Christine and I flew back into Antalya Friday night after our much needed and awemazing two weeks of Gramma & Grampa time with additional time with friends and family, picking up bits & bobs of boat equipment and meetings with experts and suppliers of marine technology. I went to check out all the progress on Saturday morning and with thanks again to Yiğit for all his photos during last week, here is the latest progress update for your enlightenment and entertainment.
Now THAT’s a bow!
Notice anything new and different?
Yup, Möbius now has her bow thruster tube in place ready to be fully welded into the hull and have the 24v 220kgf bow thruster assembly fitted. Earlier in the week it started out like this with a 300mm / 12” ID x 15mm wall aluminium tube. Bow thrusters are one of those things we spend a LOT of $$ to install and hope to never use, but when you DO need it you are SO glad you installed it. We always build our boats able to be single handed and with a boat of this length and windage crosswind in a narrow channel or marina can quickly take over control so that’s where the bow thruster earns its keep. With a hull as eXtremely strong as ours we don’t worry so much about ourselves so much as who or what we might hit if this were to happen. Pro active insurance you might call it. Uğur has marked out the odd shaped hole where the round tube intersects the compound curved hull plates and has his plasma cutter at hand for the cutting.
If you look closely (click to enlarge any picture) you’ll see a small hole inn the center where you insert a SS rod through a matching hole on the opposite side and use this to center a rotating compass like tool with a permanent pen to trace this complex shaped hole. In the flash of a plasma arc he’s got this Port/Left side cut and the sparks are flying as he cuts the matching hole in the opposite side. And as Goldilocks herself might exclaim, WOW!!! that’s a hugey hole in my boat!
You can also see where the matching arc was CNC cut in the 25mm / 1” thick keel bar that runs from bow to stern down the centerline of the hull. After cleaning up the slight slag left from the plasma cutter the tube slides right in and is checked for alignment. My thumb will give you a sense of scale. Seen from inside the Forepeak, this is where the flange for mounting the motor and prop assembly will be fitted next and then the whole tube can be welded inside and out to the hull and faired aft to help smooth the flow of water over this opening when underway. Remember these big chunks of 50mm / 2” thick aluminium you saw being cut to look like this last week? Well, they now look like this and after being carefully aligned with the laser to ensure the centerline of the hinge pin holes were perfectly aligned, they were spot welded in place and await Sezgin’s skilled hands to well around this top edge of the Rub Rails and same on the bottom. Continuing with the theme of new aluminium fittings here is a quick overview of some of the progress.
Up on the Aft Deck, standing near the entry door to the SuperSalon and looking aft we can see the two large Vent Boxes which I’ve pushed into approximate position as they await having the vent ducts cut into the deck before they are welded overtop. Stepping sideways and up on the SkyBridge staircase can you spot what’s missing from this picture?
That’s right another hole has been made whole with the addition of that eXtremely big hatch door over the Engine Room. In both of the photos above you can also see that the two 450mm / 18” square hatch frames at the ends of each Vent Box are now all fully welded into the hull and ready to bring in lots of light and fresh air into the Guest Cabin/Office.
Moving aft to ask if you can see anything else new this week?
Correct! These two big and new 700mm / 28” hatches have also been cut and welded to the deck. I am particularly excited about these as they located overtop of the VERY long workbenches running down either side of my Workshop and will make working in this full headroom area an even great joy.
Down on the shop floor and resting atop the partially completed Day Tank is the ducting for the Engine Room Intake Air which extends down from one of the Vent Boxes we saw above on the aft deck which carries fresh cool air through a mist eliminating grill in the side of the Vent Box down to almost floor level in the Engine Room ensuring a plentiful supply of cool fresh air for the mighty Gardner engine and continual exchange of air within the ER. Putting the cooler intake air down at the bottom of the ER and then having this extraction air vent, seen upside down here, up at ceiling level on the opposite side of the ER ensures that there is a good thermal flow of air in and out of the ER. Making more holes whole this is the 110 mm / 4.3” ID x 15mm wall pipe creating the intake Sea Chest in the Engine Room, tacked in place awaiting being fully welded inside and out of the hull. Here it is seen from within the ER awaiting the sea water manifold to be fabricated and welded to the side of the tube.
