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Mention Cherbourg, France,
to most people, and the reactions you’re apt to get will be associated
more with the World War II landings at Normandy than boatbuilding. But
since 1912 Constructions Mécaniques de Normandie—CMN, for
short—has quietly been designing and constructing everything from
airplanes to commercial ships and high-tech military vessels in composite,
steel, and aluminum. In fact, the yard has launched more than 300 ships,
including about 90 of the Combattante missile attack craft used by Kuwait,
Greece, Germany, and others, a production record the yard claims is unequaled
in the Western world.
And even though the
shipyard began building ocean-racing sailing yachts in the 1960s, launched
the ice-breaking, aluminum sailing yacht Antarctica in 1989 (which made
a successful expedition to the Antarctic in the early 1990s), converted
a few tugs into charter yachts over the past few years, and provided the
naval architecture for the transatlantic-record-breaking, 222-foot Destriero,
CMN has remained below the radar of many yachtsmen.
But that’s about
to change. With the recent creation of its Yacht Division, CMN clearly
intends to compete in the luxury yacht market. And with the delivery of
the 161-foot Bermie, this “newcomer” proves it’s
anything but a beginner.
Take how the yacht was
classed, for starters. Bermie’s French owner wanted the yacht
to comply with SOLAS regulations under Bureau Veritas classification.
Intended for passenger and merchant ships and much stricter than the requirements
of Lloyds or ABS—the two classification societies most owners select
for their yachts’ compliance—SOLAS has quite detailed provisions
for construction and stability as well as fire protection, detection,
and extinguishing. In addition, since the owner planned to make the yacht
available for charter, he wanted her to comply with the MCA Code.
Given its commercial
background, CMN was already well-versed in SOLAS requirements like dividing
the vessel into main and vertical zones by thermal and structural boundaries
and installing systems to detect, contain, and extinguish any fire in
the zone where it originates. While the MCA Code was created specifically
for yachts, some of its requirements—particularly the ones pertaining
to fire—aren’t as stringent as those of SOLAS, so CMN had
less of a learning curve than some other yards where this was concerned.
As you’d expect
on an MCA-compliant yacht, the curving stairs onboard Bermie that connect
the main-deck lobby with the decks immediately above and below is constructed
of steel. Bermie also contains an automatically deploying fire door between
the dining room and the lobby and yet another fire door between the lobby
and the master stateroom, which lies fully forward on the main deck. A
panel at the helm in the pilothouse monitors the status of these doors
at all times. Below decks, a twin-bed stateroom to port has a concealed
watertight doorway in its forward bulkhead that leads into the crew’s
quarters, satisfying an MCA requirement for a second means of egress in
case of emergency. Heat and smoke detectors are installed throughout the
yacht as well.
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Bermie continued > Page 1, 2,
3, 4, 5
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