The weather heated up nicely this week here in Antalya and so did the temperature inside the GreeNaval Shipyard with all the welding and progress this week. As per the title and photos below the most visible change is that the first two rows of hull plates are now all tacked in place and Ms. Möbius is feeling much less naked.
What you can’t see quite so well is the thousands of welds on the inside as Sezgin continues his non-stop welding trying to keep up with the rest of the crew who are tacking on more parts and plate by the minute. And there were a few other fun new things that happened this week but I’ll leave you to find out what those were as you read through this week’s update.
Thanks for joining us and don’t be shy about adding your questions and suggestions in the Comments section at the very bottom of this page.
And of course your video “reward” is at the very bottom of the post for those who are in a hurry and want to jump to the time lapse quick summary but let’s jump right in starting up at the bow now.
This is what the Bow looked like when we left of last Friday and now Uğur and our newest crew member are getting the bow framing all finished up in preparation for putting on the front 6m/20ft hull plates. You may recall from last week’s post the two sides of the “crash” bulkhead area are different because when the 2nd side goes on there is no way to access to the inside any longer so there needs to be the flat bars on each of the triangular stringers you see here which line up with the elongated slots cut into the hull plate on this side which allow the plate and the flat bars/stringers to be all welded up. You’ll see that next week in progress.
Might take you a bit of mental gymnastics to figure out where this shot is taken and what all those holes are for??
We are inside the crash bulkhead looking “down” when the boat is right way up, through all of those triangular stringers which you can see are welded to the front side of Frame/Bulkhead #1.
Those holes are for the Samson Post which you can see better here in this earlier rendering when there were a pair of them but we’ve decided to go with just one. A Samson Post needs to be able to take several times the force of the entire boat as this is where we tie the snubber line to when anchored and where we could attach a tow rope in the highly unlikely event of needing to be towed by another ship somewhere. Our Samson Post will be a solid aluminium round bar 100mm/4” in diameter and so all those holes you see in the photo above are where the Samson Post will slide down about 1.4m and be welded to each of the stringers it passes through. We could probably lift the whole boat up on a crane from this post but I don’t think we’ll test that out.
All hands on deck and the boys quickly had this first hull plate wrestled into position overtop of the anchor roller cheeks and clamped in place.
Uğur checks to make sure the hull plate fits properly around the anchor assembly and clamps it snugly against the frame and stringers before tacking it in place.
This continues for the whole plate with one man outside and …….
….. one outside as the plate is pulled tight against the frames and stringers and then tacked in place.
Peeking in from the open Starboard side of the crash bulkhead you can see how the bow hull plate is tight up against the stringers and how all the areas to be welded were cleaned up with a light wire wheeling just prior to being put in place here.
Once they had the first plate in place they quickly maneuvered the next one into position and repeated the same procedure of clamping and tacking.
As you may recall from seeing other hull plates being tacked in place last week the same technique is used for keeping these large plates all lined up and true by tacking a long length of flat bar on edge just below where the first plate ends while the 2nd plate is tacked on. This keeps everything lined up such that the two outer surfaces are perfectly flush.
The lower plate you see here extends about one meter up/down from the deck is 6mm/ 1/4” thick and the 2nd plate above is 10mm thick.
Here is a quick screen grab of the model with each hull plate thickness a different colour so you can see how the hull plating gets thicker and thicker as it moves from the deck down and around to the 25mm thick Keel Bar running down the center.
The maroon colour at the deck is 6mm/ 1/4”, Purple = 10mm/ 13/32”, Green = 12mm/ 1/2” and Cyan at the bow is 15mm/ 5/8” (think ice).
The inside/outside tag team continues as the plates are tack welded to the stringers on the inside.
Team Möbius is awemazing and they no sooner have that first 10mm plate at the bow all fitted when they hoist up the next one and set it alongside the mid section of the Port side resting on some brackets they have tacked to the jig to hold it here while they get the chain hoists ready to lift it up into position.
Same technique with the flat bar and this plate is soon all pulled into position and the work continues aft.
Over on the other side standing aft looking forward you can see that the Starboard side team with Enver and Umit have been equally as busy putting the hull plates on this side and working their way from the aft end forward.
