Tuna Wish—A Mussel Ridge 42 Refit — Newport Yacht Builders

At age five, the Mussel Ridge 42, *Tuna Wish*, was ready to leave her charter fishing career behind.

Bill Blaschke had a clear idea what the perfect boat would be for him and his family, a Mussel Ridge 42 laid out for tuna fishing. When he finally found the boat, a five-year-old charter vessel, the layout didn’t suit his needs, so he brought the boat to Newport Yacht Builders for a refit.

We’ve been working on Tuna Wish over the winter in close coordination with Bill to work out better space utilization, improved storage and an upgraded engine ventilation system. To do so, we have applied our usual process—removing interior components, scanning and designing to the as-built space, and then building new components in our shop, installing, and finishing them. When we have all of the beauty shots ready and the boat’s back in the water, we’ll provide the full rundown. For now, we’d like to show one example of the process.

Shown with an accessible head, as originally configured

Tuna Wish was built with a head on the main deck for ready access by the charter guests. For family-and-friends usage, Bill asked us to remove it and create a more open layout, while enlarging the belowdecks head

Interior view shows original configuration of settee area forward of head compartment

After removing the main-deck head and looking at different options, we settled on building a new settee, positioned aft to make room for another pair of comfortable, forward-facing chairs to port, matching the pair of seats at the helm, to starboard.

Once head and original settee were removed, we scanned the as-built interior and then created a new, more comfortable layout.

Next, we sent the settee components to be cut out of three-quarter-inch composite panels on our CNC machine and assembled them in our shop.

Assembling a portion of our settee at the shop in Newport

The fore-and-aft part of the settee and its seatback are shown above and then, matched with the neighboring pieces, again below. Note that the flat cabinet to the right serves as the base for the two forward-facing chairs.

The last photos in our series show the painted settee components during installation on Tuna Wish and a trimmed-out view of the area with seats, cushions, and tabletop still to come.