

The first step in actually constructing the enormous hull was to set down bulkheads that would provide shape and structure. Permanent bulkheads were made from layers of Douglas fir and epoxy with a divinycell foam core. Temporary shaping bulkheads were simply cut from plywood.

The first layer of the hull glued to the frames was 7/8 inch thick, vertical grained Douglas fir that had been impregnated with epoxy. Glued to that, one by one, were four layers of 7/16 inch thick western red cedar, laid down so that the grains ran diagonally. Occasionally, Douglas fir was substituted for the cedar in high pressure sections.

One more layer of 7/8 inch thick Douglas fir was applied to the outside, bringing the total number of layers to six.

Two final layers of fiberglass cloth, post cured to 140 degrees Fahrenheit, cover the outside.

The 155-foot hull is, uniformly, three and a half inches thick.

But that, with some strategically placed carbon fiber reinforcement, is thick enough to support the tremendous loads on the yacht.

"We're the only one in the world building boats on this scale using the cold-molding process," says Hodgdon.

The method gets its strength from the old wood, the cross-grain pattern the wood is laid down in, and lots of epoxy holding everything together.

To glue each layer as firmly and tightly as possible, they used a technique called vacuum bagging.

That involved spreading the epoxy like glue, laying down a layer of wood, and then covering the whole thing with a layer of plastic and blue bubble wrap.

Vacuum hoses under the plastic next sucked all of the air from the wood and allowed the epoxy to squeeze into its tiny pores, spaces and cracks.

After the air was sucked from under the bags, the atmosphere pushed down on the wood and epoxy with about 14 pounds of pressure per square inch. That's about the equivalent of sitting an elephant on each square foot.

The result of the process is a solid, stiff, and incredibly strong, seamless hull that maximizes interior space.

The process also produces a yacht with superior sound insulation.

"Sound insulation is important because you have water pumps, hydraulic pumps, and a water system under the floors," says Hodgdon.

Layers of cork and rubber in the floors will also help with sound insulation.

When the hull was finished, it weighed 110,000 pounds. And it had to be turned right side up.

The new facility has a 400 ton overhead crane engineered to roll over the enormous hull, but this would be its first test.

"It took 45 minutes to roll the hull over," says Ted Smith, Hodgdon Yachts' custom yacht representative. "It was the first time a rollover had been done at the new facility with new equipment. Everyone was hoping all the numbers were right."

They were, and the rollover went off without a hitch.

When it was completed, a 38-foot-long, 150,000-pound ballast keel was bolted into place with 40 bolts, each up to eight and a half feet long and two and a half inches thick.

The lead keel was cast in one continuous pour at Mars Metal in Burlington, Ontario, Canada. The keel was the largest ever poured in North America, and a truck had to be specially built for its delivery.

The massive yacht will be sailed by a crew of six. With the touch of a computer screen, 9,940 square feet of hydraulically-controlled sails will be unfurled. Two wheels (one on the port side, one starboard, of course) will steer the boat. Or if the weather's bad, the boat can be controlled by joystick below deck.

The main mast will stand 181 feet tall - about as tall as can fit under the bridge over the Panama Canal. The mizzen mast soars to 110 feet above the teak decks. Both will arrive by barge from New Zealand on June 1.

Once Scheherazade hits the open ocean, she'll be able to stay there as long as she likes.

Electric water makers on board will be able to convert sea water into fresh water at a rate of 1,500 gallons per day. Waste will be treated on board and converted to 99.6% pure water - drinkable quality, though no one will. It gets dumped overboard.

Electrical systems on the boat will be operable off engine power, generators, or batteries. Independent AC and DC circuitry systems can power everything on the boat as well, so that every appliance and function can work equally well when powered by either the generator or the batteries.

"It's redundant, but redundancy is the theme of the whole ship," says Smith. "No matter what happens, the sailboat can operate without missing a beat."

Everything on the yacht will run with the touch of a computer screen. The integrated bridge system will monitor and control all of the sailboat's systems including navigation, propulsion, power generation, steering, pumps, and safety systems, which include a closed-circuit video surveillance system and infra-red cameras.

If the success of the Antonisa is any indication, the Scheherazade will make quite a splash in the world of luxury yachts.

Antonisa won a number of awards, and was featured in many boating magazines.

The international yachting community, it seems, is waiting with bated breath for the launch of Scheherazade.

And as for the people at Hodgdon Yachts, they won't say what they're up to next.

"We're looking at several different possibilities," says Hodgdon. "It's nice to diversify."