Moving forward to get a shot looking back at them you can see how the hull is very quickly taking shape now.
and before you turn around they soon have that whole side plated with the first 2 rows.
Not to be outdone the Port side Team soon has their side all plated aft as well.
Peeking inside we find the always busy Sezgin welding ……….
….. and welding ……..
…….. and welding ………
Doing this.
And lest you think all the action was on the inside of the building, here is what I saw when I looked out my office window around lunchtime on Friday.
The yard next door was moving this little fella outside so they could put on some of the upper deck gear which was too high to clear the ceiling inside.
Look closely and you can see how they had to cut out part of the top of the doorway to get it out to begin with
She is now on stands outside in this spot while they mount propellers and finish other jobs to get her ready to launch. Those two big doors you see up on deck are for the massive storage area up there which extends all the way forward under that round helipad at the bow. In case you were wondering we decided to forego that option on Möbius, sorry to disappoint some of you.
And that’s the week that was June 25-29, 2018. Hard to believe another month has zipped by in a flash but if you look back at some of the previous posts you’ll see just how much work has taken place in this short period of time. Here for example is what it looked like a mere 6 weeks ago on May 15th when the jig was being built.
Team Möbius and Naval Yachts is AWEMAZING!! Thank you all.
Here as promised is your weekly fast forwarded video synopsis of the week.
It was a full work week here for Team Möbius at GreeNaval and as you are about to see, the progress to match. As per my attempt at a fun title the focus this week was on the two ends of the boat, the Bow and the aft Engine Room & Workshop and much more progress on putting up more hull plates. The shape of the boat is now coming into focus more and more on an almost daily basis and you will need less and less “AI” or Augmented Imagination to visualise what the finished hull will look like. LOTS to show you and pictures are much better than my words so I’ll jump right in.
Starting right side up here is what the finished bow will look like viewed from the Port side. We’ve made a few modifications since this early rendering such as just one Samson post but these shots are pretty close to what the final bow will look like. The tiny little 125kg/275 lb snugs right up to the eXtremely robust anchor roller assembly Dennis has designed and you’ll see that “in the flesh” in the pictures below. The access hatch you see on the aft Starboard side is for getting in and out of the very large storage space below the Foredeck.
Both these renderings show quite clearly how the anchor deck area slopes down to that big solid aluminium “doughnut” in the very front of the bow so that all the anchor muck and deck water is all self draining and runs right off and out through that big solid AL doughnut. We try to have as many parts on the boat as possible serve double duty and the primary purpose of this doughnut is to run our snubber line out to the anchor chain with a well centered and fully faired exit/entry. For a snubber we typically use a length of triple strand nylon, about 5-10 meters which we clip onto the chain once the anchor is set and then tied to the boat on that Samson post and the anchor chain let out so that all the tension is on the snubber. The stretchy nylon acts like a shock absorber as the winds and waves come up in an anchorage and takes the load off the windlass.
To help with both your orientation and visualisation, this is what the finished bow framing will look like, viewed from its current upside down perspective.
OK, now that you are all oriented, here is how the real bow looked on Monday morning (June 18, 2018). That wide vertical plate, known as a Stem bar curves around the bow and heads back down the centerline of the entire hull creating a single 25mm thick Keel Bar running all the way to the very aft end of the swim platform. It is massive in the eXtreme, many times more than the most stringent of any open ocean class certifications and that is very purposeful on our part as yet another SWAN or Sleep Well At Night factor.
Stepping back a bit to put the bow in perspective relative to the rest of the hull you can also see that anchor roller assembly in these shots and begin to get an idea of just how eXtremely robust this critical part of the boat is. It is all made of 15mm plate which extends back over 1.5 meters into the deck framing and becomes part of a very rigid bow framing assembly. In future posts you will see how this bow roller is further reinforced with gussets on the sides to connect it the inner hull sides and become even stronger.
Getting “up close and personal” here is a bit more of a close up view of the business end of the anchor roller cheeks.
