We visit the birthplace of Wild Rumpus, get a tour, and unsurprisingly I’m a jackass . . . . per usual.

One advantage of being in Cape Town with time to burn was visiting the factory that made Wild Rumpus. We took a long cab to Atlantis. We looked, but there was no hippy version of Aquaman, probably for the best. I’ve been pissed at him since 1976 when I put my Aquaman toy in the tub, and he fell apart.

Anyway, I digress, Xquisite Yachts are built in Atlantis, just outside Cape Town, by Phoenix Marine. We met the team, got a guided tour, and visited Wild Rumpus as she was ready to come out of the factory.

The Factory Tour

Phoenix Marine welcomed us and gave us a full tour of the offices and factory. For intellectual property security reasons, the pictures are pretty limited. For this post, I’ll simply post the pics and give a bit of running commentary.

Here we just finished a tour of the office space. During that tour, we were shown several videos and given an explanation of the CNC machine Phoenix it ordered. There is an article about the CNC machine that will do a better job than I could at explaining the scale and utter coolness of this new tool.

The guy holding the boat model is the CAD/CNC person and used the model to walk us through. At each stage, he showed us what part was made in the various portions of the factory.

Next, we see a wide shot of the factory. The staff explains the factory’s staging and takes us to an X5 hull in the process of coming out of the mold.

Here, Clinton Johns, the founder, and CEO of Phoenix shows Eric how much static exists as the hull comes out of the mold.

Eric is a much better tour participant than I am because he is genuinely interested in every step of the process, whereas I tend to absorb things quickly and move on. Even more importantly, he demonstrates his interest in the tour guides.

Although I am not in the photo, I paid attention too — I swear. This is Clinton answering a brilliant and insightful question I asked off-camera.

The tour of the factory floor and meeting the various factory workers was AWESOME.

Wild Rumpus!!!

Like any good burlesque, we ended the day with the money shot — they showed us Wild Rumpus, which was breathtaking.

Before going on board, we got a tour of all through-hulls (literally, holes in the hull that are necessary but potential spots for future leaks).

Finally, we boarded Wild Rumpus for the first time. Although this isn’t a great picture of anything, in particular, it is helpful for scale. Many folks comment to me that they don’t really understand the size of the boat from the dimensions alone. I think this picture demonstrates the size of the cockpit.

And here we young people showing old people how to use electronics. Hmm, this will require more work on our part.

What the hell? I’m bald? When did I go bald?

Here are Stacey and Eric getting the quick electronics tour right after me and not faring much better.

And finally, we ended at the bow with the super cool name and logo.

The Emotional Speech (aka -Scott is a schmuck)

The tour ended by meeting the quality control team. They were super friendly and very informative. Knowing that they go over the boat in excruciating detail is comforting before crossing the Atlantic.

They did an outstanding job and were prepared to give a rousing end-of-tour summation. Unfortunately, they chose a theme relating to the emotional side of buying a boat. As most who know would say, I am sort of an unemotional jackass. So, the speech was well done, but my lack of emotional response may have unintentionally put a damper on the event.

As I said, I am a jackass.