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Christensen Shipyards rolls last finished yacht out of Vancouver, Wash., facility

Employees at  Christensen Shipyards  in Vancouver, Washington, marked the end of an era on Wednesday when they rolled the last yacht out of the company’s manufacturing bay in the Columbia Business Park and down the road to the nearby marina for launch.

The luxury yacht-building company was founded in 1985 by Dave Christensen and has operated out of the Vancouver facility for the past 34 years, but current owner Henry Luken plans to move operations to a bigger shipyard in Tellico Lake, Tenn.

The Vancouver facility is slated to become a shipbuilding center for Portland-based company Vigor, which will use the site to manufacture a new type of landing vehicle for the U.S. army.

Vigor announced the deal in February, and both companies said the transition would take place in late spring, giving Christensen a few months to finish up work on two yacht hulls under construction at the Vancouver site and get them into the water.

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In principle, the process of launching a yacht is much like launching any other boat — the vessel is mounted on a trailer, pulled by a truck and backed down a ramp into the water.

The key difference is that the Christensen yacht launching this week is five stories tall and weighs 740,000 pounds, mounted on a custom trailer frame that weighs another 135,000 pounds. It’s a slow and careful four-day operation.

“At this stage of the game, you don’t take a chance,” said Christensen Shipyards production manager Allen Bell, who was among the staff assisting in the operation.

Preparations began earlier this week while the yacht was still in the warehouse, Bell said. First the vessel — which bears the name Jackpot — was lifted by interior cranes so the trailer frame could slide underneath, then it was lowered into place and balanced with blocks along the edge of the trailer frame.

The move began at 3:30 a.m. Wednesday in order to minimize traffic disruption. The 30-foot-wide trailer takes up the entire width of Marine Park Way, and even though the distance to the marina is less than half a mile, the journey takes about five hours.

At every turn or bump in the road, the rig has to stop so various sets of wheels under the trailer can be lifted or adjusted to compensate and keep the Jackpot perfectly level. With a vessel this size, any amount of tipping is bad news, Bell said.

The process is a collaboration between Christensen staff and moving contractor Omega Morgan. The trailer is pulled by an Omega Morgan truck designed specifically for slow and super heavy loads — it’s so low-gear that it’s usually towed to job sites rather than driven, Bell said.

The truck bed is stacked with a full load of giant concrete blocks, which push down on the tires to increase their surface area in contact with the road for better traction. A second truck is added when the trailer starts down the ramp, Bell said, to counteract the boat’s enormous weight on the downhill slope.

Only about six Christensen staffers were on the ground helping Omega Morgan with the move, Bell said, but dozens of others worked on the logistics behind the scenes to make sure it all went smoothly. The yacht represents more than 300,000 work hours, he said, so everyone wants to be involved.

“The whole company launches it,” Bell said. “It’s always been like that. It’s special to everybody up there.”

The crew pulled the Jackpot past the ramp entrance at about 9 a.m. Wednesday and then backed it up to the edge, Bell said. They spent most of the day outfitting the rear of the trailer with a pair of “floats” — giant boxy structures that will enter the water first when the yacht is backed down the ramp, giving the entire assembly more buoyancy.

The floats are essential for summer launches when the Columbia River level is lower, Bell said. Without them, the trailer would run out of ramp before the stern of the boat could get deep enough into the water to float on its own.

The actual launch will take place on Friday or Saturday, Bell said, whenever the water level ends up being highest. Once the Jackpot is far enough out to float on its own, the crews will flood the interior of floats to make them sink. Then they’ll move the Jackpot out of the way and haul the trailer back up the ramp.

The yacht will remain in the marina while Christensen staff bring all of its hardware online, Bell said. Then it’ll be put through a series of tests on the Columbia River, followed by a two-day “endurance run” out in the Pacific Ocean before it’s finally delivered to the customer.

The Jackpot will be the last yacht to be fully assembled at the Vancouver shipyard. It’s also one of the largest the facility has ever produced; 165 feet long, 30 feet wide with a fuel capacity of 15,000 gallons, and equipped with an enormous array of features and systems — even an onboard sewage treatment plant.

“This boat’s a small city in and of itself,” Bell says.

One more unfinished yacht hull remains in the Vancouver assembly bay, but it’s been sold to an undisclosed buyer who will complete the construction process. The hull will be moved to the ramp and launched next week, according to Christensen staff, then either barged or towed by tugboat to its new home.