This aft view looking forward shows more of the construction and the flared out cheeks which will have an additional pair of AL pads welded on to provide a very solid surface for the blade of the anchor to snug up to and be able to take the brunt of large waves we will be piercing while underway. You can make out the two holes on the side which are for axle pins for the dual nylon/UHMW anchor rollers for the anchor and chain ride on as they come in and out.
Off to the side of the bow is this stack of triangular bow stringers which are about to be fitted into those slots you might have noticed in the shots of the Stem Bar above.
This is more examples of the interlocking “kit” like nature of this construction technique. The large slots at the peak slide around the Stem Bar and then the last 35mm/1.5” or so slides into those slots you saw above.
Like this. That is Frame #1 and it was left loose so as to allow room for those triangular stringers to slide into the Stem Bar and then moved upright so each of the tabs in the aft end of the triangular stringers would snap into place into the little rectangular slots you can see if you look closely here.
You’ll see here that the opposite Stbd. side is a bit different with these horizontal flat bars welded to the edges of each triangular stringer. The bow hull plating will begin with the Port side, the one with no flat bars, and Sezgin the Master Welder can easily reach through with his MIG welder from this still open Stbd side and run his welds along each stringer. But once the Port side has been welded up he has no access to get in and weld the Stbd. side hull plates, so the slot welding technique we talked about last week will be used where there are elongated round ended slots cut into the Stbd. hull plate which line up with these flat bars so Sezgin can fill each slot with weld and secure the hull plate to the stringers. As with many such welds in the outer hull these will all be carefully ground flat and flush with the hull plate and become invisible.
Literally hot off the press or MIG welder you can see some of the finished welds and appreciate just how incredibly strong this bow will be even before the 12mm/ 1/2” bow plating goes on.
Looking forward from the backside of Frame #1, more of the finished welds and a good shot of how all those tabs in the aft edge of each stringer slot into the Frame bulkhead and get welded up.
This is smaller in size but very similar to the slot welding technique I described above.
OK, with the bow pretty much all framed in, let’s head aft to the other end of Möbius and rewind the clock to Monday morning to see where we start back there.
While we have made a few changes to some of the details this earlier rendering is close to what the finished Swim Step will look like. Right side up of course!
So now flip your brain once more and we’ll get back to the upside down reality views of the Swim Step.
Uğur is busy slotting each stringer into the aft frames and the very aft end of the boat quickly starts to take shape.
With most of the stringers which form the Swim Step now in place you can begin to see how this 1.4m/4.5’ long Swim Step will provide a great platform for getting on/off the Tender, diving off, snorkeling, fishing, etc. Can’t wait!!!
As you can see the swim step also provides some significant additional storage space underneath. We will use this for longer term storage of items such as our spare CPP propeller blades and other such infrequently used items. This is because we don’t want to put access hatches in the Swim Step deck as they introduce a possible leak and because they would need to be flush there would be a groove between the hatch lid and frame which would collect water and stay wet most of the time and become moldy and dirty. No thanks! Therefore we will weld the Swim Step platform with no external access ports to keep it fully sealed from the exterior and nice and dry on the inside.
Meanwhile along the sides, Enver and Umit are busy adding more 6m/20ft lengths of hull plates to each side. To prep the deck for this they temporarily weld in these lengths of flat bar and clamp the deck plate to it every 15mm/6” or so to ensure the deck stays completely flat as they tack the hull plate along the deck edge.
With the deck edges all nice and flat the 2nd 6m/20’ length is now tacked in place.
And soon thereafter the first of the 10mm thick plates is tacked in place. You can see another use of temporarily tacked in place flat bar along the lower 6mm plate to keep that edge perfectly flat as the upper 10mm plate is tacked to it.
The framing for the future option of active stabiliser fins is in this area so the 10mm plate is notched for the thicker 12mm plate to be fitted as the hull curves down through the waterline and under the boat.
In case you were wondering how the transition between different thickness hull plates is formed, this will show you how it works. The frames have a notch cut in them where each transition from one thickness to the next will be and this allows for the two different thickness plate seams to stay flush and smooth on exterior of the hull. The small step between the two different plate thicknesses is welded up on the inside. You can also see here how all the edges of each plate have been carefully routed with these 45 degree chamfers to create the V grooves on the inside for a full penetration weld.