Note too that the forward wall of the ER has now been fully filled with a double layer of EPDM foam making it 100 mm / 4” thick to keep all the heat inside the ER and moving up and out those vents you saw above. Last week you saw this eXpecially large Forepeak hatch being installed and here is what it looks like now when open. Stepping back you can see how this hatch fits into the overall foredeck and the sloped anchor deck area safely surrounded by the solid 40mm pipe railings at the bow.
The center hatch opening with the white board in it for safety is overtop the vanity sink in the Master Cabin and the matching 700mm / 28” hatch on the Left/Port side is overtop of the shower. We are eXpecially delighted with the way our placement of this hatch because we can leave it open when anchored even when raining AND we have made the two outer walls of the shower out of etched glass so it will also help flood the whole Master Cabin with the glow of all the natural light coming through. We aren’t quite finished enough to show you all the interior but to help you visualise our awemazing shower, here is a sneak peak at an early rendering of the Master Cabin which our brilliant interior designer Unzile is creating with us. I’ll be bringing you much more on all that in the coming weeks but let’s continue with this week’s tour for now.
We saw this being built last week and here is the door into the Engine room is now all in place ready for one more hinge to be added in the middle and then be insulated and fitted with its fire proof glass window. Stepping aft a bit in the Workshop you can see how we’ve hinged the door such that it can open all the way to sit tight against the aft side of the ER Enclosure to keep it well out of the way and provide full access to the passageway on the left that leads to the WT door into the corridor outside the Guest Cabin leading to the stairs up to the SuperSalon. On the opposite Starboard side of the Workshop we see more additions such as the other big hatch, more perforated wire trays and the outline of the Day Tank at the far end.
The workbench and shelving which bolt to those frames on the far right here and same as opposite side above, have been removed for now to make it easier to move things in and out of this Workshop area. Here are some of the 11 meters of Workbench that have been removed and stored under the hull while work on the interior goes on.
Did I mention that I have ELEVEN meters of Workbench in my full headroom Workshop???
Looking down at the aft side of the ER Enclosure the AL plate that seals this opening has been cut and fitted prior to being gasketed and bolted in place. This gives easy access to the prop shaft “dripless” seal which cam be easily seen and inspected from within the ER but when you need to replace the seal every few years, it is very nice to have such ready access. A feature we’ve designed in throughout all the systems on this boat. Moving up to the front of the boat we find this find this beautiful sight of the now fully insulated Master Cabin. The black foam on the sides and ceiling is the 50mm thick EPDM and the white on the forward WT bulkhead where the Forepeak begins is the acoustic insulation to keep our Master Cabin nice and quiet with the help of another 50mm of EPDM on the opposite side inside the Forepeak.
Zooming in a bit you can see the beautiful big hatch that sits directly overtop of the vanity sink and see all the pass through ports where pipe and cables pass through this WT bulkhead into the Forepeak. Way more than enough insulation you say? No way we say. Check out this newest arrival at Naval Yachts and the next layer of acoustic insulation that we will form the layered sandwich between interior bulkhead walls and the outer plywood skin for mounting the cabinetry. More on this in the coming weeks. Jumping down into the Basement we find more of these beautiful AL fuel fittings on the pass through this WT bulkhead into the Guest Cabin ….. ……. which looks like this on the other side. More delightful sights for my eyes of progress in the basement with all these fuel tank access port lids all bolted down ….…… …… sealed and pressure tested. Jewel like to my eyes are these freshly machined barb fittings ready to be welded onto the tanks for their vent and fill hoses. More works of art to me are these fuel hoses now fitted to their beautiful blue AN-12 push on fittings and matching JIC fittings in their aluminium SAE5 flanges bolted to the tank tops. Seemingly impossible to my wandering eyes but the view gets better the more I look up to see those hoses leading up to their respective SS ball valves on the supply and return manifolds. Which in turn wind their way along the super highway of hoses taking them …… up to the Day Tank and Alfa Laval centrifuge in the Workshop through these pass throughs on the WT Bulkhead.
Whew! Now THAT is what I call an eXtremely good progress update and you can see why I’m so excited to be back onboard Möbius here at Naval Yachts. I’ll give your weary eyes and brains a short rest until I head to the yard in the morning to join the rest of Team Möbius and capturing it all as best I can for next week’s update. I’ll do my best to also shoot some video next week and try to put together another walking tour that so many of you have been asking for.
In the interim, thanks again for joining us on the adventure of designing and building the good ship Möbius and the first of what will likely be many XPM78’s to follow. And please be sure to add all your comments, suggestions and questions in the “Joint the Discussion” box below.