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By SuperyachtNews 24 Jul 2018

Christensen Shipyards sells Hull 38 and looks to the future

Jim gilbert, president of christensen shipyards, discusses hull 38 and the size range of superyachts that will be the yard's future sweet spot….

Christensen Shipyards, the US-based superyacht manufacturer, has announced the sale of Hull 38, a 50m high-volume superyacht, to a pair of experienced yachtsmen from New Jersey. The vessel, which was formerly under contract to Henry Luken, chairman of Christensen Shipyards, was sold with less than six months to go until its scheduled delivery date. The full ABS superyacht is a six-stateroom vessel with a large master suite on the main deck and five large cabins, including a full-beam VIP stateroom on the lower deck. Hull 38 was sold under the central agency listing of Merle Wood & Associates.

Similar to previous yachts in Christensen Shipyard’s 50m full-volume series, Hull 38 is distinguished by a number of features, including an engineer’s cabin in the aft lazarette, a predominantly Garmin-equipped wheelhouse and an innovative, easy-to-maintain, dual loop HVAC system developed by Christensen. A modern yacht with classic, raised black walnut panelling, Hull 38 also features marble and onyx stonework, expanded dining capacity and a powerful sound system throughout.

“Hull 38 had started off as Mr Luken’s boat before Christensen went into receivership [in 2015], he had then sold the boat to another owner and they were working on it prior to the receivership,” starts Jim Gilbert, president of Christensen Shipyards. “However, the boat became part of the old company’s assets and so, when Mr Luken bought out Christensen’s assets from the receiver, he paid separately for Hull 38, as well at Hull 42. They became the personal property of Mr Luken.”

Gilbert explains that Luken continued to build Hull 38 as if it was his boat and he intended to take delivery of it. “If he sold it, great, and if not, then Mr Luken would have had a beautiful new boat,” he says.

However, moving forward, once Hull 42, the last vestige of the old company that went into receivership, has been sold, the strategy is to develop new contracts and open up Christensen Shipyard’s facility in Tennessee in order to begin building larger superyacht projects.

“We wanted to get Hull 38 and Hull 42 sold so that we more financial resources to getting the new shipyard up and running,” continues Gilbert. “At present, the facility is around 90 per cent complete, but we do need to outfit the workshops and put in a main railway system for the launch and retrieval of boats. The facility currently has 12 slips that are 67.1m by 18.3m”

Gilbert believes that the sweet spot for Christensen’s long-term growth is around the 65m mark. “We could do 70m, but 65m seems to be where a lot of the market is going,” he says. “If you are going to go over the 500gt boundary, you really might as well do it for more than 40gt, you might as well do it for 250gt. Our idea is to produce wide, full-volume boats that aren’t 75m in length, but that boast the same volume.

“As the buyers get younger, they are looking for a beach club, a lot of storage for paddle boards, kayaks and the like. Ideally, they want to have bigger tender and they don’t want to store them on the third deck, so all the factors dictate a much beamier and deeper vessel. Additionally, we are finding that more clients don’t want the traditional pecking order in terms of accommodation as more and more owners buyer together with friends of business associates.”

Profile links

Merle Wood & Associates

Christensen Shipyards Ltd

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Washington state court to decide if Chattanooga man is a yacht company's savior or a corporate raider

May 27, 2016 at 1:00 a.m. | Updated May 27, 2016 at 12:06 a.m.

by Tim Omarzu

Is Chattanooga entrepreneur Henry G. Luken III the savior of an Oregon company that builds "super yachts" for wealthy clients? Or is Luken a corporate raider who ran the boat builder into the ground so he could buy it at a discount?

A courtroom in Washington state will be the battleground for those competing versions of what happened at Christensen Yachts, a Vancouver, Wash., business that Luken - who's owned a number of luxury yachts - has co-owned for more than a decade.

Christensen went into a tailspin and temporarily laid off all of its employees in February of last year. The boat builder went into receivership, a form of bankruptcy, because it had more than $40 million in debt it couldn't pay. But Luken and a wealthy Florida friend and business partner, Donald Burns, bought Christensen Yachts out of receivership for $5.5 million, reopened the doors and hired a staff of more than 100 people.

Luken has painted himself as a white knight who saved the yacht builder from closing. But an attorney for the Christensen family, Kerry Shepherd, lays out a very different picture of what happened in a lawsuit filed this week in a federal court in Tacoma, Wash.