Nearing the end of the work week on Friday afternoon Umit is busy tacking in more of the 10mm plate.
Ever present in the background is the endless careful preparation of each of the thousands of pieces so that they are all clean and smooth and ready for their turn to join their mates in the hull.
And to add to the excitement and progress this week our container arrived from Miami containing all our worldly possessions. The container actually arrived here in Antalya last week but it took a week of bureaucratic paperwork and fees, fees, fees to get it on a truck and sent over to our apartment which is what you are seeing here.
Burak, with his cell phone, was kind enough to come over and help out with some of the unloading and translations and in less than an hour we had all of it up on the elevator to our 9th floor apartment and stowed in one of our spare bedrooms to await our unpacking. The other half of the shipment is still in the container and will go to Naval shipyard with all my machines and tools and boat supplies which will ultimately end up on Möbius once she is built and ready to launch next year.
So that is the week that was June 18-22 here with Team Möbius. Hope you enjoyed this weeks update and thanks again for joining us.
Do please add your questions and suggestions in the Comments section down at the very bottom of this blog post.
And as always, here is your reward for getting all the way through this or being smart enough to jump here first and watch this week’s synopsis video. See you again next week!
It is Eid al-Fitr here in Turkey right now which is a major 4 day holiday celebrating the end of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting so it as a three and a half day week with a half day on Thursday. After 30 days of dawn to sunset fasting you can imagine the joy and celebration going on over this long weekend. It is a time when families traditionally get together to mark the start of Eid with a lavish meal and we are delighted that Dincer and Baris have made the journey up to their original home town of Çanakkale which is at the far western end of the Sea of Marmara with Istanbul over on the far Eastern side. Enjoy your family time Baris & Dincer!
People who have jobs involving a lot of physical labour are exempted from the fasting so our crew were still able to have their tea breaks and lunch and keep up their fabulous progress on Möbius. I’ve talked in previous postings about our use of the “empty ends” design for Möbius which allows us to have as long as possible waterline for maximum hull speed and efficiency but keep the interior just right sized for us by leaving the two ends of the boat, bow and stern, relatively “empty” non living space for storage, propulsion and other systems equipment. This week the focus was on framing in these two empty ends of the boat by erecting the frames at both ends and connecting them up with stringers and baffles for the tanks. The week may have been short on days but it was long on progress with TWO exciting milestones; the final Frame was erected on the jig and our first 2 hull plates were tacked in place! Many more milestones to come but I’m getting ahead of myself so let’s jump right in and let the pictures do all the talking as I take you through all the progress from June 11th through 14th, 2018.
As you may recall from last week’s post, this is what the aft end framing looked like. The Engine Room Enclosure begins at Frame #17 seen at the left and the rest is all for my amazing Workshop. All the frames are in, the longitudinal stringers have been installed in their matching slots and everything is precisely tacked in position.
If you click to enlarge this photo you can see the lengthways running engine beds up at the top which have been fabricated from very beefy 25mm plate flanked by two large water tanks on each side within the hull as elsewhere on the boat.
All of which set the stage for THIS!
The very first hull plate is lifted into position
and Umit tacked it in place to the stringers and frames.
Frames are notched where the lengths of plate meet up to allow for a continuous weld which will be done once all the plates have been tacked in place.
The next day a second 6m/20ft length of 6mm plate could be tacked in place in front of the first.
and I can now sight down these two hull plates and use my AI (Augmented Imagination) to visualise the sleek slender shape of our hull. It is difficult to see in these pictures with just these two upper plates but there is a nice compound curve to these plates as they move aft and begin the narrowing of the hull aft.
This subsequently set the stage for positioning the aft transom plate and tacking it in place.
The rectangular opening on the right will have a watertight door on it and is our HazMat locker for safely storing things like fuel, welding gas, propane and anything else that we want to keep safely outside of the boat but in a dry secure space.
The opening where Enver and Umit are standing is another WT door in and out of the Workshop and Engine Room areas.
