It's quite a remarkable feat, especially considering this is your first age. Well done, Katreeny!
One suggestion for decreasing the load time would be to lower the polygon count in your model. Just out of curiosity, what is the total number of polygons for your shell? [BTW: if you load it into Blender and make all your layers visible, the polygon count is shown at the top right, where it says "Fa:###" (or "Faces").]