"Henry G. Luken III's $170 million fortune never seemed to be enough for him," the filing says. "So he raided Christensen Shipyards Ltd. ("CSL") by pushing the company into financial ruin and then buying all of its assets for cheap. In the process, Luken put hundreds of people out of work, stole a company that the Christensen family had spent decades building, and destroyed the Christensen family's legacy in Southwest Washington."

Shepherd made his charges in response to a lawsuit Luken filed in March for more than $22 million against the Christensen family members. Luken says he filed suit because they stole millions from him. Although he was part-owner of the shipyard, Luken said he didn't always have control of it, and had to wrest control back.

"It's about $15 million that just plain old disappeared," he told the Times Free Press in a previous interview. "My money is just gone."

Luken waved away Wednesday's court filing.

"I don't think they could tell the truth if they knew what the truth was," Luken said of the case made by former company officers David Christensen, Joe Foggia and Pat Withee, and the Christensen Group Inc.

Luken said Thursday that he's won every time he's gone up in court against Christensen Yachts' principals. He said he and Burns bought the business with the Washington state-appointed receiver's approval and "we have 130 people back to work again."

He also threatened them to sue for libel, after being told that Wednesday's court filing accused Luken of stealing from Cleveland, Tenn., billionaire Forrest Preston, founder of Life Care Centers of America.

"Luken stole approximately $5 million that his billionaire friend, Forrest Preston, had entrusted him with to build Preston's yacht," the filing says. "Luken spent the money on a personal airplane, six exotic cars, and to pay off his personal credit card charges. Not surprisingly, Preston then halted construction on his yacht and cut off all funding on the yacht for over a year."

In 2006, Luken built a shipyard on Tellico Lake in Greenback, Tenn., near Vonore. Wednesday's legal filing says that he hoped to convince the Christensen family to move the shipyard to Tennessee, but the shipyard's founder, David Christensen, refused.

Ron Hammontree, executive director of the Tennessee Reservoir Development Agency, said the 400,000-square-foot, eight-story-tall facility sits empty in Greenback, which he called "just a wide place in the road, really."

"The Christensen Yacht building is just standing there, there hasn't been anything done with it since they stopped construction on it," Hammontree said. "Hopefully, one of these days, we'll see them building yachts over there."

Luken said he'd like to build boats in Tennessee, but he's got his hands full with other ventures, including his real estate holdings and ownership of Luken Communications, which he bought with Preston a decade ago. The Chattanooga-based communications company offers old TV shows including "I Spy" and "Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids" for sale to broadcast TV stations.

Contact staff writer Tim Omarzu at [email protected] or www.facebook.com/MeetsForBusiness or twitter.com/meetforbusiness or 423-757-6651.

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Final Christensen launched in Vancouver; yard moves to Tennessee

Christensen has launched the last hull to be completed and delivered from its Vancouver yard. 

The 164-foot (50m) Jackpot , launched the week of June 19, was delivered to a pair of experienced owners in New Jersey. 

The yard is moving to facilities that have been under construction since 2008 in Tennessee. One partially completed 164-foot vessel, Hull 42, is expected to launch this week and delivered to a client who will complete the yacht, according to a company press release.

“We owed it to our clients to give them the yachts they had contracted,” stated Henry Luken, chairman of Christensen Shipyards. “That was our priority, along with making sure all our subcontractors, personnel and suppliers were fully repaid what they were owed when the company went into receivership.”

The move to Tennessee, which puts the yard closer to East Coast markets, will double its capacity, with 13 construction bays in a 55-acre, climate-controlled shed, each capable of accommodating yachts up to 230 feet (70m). According to the company, when the facility opens later this summer, it will be among the world’s largest superyacht build yards under a single roof. The facilities are located in Vonore, Tennessee, adjacent to the Tennessee River and a 20-minute drive from Knoxville. The Tennessee Valley lake-and-river system allows passage for yachts to reach the Gulf of Mexico from the shipyard in under 10 days.

“This is a huge step for us, but also for American yacht building, which has been in steady decline for the last two decades,” Luken stated. “In our new range, we can now compete with any builder in the world in both price and quality, and unlike our existing facility, we can offer yachts virtually unrestricted in beam.”

Luken noted that Tennessee is one of the biggest fiberglass boatbuilding centers in the world, thanks to Sea Ray and other powerboat builders who employ as many as 5,000 builders within a 30-mile radius of the new yard. 

“Tennessee is also at the center of American fine cabinet-making,” Luken said.According to the company, several former owners have expressed interest in its new line of 55-65m high-volume yachts, and the owner of M/Y Chasseur is in negotiations for the purchase of a new LY3-compliant 164-foot (50m) yacht to be built at the new yard.