Here is a shot looking aft inside what will be the Workshop and Engine Room enclosure with the HazMat locker on the left, entrance door on the right. Keeping in mind the boat is upside down right now you can join me in imagining this great space.
Umit who is about 190cm/6.2ft will give you a sense of scale in this space and you can start to see the prop tunnel shape when those upper curves in the frames are plated in.
Moving forward to the mid sections of the hull, the tank assembly which you saw lifted into place a few weeks ago is now being framed in and the margin plates installed which form the top of the tanks where they intersect the hull plates.
On the right here we see the bulkhead which separates our Master Cabin on the left from the Galley and Basement areas to the right. There is a “void” in here to form an air space between the fuel tanks in the floor on the right and water on the left and here you see the stringers being tacked into place. Up at the very top, soon to the very bottom when we flip the hull right side up, you can also see the big thick 25mm Keel Bar which travels all the way from stem to stern and forms a super strong backbone for the whole boat.
I have previously noted some of the various ways which wedges are used to put aluminium pieces into perfect alignment and here you see that same Keel Bar and this wedge being used to align this joint which will soon be fully welded to form a single bar.
Panning over and out a bit above our Master Cabin shows more of the stringers and baffles forming the underfloor integral tanks.
Looking aft you can see how the gridwork of baffles and frames for all the integral tanks are mostly in place now.
What you can’t see as well are the nautical miles of welding in place along all every edge of these baffles. This is one of the spools of AL wire for one of the MIG welders and they go through several of these a day now. All of this just a warm up act for the truly long lengths of weld which will begin once the hull plates are tacked in place and this giant jig saw puzzle of a hull has been fully assembled.
Continuing our way forward this is Frame #4 on the left which is the WT Bulkhead separating the forward end of our Master Cabin from the Forepeak storage area and you can see Uğur up on top tacking the margin plate in place.
Back up on top this forward looking shot shows the framing pretty much complete under our Master Cabin and a view of the Forepeak area where we are headed next.
Back on the ground and looking towards the bow we see all four frames that make up the bow.
If you’ve really been paying attention to these posts this is the first time we’ve seen Frame #1 in place which is the last frame to be added so another welcomed milestone this week is having ALL the frames now in place which is overly exciting for your reporter here!
Next week when everyone is back and fully fed, the framing in will continue as will the addition of more plates so the hull will soon take on more and more of its shape for you.
For now though, here is this week’s compilation of sped up video clips I took throughout the week.
My sincere thanks for taking the time to join us on this journey and be sure to add your questions and suggestions in the comments box below.
Wow! This family of unique new eXtreme Passage Makers I’ve been writing about seems to be gaining new members every day.
I had no sooner finished writing up yesterday’s “Canadian Kissin’ Cousins” posting about the recently announced Tactical 77 when Andy, one of our most enthusiastic followers reminded us of thenew “Circa 24 meter (78ft) Expedition Yacht” which Circa Marine has recently announced and has on their drawing boards/screens.
As many of you reading this would know, Circa Marine in Whangarei NZ is the very talented engineering firm and shipyard which worked with Steve Dashew to design and build all of the FPB series of boats which totals about 20 boats all together I think.
With the Dashew’s recent decision to very deservedly retire themselves so they can finally spend time enjoying their very own FBP78-1 “Cochise” and their decision to also retire and end the Dashew/SetSail/Circa alliance, Circa is now developing their own version of these new type of passage makers.
Christine and I were fortunate to spend a day with the great people at Circa back in November 2016 when we sailed our previous boat down there and they were extremely generous in answering the hundreds of questions we put to them as we made our way in and around the FPB78’s and FPB70 they were building at the time. As we discussed the four different size FPB’s they had built, 64/115/78/70 we got the distinct impression that the FPB70 was their favorite and they had many of their own ideas they’d like to incorporate in the future. Of course we didn’t know then and neither did they that the FPB series was going to end and so not too surprising to us that they have decided to create their own new Circa version and take advantage of their deep experience in building these kinds of boats. Clearly these boats will benefit from what is now about 20 years of experience in building these types of boats, let alone many other boats they have been building for even longer and that this new Circa 24 will be an incredible boat.