First a big thanks goes to Yiğit back at Naval Yachts in Antalya for dutifully taking and uploading all the photos below and second my apologies for not being able to get this weekly update posted until now. Christine and I have been fully immersed in the wonders of being Grandparents for the past two weeks as we gathered our West and East cost children and grandchildren together for the first time in Florida and have been having a fabulous time with all of them and other family here. As the saying goes if you think our hands are full, you ought to see our hearts and so there simply has not been much time left over each day to get to online.
Thanks for your patience and without any further delay here is the update from the equally busy and talented Team Möbius for the week of April 15 to 19, 2019 back at Naval Yachts in Antalya.
If you’re not familiar with the WIF acronym in the title, it refers to Water In Fuel which is something we go to great lengths to prevent from happening and a whole WIF alarm system to let us know if any water does somehow get into our fuel.
So you would think that we’d be aghast to see all this water blasting into our tanks. But you’d be wrong as we are delighted! Why? Because this means the tanks are all being scrubbed, rinsed and vacuumed in preparation for being all sealed up with their gaskets and cover plates for final testing and ready to start storing their respective loads of our 14,450 L / 3800 USG of diesel fuel as well as our 7,100L / 1900 USG of water tanks. With all tanks being integral to the hull such that all our fuel and water is below the waterline, the tanks and their baffles were amongst the very first parts of the boat to be assembled and welded almost a year ago now so they have accumulated a LOT of dirt, dust and debris from all the construction that has gone on since. The bigger bits were removed with a strong vacuum and then washed down as you see here to get all the finer dust and grit rinsed down to the bottom where it was all pumped out, Next all the tanks were vacuumed dry and the tops bolted down to seal them shut and all ready for their next pressure test to find any leaks with the newest additions to the tanks. Tanks are pressure tested after every change or addition such as these two fuel fittings that have now been connected up passing through this WT Bulkhead. Once all the plumbing is done we will do a final test with a manometer to ensure there the whole system is completely sealed. Not a tank per se but a “void” left empty to keep water tanks separated from fuel also need to be sealed shut in preparation for the floor insulation and cabinetry being installed. This void is at the aft end of the Master Cabin is now being fitted for its top plates and gaskets pressure, then pressure washed clean and dried.
Here it is with the tank tops bolted in place ready to be pressure tested as well.
The row of round SAE5 flanges you see taped up here and in the photo above, go into the water tanks forward and will soon be fitted with the supply and return lines and tank level gauges. Finishing up with tanks for today, the baffles have now been tacked in place within the 500L Day Tank as it is readied for installation in the Workshop. Meanwhile down in the Basement the Tank Selection manifolds are being mocked up with their octopus like set of 14 different hoses and ball valves which allow us to move fuel to and from any of the six fuel tanks, supply and return fuel to the Alfa Laval centrifuge and the fuel transfer pump for filling the Day Tank. Uğur and Nihat turned their attention to the massive hinges for the Paravane stabiliser A-Frames being cut out of this 50mm/2” thick block of aluminium. Which is soon shaped and drilled and is ready to be inserted through the Rub Rails.
Paravanes, often referred to as “birds” or “fish” are suspended off the end of these A-Frames and “fly” through the water about 5m/16’ below the surface when we are in seas that want to cause the boat to roll. You can see three of them in the bottom right corner of this rendering as I am testing out different positions, depths and making sure they can’t hit the hull or reach the prop.
Note that there is only one A-Frame on each side of the boat not two as you see here with the A-Frames shown in both up and down positions.
The shape of the paravanes is similar to an airplane and as the water moves over the wings they maintain downward pressure to counter the forces trying to lift them up as the hull rolls and thus stabilises the hull and makes for a much more comfortable ride.
As you can imagine these forces can be Xtreme in heavy seas and weather so these hinges need to transfer all this force from the A-Frames into the framework of the hull and will be inserted into slots you see being laid out here. The hinge plates extend down through the top and bottom …. ….. of the 10mm thick Rub Rails. The center line of the pair of hinge pins must be perfectly aligned and the laser level makes this relatively easy as the hinge blocks are soon tacked in position. Up at the bow the large hatch lid has been completed and is now being fitted with its hinges. This hatch provides us ready access to the large 4m/13’ long Forepeak area below where we will stow lines, fenders and lots of other equipment such as Black and Grey Water tanks, the anchor Windlass, Bow Thruster and various pumps so this large space will be well used. Last but not least of this week’s progress Yiğit gives us a peek at the latest arrival at Naval Yachts.