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Final two yachts from Christensen Shipyards about to hit the water

One could begin trip to nearby marina as early as wednesday.

The last two yachts from Vancouver builder Christensen Shipyards are scheduled to launch in the next two weeks, marking the end of a 30-year era for the boat-building facility in the Columbia Business Park, which will be repurposed to serve as a manufacturing site for Portland-based Vigor.

The first of the two yachts was being mounted on moving equipment Tuesday and is expected to begin the trip to a nearby Columbia River marina as early as Wednesday. The other vessel will follow suit as soon as the first one is in the water.

“One’s headed to the water this week and the other is going next week,” Christensen Shipyards owner Henry Luken said Tuesday.

Vigor announced in February it would purchase the Vancouver facility to manufacture a new type of landing vehicle for the U.S. Army, and Luken announced plans to restart the luxury boat company at a new facility at Tellico Lake, Tenn.

The announcement came after a lengthy legal battle between Luken — a longtime investor, customer and later co-owner of the company — and the family of company founder Dave Christensen, who died in 2018. Each side blamed the other for financial struggles the company faced in the years after the 2008 financial crisis.

Luken filed for Christensen Shipyards to be placed in receivership in 2015, and later bought its assets out of receivership and restarted the company as a new business entity. He sued the Christensens in 2016, seeking to recover millions of dollars that he said he’d lost when the original company went under.

The Christensens pushed back, alleging that Luken had used his co-owner position to force the company into a series of bad business decisions with the intention of bankrupting it so that he could take over. The lawsuit reached a settlement in February, shortly before the sale to Vigor was announced.

Officials at Christensen said the handover of the Vancouver facility would take place around the end of June, but the company would first have to finish work on two yachts still under construction. One of them was described as nearly complete, but the other wasn’t far enough along to be finished in time.

The tentative plan was to bring the unfinished hull up to seaworthy status and then sail it to the Pacific Ocean, through the Panama Canal and up the Mississippi and Tennessee Rivers to reach Tellico Lake, where it would be completed at the other facility.

That plan appears to have changed. Reached for comment on Tuesday, Luken said the yacht scheduled for launch this week is the completed vessel. The unfinished yacht has been sold and will be finished by the buyer, he said.

Luken said the unfinished yacht will be moved to a new location to be completed, although he said he could not disclose its destination or the identity of the buyer, saying only that the yacht would remain on the West Coast rather than traveling to Tellico Lake.

The process of moving and launching a multimillion-dollar yacht is slow and deliberate. According to Anna Pipher, an employee at the Vancouver facility, crews are scheduled to begin moving the first yacht before sunrise Wednesday morning, and it will take all day just to move it less than half a mile to the top of the marina ramp near Southeast Marine Park Way.

The yacht will sit on the ramp Thursday while preparations are made to lower it into the water, which is tentatively scheduled for Friday. It will not depart immediately, although Pipher said she couldn’t say how long it will remain in the marina.

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Christensen is Back

• By Yachting Staff
• Updated: June 30, 2016

Andy Herrington had spent more than 20 years with Christensen Shipyards when the gates closed because of financial trouble, throwing him and the other craftsmen out of their jobs. Like his co-workers, he scrounged what work he could to make ends meet. “I did a little bit of logging and tree chopping and horse training when we were off,” he says, “but mostly we just figured out how to reopen.”

That problem was resolved by Henry Luken, who purchased his first Christensen, Liquidity , in 2001 and had been part-owner of the yard since 2003. He’s now the principal yard owner and owns one of two yachts that are partly completed on site.

Two other partly finished yachts, the 164-footers Silver Lining and Chasseur , will have launched by the time you read this, having since been completed by Herrington and a lot of his former colleagues.

“The most surprising thing — and I think even Henry and the people in management were kind of taken aback too — was how many of the senior people came back,” says Jim Gilbert, who was named Christensen’s interim president in January. “We got essentially all of our shop foremen [and] essentially all of our supervisors.”

Herrington says the workers are equally thrilled to be back in business at the yard: “We have a sign outside our employee entrance that says, ‘Through this door pass the finest craftsmen in the world.’ We all believe that. When you don’t see that every day, after a while, and then you see it again for the first time, you really realize what it means. It’s who we are.”

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Lawsuit alleges shareholder drove Christensen Shipyards into ruin before taking ownership

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Two New Launches From Christensen

CHRISTENSENS REVOLUTIONARY NEW LAUNCH SYSTEM

After a turbulent last few years, Christensen Shipyards has been successfully rebuilding itself and pushing out an extraordinary volume of work.

