Meet Ruud, our general manager

Hey Ruud. Nice to have a word with you. Tell us who are you, how long do you work at van Cappellen and what is your position.

As you say it yourself; I am Ruud and I have been working at van Cappellen since 1991. I get to do this in the position of General Manager. So yes, I am part of the interior 😉 .

Haha, if you are part of the interior you can undoubtedly tell what projects van Cappellen is involved in.

Of course! The bottom line is that the demand for each project is different. Every yacht owner wants his yacht as quiet as possible and as little vibration as possible. Depending on the size of the yacht. The standard between 45-60 DBA. It’s up to us with different disciplines to advise the customer to make the yacht as quiet and vibration free as possible. Or as we say internally: we create a deafening sound of silence 😉.

Sounds very simple, but what can a project look like?

Well, it is indeed not that simple. If you look at an average project, it can look like this:

First, together with the customer, in many cases a shipyard, we determine what the exact demand is;

Then we draw the construction of the yacht to make an FEM (Finite Elements Methods) calculation. Here we determine where the structure can be reinforced and/or where insulation needs to be placed.

The results of the calculations are converted into an advice, which we discuss with the client.

When the ship is actually built, we get on board to measure whether the vibrations and noise levels are indeed as advised.

Sounds interesting! Approximately how long does a project take?

If you start looking at the above example, a project takes about 7/8 months. So, quite a big job.

That is indeed quite long. Do you ever see a yacht sailing that Van Cappellen worked on?

This rarely happens. Most yachts are built for the big boys, you know them from the brand with an apple as a logo😉. The funny thing is that most yachts don’t even sail, but are really meant as lodging for a weekend getaway or a showpiece for a party. But it does happen once in a while that when we are at a boatyard, we see a yacht that we have also worked on.