Can you guess what lies under the tarps? Aha! The first batch of our Santos/Rosewood for the interior cabinetry. These are the solid wood just under Yigit’s fingers and the veneer is stacked above for its ride down from Istanbul. Earlier in the week at the suppliers warehouse, the Santos/Rosewood veneers had been carefully selected and bundled up for their journey South. A very exciting milestone as the build transitions from the aluminum exterior work to the interior. You’ll be seeing much more of this Xtremely beautiful wood in the coming weeks and months as the carpentry crew joins Team Möbius. And if you think it was a productive week at the shipyard check out the progress back at Dincer’s home with the even more rapid growth of the twins Mert (middle) and Yiğit (bottom) and their big brother Demir.
Well it is now Saturday evening and we have just returned “home” to Antalya and are busy unpacking our four checked bags full of boat parts, electronics and navigation gear for Möbius. So I can finally get this tardy progress update for last week posted and will follow up shortly with this week’s update so you will be getting two back to back posts along with my thanks for your patience. See you again shortly.
Hard for us to believe but this week marked the beginning of Year Two as we passed the one year mark since Project Goldilocks began last April 6th and the productivity freight train that Team Möbius is, continues to pick up speed on the tracks to completion by the end of this year. We were all too busy with the ever increasing teams and types of work that has been happening to stop and celebrate this milestone and it is one of those things where you wonder simultaneously at how it could have been so long ago and yet how short a time it seems. As per the title and what you’ll see and read in this week’s progress update we now have teams working on finish welding in all our in-house designed and built deck hatches both glass and aluminium types, hand hold railings, electrical wiring, insulation, fuel hoses and manifolds, engine room door, wood and material selections for the interior design work which is picking up steam now too. So with that brief synopsis let me stop telling and start showing you this week’s progress.
If you’ve been following along the past few weeks you’ll know where you are and what these are. That’s right we are in the Basement and these are the two large fuel manifolds for selecting which fuel tank we are pulling from and which tank we are returning to when either polishing or transferring fuel. Most often this will be filling up the 500L Day Tank which is the supply source for the two diesel consumers, the Gardner engine and the Kabola water heater and then from time to time when we are polishing the fuel via the Alpha Laval MIB303 centrifuge or transferring fuel from one tank to another to keep all that weight well balanced and where we want it.
The manifold on the left manages all the return hoses and the one on the right the supply to each of the six fuel tanks below the Basement. You can see the large access hatch opening above into the SuperSalon and we’ve located all these ball valves here for quick and easy access whenever we need to switch which tank we are drawing from and returning to.
The manifolds have 14 hoses connected to them, six each to/from each tank and then a main supply and return line leading up to the Day Tank in the Workshop and they have now started laying in all these rubber fuel hoses along the “superhighway” of wire trays that you’ve been seeing installed over the past month. Speaking of the Day Tank, it moved aboard for a temporary stay to determine the precise location it will have and finalising the brackets to hold it there. Here you see the partially welded up Day Tank making its way through the WT doorway from the Swim Platform into the Workshop. Moving it straight forward from the door the Day Tank nestles into its spot up against the WT Bulkhead into the Guest Cabin and the Starboard side wall of the Engine Room on the left here. If you look closely you can just make out the WT Bulkhead in the back as it is all covered with the black EPDM insulation and you can see two of the aluminium pass through sleeves on the right where hoses, wires and plumbing lines need to penetrate a WT Bulkhead frame. Where hoses, wires and pipes need to pass through a Water Tight Bulkhead, oval shaped aluminium sleeves have been welded in such as the three you can see on the left of this photo. Near the end of the build once all the systems are fully installed these sleeves will be filled with a special certified foam to completely seal them. And there are some off/on ramps built in where we need to run hoses and cables across a bulkhead such as this. You might think some giant squid has squeezed aboard but this is the beginning of installing the larger 50mm/2” ID rubber hose for the Fill & Vents boxes where they connect to each fuel tank when refuelling. These might look like two periscopes watching the action happening on the hose trays but they are actually two of the Fill/Vent connections into this fuel tank in the Basement that is inboard of the Grey Water tank in the background here with its access port on the right and some of the SAE5 flanges on the left where the Maretron and Hart tank level lines go. Up in the Master Cabin the water tank access ports are being fitted with their SS studs…………. Fuel rated gasket material is cut to fit……….. ……… and lids are carefully torqued down and then each tank is pressure tested to ensure it remains fully sealed. Finishing up with tanks for this week, Uğur and Nihat are welding in the flanges around these two void (empty) tank sections which separate the water tanks in the aft end of the Master Cabin from the fuel tanks in the Basement This is required by CE and class certification but is also just good practice to eliminate any chance of fuel and water mixing. 6mm / 1/4” aluminium plate covers will be bolted in with gaskets to keep this area fully waterproof as well as providing access in the future should it be needed for these areas which are located under the Queen bed in the Master Cabin. Up at the front of the Master Cabin Mummy is busy finishing off the installation of the special acoustic insulation on this WT Bulkhead where the Forepeak on the other side. With 50mm / 2” of EPDM on the other side, this is our typical over engineering just to ensure that anytime someone is sleeping in the Master Cabin noised from anchoring don’t interfere with their sleep. These large acoustic insulation panels have peel & stick adhesive to keep them fully sealed against the aluminium plates and then these aluminium fasteners are glued to the aluminium bulkheads and the foam is pressed in place.
