Yes - generally for an over high load - you will need the Electricity - and nowadays the Cable and
Phone (Telstra &Optus) companies to
survey the
route and to
lift or move wires as needed.
When the yacht was started we did not have the cable and Pay TV, and
Internet Cables that criss-cross every street in the land (haphazardly going from one side to the other as customers came online) and it was not a factor that I (who had built and moved a previous 55' yacht from the same location) even considered - otherwise I would have designed the yacht differently. As it was I had seriously considered actually doing a flush deck design.
When the time came about 4 years ago for the yacht to be moved to the water - surveys of the route were done by the utility companies - and it was found that the Electricity Commission would need to
lift a lot of wires and to remove and replace a couple of sets and the quoted
price for the whole exercise was about $20,000. It was however all the others that were the problem.
All the other
cables were allowed to be a metre lower than the Electricity wires and there were now literally thousands of them between us and the water - and more going up every day.
Both Telstra and Optus said that it was now an impossible task - and that no amount of
money could get the wires disconnected and re-installed - with the time and disruption - and customers affected.
You should also bear in mind that we were 30 miles from the sea - in the Western Suburbs of the
Sydney Metropolitan area - and needed to traverse fully built up residential,
commercial and industrial areas right across
Sydney - using all roads from our own back road to highways and motorways. This is what comes of idiots building big boats a long way from the water.
With the yacht standing at 6m of bare hull - alone - let alone on a truck - it became landlocked by it's height.
As the property where it was built belonged to old friends - and was not mine - then came the slow and difficult realization - that it had to be either moved somehow or destoyed.
It took a little longer - to convince myself that I could cut it in half.
And in case you were wondering - because of it's design - a high raised coaming - stepped deck, with superstructure - it was not possible to just 'cut some off the top'. To overcome the problem I really needed to lose about 2m of height - which meant going below the deck level - which raised then considerations of the strength and stability of the top section when it was lifted up - that it did not 'pancake' and buckle.
I went to the trucking company and said 'you tell me what height this yacht has to be - so that we don't need ANYONE'S permission to take it anywhere'. And they told me that if I could keep the finished load under 4.5m then I could take it anywhere I Iiked in
Australia - no problem.
So after some more careful consideration - I settled on a cut line of 11' 6'' or about 3.5m - which happened also to have been a strategic level line in the yacht itself - being the height of the engine room roof/upper
saloon floor - and also about a foot above various benchs and counters - and about 1 metre above most of the lower floor level. It was also about 2'6'' above the design waterline and about 4' below the deck level - which would give it a substantial skirt of hull and internal walls to keep the form rigid when lifted.
It was also as convenient a working hip height both inside and outside on the scaffolding - as you could find.
Rodney
PS When the yacht was transported - we needed NO ONE'S permission - just as promised.
And only had police and other escorts for the oversized load - as both sections took up the entire 3 lanes - and all of every intersection - on it's journey. Not a wire in the land hung in our way.
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