Looks like our intuition when we were visiting them was right and like us Circa has decided that the 24m or 78ft size is the sweet spot or Goldilocks just right size for these kinds of boats and owners so we take that as great validation for our coming to the same conclusion with Möbius several years ago. This makes sense as well in that the FPB70 was the last of the FPB’s to be designed and therefore the one which benefited the most from what is almost 2 decades of gathering such a plethora of real world data from all the previous boats, all those years and hundreds of thousands of nautical miles of owner experiences and all of Circa’s experience in building these boats. Steve was extremely diligent at collecting and curating all this data, sharing it so generously and articulately on the SetSail blogs and learning from it all and the results certainly show this evolutionary journey. Everyone from Steve to all the talented people who worked with or at Circa over all those past 20 years certainly deserve a great deal of credit and a huge amount of gratitude for developing this new style of boat and putting them on the marine world map.
New Zealand is certainly a hot spot in the marine world in general and especially so for these new kinds of eXtreme Passage Maker style boats and the “family tree” has very deep roots there. Back in the early 2000’s, prior to the FPB’s, Kelly Archer another very talented Kiwi, had designed and built his personal boat “Ripple” which obviously caught Steve’s eye at the time and Steve and Kelly went on to have a long partnership designing and building the FPB’s.
Oh, and I might add that Kelly chose to put a horizontal version of the same Gardner 6LXB main engine in Ripple. Brilliant!
No coincidence then that we found our own “just right” designer for Möbius in New Zealand when we met up with Dennis Harjamaa at Artnautica Yacht Design. Dennis had designed AND built a boat for himself based on the same DNA I’ve been outlining of long, lean, low all aluminium low maintenance boats for couples with the shared passion for crossing oceans in extreme safety, comfort and efficiency. These boats known as the LRC58 and there are now four of them out exploring the world and a fifth beginning it’s build phase at Aluboot in the Netherlands. Good article here on the three LRC58’s which Dickey Boats in NZ have built and you can follow along with Rob at Artnautica.eu while he was building his LRC58-3 “Britt” at Aluboot.
Thanks to all our “Giant Teachers”:
Since I was very young I’ve always been fascinating by the way in which we humans are able to continuously learn, innovate and advance by “standing on the shoulders of giants” which Wikipedia nicely describes as:
“… expresses the meaning of “discovering truth by building on previous discoveries”.
This concept has been traced to the 12th century, attributed to Bernard of Chartres. Its most familiar expression in English is by Isaac Newton in 1675: “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”
Christine and I are retired teachers as are most of our siblings so we have that in our DNA as well and we see these “giants” as the great teachers in our lives. We do our best to be very highly motivated learners and we certainly want to add our deep gratitude and appreciation for the many giants whose shoulders we humbly stand upon, learn from and leap forward.
Currently we find ourselves standing upon the shoulders of several other such giants and teachers such as Dennis at Artnautica and Dincer and Baris here at GreeNaval who have been instrumental in transforming our vision into the reality that is Möbius and we can’t wait to launch her and join this growing family of eXtreme passage makers out exploring the world one nautical smile at a time.
Last month I put up a post “Newest Member of this Family of Passage Makers” about the newest members of Dennis’ Artnautica LRC58 line of boats, the LRC58-3 “Britt” and LRC58-4 “Raw” which have both been launched and are now at sea as will be joined by LRC58-5 being built in the Netherlands. My larger comment and purpose for that post, and for this one, is to highlight the rapid growth of a whole new style and type of long, skinny ocean crossing passage makers which are most often designed to be owned and operated by a couple with no crew.
An overall name for this new family of passage makers has not emerged as of yet and they aren’t trawlers, they aren’t pilot boats, they aren’t military boats though they have characteristics from all of these types and many others.
I will write a future post that will go into more details of this new style of ocean crossing beauties but wanted to introduce you to the newest family member which my crack researcher Christine uncovered yesterday in this recent article Simon Murray wrote for Power and Motoryacht magazine entitled “Meet the Special Forces-Inspired Tactical 77”.