To finish, these large diameter aluminium locking washers are pressed on and the spikes are bent over and cut off to ensure these panels stay put prior to having the acoustic plywood panels fastened over top.
Finishing off the insulation update this week, Mummy has also been busy completing the exacting job of applying the thick cloth backed foil over all the EPDM foam insulation on the Basement walls and ceiling. This foil has proven to be a great solution to providing the just right surface in the Basement. As you can see it is VERY bright in here with all the reflection off the aluminium foil and it is Xtremely durable and easy to clean. What’s not to like? Installation of all the glass topped deck hatch frames we’ve designed and built in house is now finished with these last two 70cm / 28” square welded in place on each side of the Aft Deck. These are located overtop of the middle of the length of the 5m long workbenches below in the Workshop. At the very back of the Aft Deck Uğur, Nihat and Sezgin were hard at work building the door for the entrance into the Engine Room. We decided to put a fire rated glass window in this Engine Room door so we can do a visual check of what’s going on inside before opening this door. We have plenty of gauges that would raise alarms if something goes wrong in the Engine Room but this adds an additional degree of safety when we are doing our hourly Engine Room checks on passage.
Inside the Port side of the Workshop looking forward we see the Engine Room doorframe tacked in place. Uğur fits the short stingers that Nihat has cut to shape for the short area between the new door frames and the rest of the ER walls. And Sezgin arrives to fully weld the frames to the walls. Yiğit designed up these hinges and Uğur quickly fabricated them and tacked the door in place on the new door frames to check that the door can open the full 270 degrees so it folds all the way around out of the way up against the back wall of the ER. You can see the window cut-out here as well. It is a bit of an odd angle but might still give you a better sense of how this ER door fits. This is looking aft towards the door diagonally across where you enter the Workshop from the Swim Step. Last but definately not least the rest of the hand hold railings have been fabricated and tacked in place around the perimeter of the whole Pilot House. Here we are looking at the Starboard/Right Aft corner of the Pilot House looking forward along the side decks. Moving up to the front of the Pilot House, there are similar hand holds run across the forward overhang. These are huge safety factors enabling us to go out on deck if ever neccessary and always have an Xtremely sturdy and easy to grip hand hold around all 360 degrees of the Pilot House. These hand rails are about 1.4m / 4.5ft off the deck which is a just right height for easy reach while walking along these areas and they also provide a continuous series of places to clip your safety harness to.
Early Thursday morning Christine and I went out to the Antalya airport to start our most recent led of the Never Too Nauti Grandparents World Tour with a quick trip to Florida for some much needed time being Gramma and Grampa with our three grandchildren and three children and their respective spouses. This low quality shot is as we were amongst the very first flights to land at the brand new Istanbul airport which opened thee days earlier First time we have been able to get all of this extended family together and is about the only thing that could pull us away from building our boat with Naval Yachts. Inside this new airport is truly enormous and stunningly designed. We had a chance to explore and admire it as we had a few hours before our flight to Miami. So we are leaving our beloved Möbius in the Xtremely capable hands of the rest of Team Möbius and Naval Yachts and staying in close contact via Email and WhatsApp to make sure we are there to answer questions and provide input whenever needed. We fly back on the 26th and thanks to Yiğit taking photos every day onboard Möbius I will be able to continue to get these weekly update posts coming so that you, and we, don’t miss any of the action as this incredible voyage and adventure continues.