Jim Gilbert, President of Christensen says the yard has reinvented itself and is focusing on a “get-it-done-whatever-it-takes” culture focusing on cultivating broker connections and overcoming obstacles.

The yard has launched two 50m builds within the span of one week using their revolutionary and unique launching system that overcomes low-water challenges they have faced in the past. The new attitude, new creativity and abundance of new energy within the yard have successfully given Christensen a true re-birth.

Amazing Feat at Christensen

Christensen Shipyards broke all of its previous records by launching two new 50M yachts in less than a week. Making the launches even more of an achievement was our successful deployment of an entirely unique in-house system that turns a 130,000-pound yard-built steel cradle into a safe and reliable mini-dry dock launcher.

The yachts, M/Y Silver Lining (Hull 36) and M/Y Chasseur (Hull 40) were splashed using large air-filled FRP boxes and several salvage bags that were attached to the custom cradle. The entire assembly was placed under the hulls and carried 400 yards down from the shipyard to the company’s private lagoon off the Columbia River.

With the help of two massive prime movers, the hulls were lowered down the company ramp. When the hulls were submerged sufficiently to permit the launch, the FRP boxes were filled with water and sunk to permit the yachts to swim free without damaging stabilizer fins.

The system is nicknamed, “The Luken Launcher,” by the Christensen staff in honor of Henry Luken, chairman, who fathered the idea of designing, engineering and building the mini-dry dock which vastly increases the safety and security of the company’s launch practices. In addition, the Luken Launcher allows launches even at low river water levels.

Both yachts—available for sale (contact us for more information)—are undergoing river and sea trials in the coming weeks with delivery this summer. The yachts will depart the Pacific Northwest in early September for the long shakedown voyage through the Panama Canal for display at the 2016 Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show. The yachts will be berthed at Sunrise Harbor prior to and just after the show. Brokers-only showings will be announced for the week prior to the start of the Show.

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT TEAM@WORTHAVENUEYACHTS.COM

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Henry luken's former yacht escapes katrina's wrath.

• Tuesday, October 4, 2005

The 157-foot yacht recently sold by Chattanooga multi-millionaire Henry Luken encountered Hurricane Katrina en route to a new owner in Florida, but escaped unscathed.

"We were really concerned about it," said Peter Kehoe of Pompano Beach, Fla., who brokered the deal for the Luken yacht "Liquidity."

Mr. Kehoe said when Katrina hit, the Liquidity was on its way to its new home in Florida. He said it was about 100 miles north of Mobile at the time the storm struck.

He said the huge yacht is safe in Florida now, "but because of the storm, it took three to four times the normal time to get here."

Mr. Kehoe said unnamed investors in Florida acquired Liquidity for an amount in the range of $26 million. He said it is planned to put the yacht on display at an upcoming boat show in Fort Lauderdale and to use it for excursions in the Mediterranean next spring.

But he said Liquidity can still be bought - for $28 million.

Mr. Kehoe said, "It's one of the finest yachts in America. It's all fiberglass with an interior of all American walnut. It's worth every bit of $30 million."

He said he expects Mr. Luken will build himself another yacht at his Christensen Shipyards at Vancouver, Wash.

Mr. Kehoe said, "Henry has a passion for building great boats."

Mr. Luken recently finished the public comment period on a 135-foot dock below a home he acquired on Battery Place in downtown Chattanooga. There was no opposition.

Liquidity was afloat just above Chickamauga Dam for several months.

Mr. Kehoe said the purchasers flew up to Chattanooga in two private jets to inspect it.

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In the outdoors section">outdoors, podcast: mike costa interviews richard simms, application period for early season wma waterfowl quota starts sept. 25, tennessee serves, national public lands day work events, sept. 19-29, in the travel section">travel.

John Shearer: Visiting St. Louis, Part 2 – Enjoying Washington University, Union Station, Barbecue, And Top Of The Arch

Rock city seasons continue, chattanooga tourism co. invites residents to shape the future of local tourism, in the church section">church.

Bob Tamasy: Can We Really Trust The Veracity Of The Bible?

Forward starting new 7-week grief support group.

Dr. Emir Caner Speaks At First Baptist Church In Fort Oglethorpe Sunday

In the obituaries section">obituaries.

Terry Shawn Cofer

John milton campbell.

Maureen Patricia Downey Parr