The “Tactical 77” as it is being called is a recent design from Bill Prince of Bill Prince Yacht Designs of a 24 meter all aluminium ocean crossing passage maker for an ex Special Forces gentleman to take his family out cruising the world.
She will be built by the Canadian builder Tactical Custom Boats located near Vancouver British Columbia and near where I lived while going to the British Columbia Institute of Technology BCIT and University of British Columbia back in the early 70’s and then taught High School for many years in nearby Ladner.
Located in Richmond B.C., Tactical’ s web site says they build;
High performance aluminum boats designed for speed, comfort, and safety in all operating conditions – without compromising dependability, luxury or design.
Sound familiar? As you can see from these pictures, location is not the only thing we have in common. The similarities to our upcoming addition to this new family named Möbius which we are referring to as eXtreme eXploration Passage Maker or XPM are striking. It is no coincidence that the looks of these boats are so similar because the owner’s requirements and the design goals and use cases overlap extensively. To quote this P&M article;
“Prince was tasked with designing a cohesion of extremes. The client wanted a high-performance vessel with pseudo-military exterior styling and interiors that emphasized luxurious, superyacht-like accommodations.”
Sound familiar?
It will if you’ve read over my earlier post “Project Goldilocks: Mission Impossible” where I outlined the overall mission and all the key characteristics Christine and I have for designing and building Möbius.
Prince went on to say about the client;
“He wants a really comfortable yacht that will scare the Coast Guard from a quarter mile away.”
Christine and I are not interested in scaring our friends in the world’s Cost Guards but are very keen on similarly deterring any “bad guys” with mal intent towards us.
“We have designed go-anywhere capability and luxurious accommodations inside aggressive, pseudo-military exterior styling,” says Prince.
Sound familiar?
There are a few differences mind you when it comes to weight, costs and power. For example “the boat will be propelled by twin MAN 1,900hp inboard diesels giving the Tactical 77 combined 3,800HP and top speeds over 35 knots.” Yikes! Mobius for comparison will have about 150HP and a top speed of 11-12 knots. But I’ll be much happier paying our construction costs and our fuel bills!
However at their core all these new kinds of boats share very similar purposes and owners and I was most intrigued by a story the designer Bill Prince shared when interviewed for this article:
With the owner’s highly specialized background, you would think clients like him are exceedingly rare. Yet Prince had three people come to him separately a few years ago, asking for essentially the same thing:
a low-maintenance, go-anywhere-in-any-kind-of-weather, aluminum cruising boat that doesn’t require a full-time crew.
“In the space of six to eight weeks I listened to three gentlemen who were all experienced yachtsmen describe almost the same spec,” said Prince. “So, I’ve seen this coming for a couple of years.”
Almost like reading my own writing!
In the Mission Impossible posting I shared that the mission statement Christine and I brought to Dennis, Dincer and Baris is:
“The just right boat for exploring extreme locations in equally extreme safety and comfort.”
and some of our key characteristics for Möbius included:
all aluminium, no paint, no stainless
Go far, Go everywhere, Go nowhere (@ anchor), Go alone
Interior with extremely high craftsman level fit and finish
You get the idea.
On the one hand the owners of these new style of boats have their own unique use cases and criteria, so each of their boats will be similarly unique. However when viewed by others they will tend to look similar because at their core these boats are designed and built for those who share a passion for long, low, lean & mean low maintenance boats which inspire them to cross oceans in eXtreme safety, comfort and style. We can’t wait to add Möbius to this growing family of ocean crossing passage makers and more so to join them out exploring this awemazing watery world of ours.
This is what the Bow looked like when we left of last Friday and now Uğur and our newest crew member are getting the bow framing all finished up in preparation for putting on the front 6m/20ft hull plates.
You may recall from last week’s post the two sides of the “crash” bulkhead area are different because when the 2nd side goes on there is no way to access to the inside any longer so there needs to be the flat bars on each of the triangular stringers you see here which line up with the elongated slots cut into the hull plate on this side which allow the plate and the flat bars/stringers to be all welded up. You’ll see that next week in progress.
Might take you a bit of mental gymnastics to figure out where this shot is taken and what all those holes are for?? 