Thanks for joining us and don’t forget to add your questions, comments and suggestions in the “Join the Discussion” box below.
NOTE: I’m having trouble splitting this week’s update post into two so it will have to stay here as one big posting. So go get a comfy seat and a good beverage and I think you’ll enjoy this longer than usual posting. As you’ll see it has be a VERY busy and eventful week!
OK, back to our regular programming now………………………………
It was one of the longest and closest beauty pageants in history but the jury is finally in and the 2019 Miss Möbius World Wood has been crowned.
You saw some of the run up in last week’s post such as this photo of the final four veneer contestants in the Au Naturelle portion of the contest. And here are the four finalists, resplendent in the early morning Antalya sun sporting their solid Rosewood edging with their carefully applied coats of clear varnish buffed to a lovely matte lustre.
The two Siamese twins in the middle are Anzem commonly known as African Bengi and the two contestants on either side as well as the other set of twins angling for attention in the background, are all different cuts and types from the Pelesenk/Rosewood family which is often mistaken for Lignum Vitae. According to their application form and family tree (sorry) these three are all
“Tropical hardwoods known for their beautiful figuring and rich, dark red or purplish color streaked and variegated with black. A very hard, heavy and highly valued cabinet wood sustainably obtained from several tropical leguminous trees of the genera Dalbergia and Machærium Takes a high polish easily and used for expensive furniture and jewellery making. The Rosewood name is derived from aroma wood exudes as it is sawed.
By whatever name, and with apologies to William Shakespeare I think you might agree that these woods are a great example of how “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.“ and look as beautiful as vividly on display in these photos.
So, without any further ado (not to be mistaken for adieu!), the winner of the Miss Möbius World Wood contest is ………………………………….
This beauty, known by her parents (aka lumberyard) as “Kisa” according to the label on the sample strip of veneer our awemazing interior designer Unzile had sent to us last week. Kisa is seen here rightfully showing off her beautifully random swirling streaks of a colours ranging from light brown through burgundy wine to black.
In this pose you can see her solid wood edging and radiused corner. This type of solid wood radiused corner will be used throughout the interior with varying radii from 25mm to 50mm depending on their use on cabinet edges, wall corners, etc..
We can’t wait to see how this will look in larger forms as the Xtremely talented Naval cabinetmakers start building the interior walls and cabinets so you will soon be seeing LOTS more of Kisa in the weeks and months to come.
Speaking of Beauties, I snapped this quick pic of my Beautiful Bride, aka Captain Christine, taking on the next daunting task of choosing all our other interior materials. We wanted to start with finding our Goldilocks “just right” wood first as Mother Nature has such a range of colours and we weren’t sure just which ones were going to call our name the loudest.
With Kisa being the winner we now know the colour pallet she brings aboard and so Christine is now moving on to the selection of materials and colours for the floor, ceiling and walls.
As many of you who have built or remodeled homes, floating or otherwise, know all too well, there is a mind boggling number and range of colours, textures and materials to chose from so this is a tall mountain to climb but a thoroughly fun part of our adventure.
With our wood now known the next material and colour for the interior decision hierarchy is the floors and we are fortunate enough to find ADO Floors right here in the Antalya Free Zone and almost beside Naval Yachts where we are building Möbius. The ADO Group is a 62 year old company now making some incredible “Luxury Vinyl” flooring which has proven to be a just right fit our priorities of Xtreme safety, comfort, durability and low maintenance. The flooring we are going to use is part of ADO’s “LAAG” series which is found not only in homes but also industrial buildings such as airports and shopping centers as it is simultaneously tough, non-flammable, anti-bacterial as well as being sound insulating and waterproof. Importantly for us this vinyl plank flooring also works well with our in floor hydronic heating so having checked all our “must have” boxes we have another winner this week!
Difficult to capture in a photo and with must one small piece, but the sample above is the one, “Aperta 2010” is calling our names the loudest and what we’re going with. In addition to its other great properties we also went with this because it has a significant 3D texture that I would best describe as being similar to the texture of the raised grain of aged wood siding on old buildings. Not sure how well that captures it but this texture provides the critical “grippiness” and non slip that we need on our floors when we can sometimes be walking about in bare, sometimes wet feet on a boat that is Rockin’ & Rollin’ in heavy seas or boisterous anchorages.