Those holes are for the Samson Post which you can see better here in this earlier rendering when there were a pair of them but we’ve decided to go with just one. A Samson Post needs to be able to take several times the force of the entire boat as this is where we tie the snubber line to when anchored and where we could attach a tow rope in the highly unlikely event of needing to be towed by another ship somewhere. Our Samson Post will be a solid aluminium round bar 100mm/4” in diameter and so all those holes you see in the photo above are where the Samson Post will slide down about 1.4m and be welded to each of the stringers it passes through. We could probably lift the whole boat up on a crane from this post but I don’t think we’ll test that out.
All hands on deck and the boys quickly had this first hull plate wrestled into position overtop of the anchor roller cheeks and clamped in place.
Uğur checks to make sure the hull plate fits properly around the anchor assembly and clamps it snugly against the frame and stringers before tacking it in place.
This continues for the whole plate with one man outside and …….
….. one outside as the plate is pulled tight against the frames and stringers and then tacked in place.
Peeking in from the open Starboard side of the crash bulkhead you can see how the bow hull plate is tight up against the stringers and how all the areas to be welded were cleaned up with a light wire wheeling just prior to being put in place here.
Once they had the first plate in place they quickly maneuvered the next one into position and repeated the same procedure of clamping and tacking.
As you may recall from seeing other hull plates being tacked in place last week the same technique is used for keeping these large plates all lined up and true by tacking a long length of flat bar on edge just below where the first plate ends while the 2nd plate is tacked on. This keeps everything lined up such that the two outer surfaces are perfectly flush. 
Here is a quick screen grab of the model with each hull plate thickness a different colour so you can see how the hull plating gets thicker and thicker as it moves from the deck down and around to the 25mm thick Keel Bar running down the center.
The inside/outside tag team continues as the plates are tack welded to the stringers on the inside.
Team Möbius is awemazing and they no sooner have that first 10mm plate at the bow all fitted when they hoist up the next one and set it alongside the mid section of the Port side resting on some brackets they have tacked to the jig to hold it here while they get the chain hoists ready to lift it up into position.
Over on the other side standing aft looking forward you can see that the Starboard side team with Enver and Umit have been equally as busy putting the hull plates on this side and working their way from the aft end forward. 
Moving forward to get a shot looking back at them you can see how the hull is very quickly taking shape now.
and before you turn around they soon have that whole side plated with the first 2 rows.
Not to be outdone the Port side Team soon has their side all plated aft as well.
Peeking inside we find the always busy Sezgin welding ……….
….. and welding ……..
…….. and welding ………
Doing this.
And lest you think all the action was on the inside of the building, here is what I saw when I looked out my office window around lunchtime on Friday.
The yard next door was moving this little fella outside so they could put on some of the upper deck gear which was too high to clear the ceiling inside.
She is now on stands outside in this spot while they mount propellers and finish other jobs to get her ready to launch. Those two big doors you see up on deck are for the massive storage area up there which extends all the way forward under that round helipad at the bow. In case you were wondering we decided to forego that option on Möbius, sorry to disappoint some of you. 
And that’s the week that was June 25-29, 2018. Hard to believe another month has zipped by in a flash but if you look back at some of the previous posts you’ll see just how much work has taken place in this short period of time. Here for example is what it looked like a mere 6 weeks ago on May 15th when the jig was being built.
I had no sooner finished writing up yesterday’s 
With the 
New Zealand is certainly a hot spot in the marine world in general and especially so for these new kinds of eXtreme Passage Maker style boats and the “family tree” has very deep roots there. Back in the early 2000’s, prior to the FPB’s, Kelly Archer another very talented Kiwi, had designed and built his personal boat “Ripple” which obviously caught Steve’s eye at the time and Steve and Kelly went on to have a long partnership designing and building the FPB’s. 
The “Tactical 77” as it is being called is a recent design from 
As you can see from these pictures, location is not the only thing we have in common. The similarities to our upcoming addition to this new family named Möbius which we are referring to as eXtreme eXploration Passage Maker or XPM are striking. It is no coincidence that the looks of these boats are so similar because the owner’s requirements and the design goals and use cases overlap extensively. To quote this P&M article;
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