Cabinetry Wood: CHECK
Interior Flooring: CHECK
Walls, Upholstery, Ceilings? TBD
Before we leave this interior topic, some of you may be interested in knowing the overall concept and theme we have for our interior spaces. As you’ve seen and read the exterior will be all business, function first, raw unpainted aluminium, no paint, no wood no stainless and with a style and look that is “lean and mean”. More industrial bordering on military so as to present a “don’t mess with me” vibe to any onlookers with less than friendly and honourable intentions. On the outside we want to blend in an fit much more in a fishing port rather than a superyacht marina.
But on the inside we want to be transported to the opposite end of this spectrum to be bathed in natural light and fresh air and immersed in a world of carefully crafted cabinetry using woods and materials which radiate a feeling of warmth and beauty. Materials on the walls, upholstery and ceilings which provide the perfect backdrop for the artwork of friends, family and some rare special mementos we have picked up in our decades of travel around the world.
Having lived aboard our previous sailboats for decades, we are inextricably connected to Mother Nature and the environment we are anchored in which is usually an isolated “only boat in the bay” type anchorage in the latest Xtremely remote location we serendipitously find ourselves in and so we want to bring that with us and not be cut off from it when we step inside. Hence the 360 degrees of glass surrounding our entire Pilot House/SuperSalon which is our primary living space and all the huge hatches we’ve designed which you’ve been seeing installed in the past few weeks and will see a bit more of below.
I will tell more of the story behind our choosing Möbius as the name for our Goldilocks boat but for now I’ll encourage you to Xplore and play with these intriguing wonders of math, space and surfaces which have captured my imagination since I was a very young boy. You can start with this brief Möbius strip explanation or this 3D “Klein” vessel exploration where the little GIF animation to the left comes from.
One of the many fascinating features of a Möbius strip or Klein bottle which so boggled my little boy mind, which is still VERY active, is that they have no inside or outside, no boundaries, only one continuous surface and one continuous edge. Or as Ross Dawson captures it so well in this little graphic on the left; “The inside is the outside”.
If you are still with me after my all too typically “brief” lead ins, my point is that we are also going to adopt a Möbius theme to help us design our interior such that our “inside is the outside”. At the very top of our interior design triangle the theme we have come up to help create “the inside I the outside” is to replicate a similar orientation and colouration of the natural outside world. The floors will give us a feeling of the ground that is under our feet on remote beaches, walks on old docks and you can now see part of what led us to chose the vinyl floor sample above. Our lower vertical surfaces will be reminiscent of the trees, jungle and forests we see and wander through ashore with our use of the beautiful Miss Kisa Rosewood for all the cabinetry and lower wall surfaces. Then we are going to have a horizontal band at about countertop height which endlessly wraps itself around the whole interior to create an internal version of the aqua marine horizon we are accustomed to seeing all around us. Above the horizon there will either be views of the natural exterior vistas that surround us or lighter coloured leather and fabric covering the walls and higher cabinetry and makes the transition into the whites of the clouds above on the ceilings.
In short, floors that mimic sand and rough wood surfaces under our feet and a horizon below which are forests of beautiful wood and above which are open expanses of sky and clouds. Lucky for you and your eyes, I’ll leave it at that for now and return in future posts to give you more of the story behind the naming of our boat and the design of our interior.
The other bit of progress on our interior is these two sheets of a larger shipment which arrived this week. Can you guess what this is for?
This close up view (click to enlarge any photo) will help answer that. This is the first in the multi layered insulation of the interior bulkheads to keep them Xtremely well insulated both thermally and acoustically. As you can see here, this first layer already has 3 layers of its own with an inner 3mm layer of highly compressed EPDM sandwiched between the 17mm layer of white foam and the 6mm layer of black foam. The outer side of the black foam is covered with “peel & stick” industrial adhesive which will be used to attach the foam to the flat aluminium plate of the bulkhead “walls”.
Given the Xtreme nature of how these XPM boats will be used these additional aluminium fasteners are glued to the aluminium bulkheads prior to the foam sheets being pressed in place. Once the foam is in place one way lock washers are pressed overtop of the protruding portion of these aluminium “nails” to lock them in place. The walls will then be covered with a further layer of special acoustic plywood which is also constructed of multiple layers of wood and fibre and I’ll show you that in a future post.
In case you are wondering, this Xtra special acoustic and thermal insulation on this side of these WT bulkheads is over and above the already eXcessive 50mm/2” EPDM foam that is on the other side, Why go to such Xtra work and expense? This treatment is being used here to ensure that none of the noise and heat from the engine room is able to sneak into Christine’s Office/Guest Cabin. The WT bulkhead between our Master Cabin and the Forepeak will receive similar treatment to insulate it from the sounds of the anchor chain, windlass, etc..
Speaking of insulation, good old “Mummy” continues the seemingly endless task of applying the nautical miles of EPDM foam insulation that covers every internal aluminium surface and if you look closely here you’ll see him carrying yet another roll of EPDM up the steps to the Swim Platform on Möbius.
In addition to installing all the EPDM insulation Mummy has also been in charge of another long and tedious task; applying all that beautiful shiny aluminium foil cloth overtop the EPDM in places like the Basement as you see him doing here. Here is more of Mummy’s handiwork installing the EPDM insulation inside the “doghouse” where you step into the Workshop from the Swim Platform and you can also see that the overhead hatch is now all welded in place patiently awaiting Mummy to find the time to put in the EPDM around it. More EPDM seen here in our Master Cabin where Hilmi the electrician continues his work installing all the perforated AL wire trays that he will soon start filling up with many nautical miles of wire and cable.
At the other end of the beauty spectrum, some might say the more masculine end, you may also recall this depiction of the Fuel Supply and Return manifolds from last week’s progress update and we’ve now got an update on that as well. Here is the first phase of building the first of what will be many different manifolds for fuel and water. As per the drawing above this is machined from a single length of 70mm / 2.75” square solid aluminium that is bored out down its centerline to provide the common internal reservoir which feeds each of the six 316 SS full flow ball valves on the top and bottom, one for each integral fuel tank that forms the hull compartments below the tank tops you see here.
The same 3/4” ball valve on the right end of the manifold is where the main supply/return line lines connect and bring fuel to/from the Day Tank in the Workshop. All the rubber 20mm ID fuel hoses will connect to the ball valves using the blue/red JIC AN-12 fittings you see two of here. These components are as expensive as they look although building in house helps but we gladly spend our budget on mission critical systems on our boats and on a power boat the fuel system is definately mission critical.
If this were a water manifold, the supply/return valve and line would need to be larger to have enough flow for multiple lines being used simultaneously, but in these fuel return/supply manifolds allow us to select which of the six fuel tanks we are taking fuel from and which one we are returning to so there is never a situation where more than one tank is being used at the same time.
Many may feel that Kisa and her wooden sisters above are far more beautiful but as I like to remind people, beauty is a FEELING using any number of our senses not merely what we see so these Xtremely robust fuel manifolds are Xtremely beautiful to me and make us feel Xtremely warm and fuzzy knowing that they will never leak, are easy to use and ensure that our fuel is safely transported to all diesel consumers and tanks.
More fuel related progress, the Fuel Vent boxes are now all welded in place sporting their requisite hose barb outlets for the 50mm vent hoses to come. More hose barb pipes and some elbows all machined ready for welding into the tank tops for the other end of the hoses running from the Fuel Vent and Fill boxes into the fuel tanks underneath the Basement. Like this. Final Fuel related update for this week, these two threaded flanges are now all finished, insulated and foiled awaiting the JIC AN-12 fittings to be installed for the fuel hoses on either side of this WT Bulkhead in the Basement. Switching from Fuel to Water for a bit, another exciting milestone this week was the start of installing the Sea Chests into the hull. I’m a huge fan of using Sea Chests for bringing sea water into the boat for things like the supply for the watermaker, salt water wash down pumps and the wet exhaust on the Gardner. Rather than having individual sea cocks perforating the hull in every location these sea water consumers, a single large diameter Sea Chest pipe can be used to bring the sea water inside and act as a manifold for any number of outlets via a SS ball valve for each one.
HOWEVER, my top priority is keeping the sea OUT of our boat so cutting big holes into the hull BELOW the Waterline has my full attention and we go to great lengths to ensure that we keep the sea on the outside of the hull! Hence these special order Xtra thick aluminium pipes from which we will fabricate our Sea Chests. The one above is for the Intake Sea Chest in the Engine Room which is 120mm / 4.7” ID and the walls are 15mm / 5/8” thick. The pipe on the left here will be used for one of the lower volume Sea Chests and is 90mm / 3.5” ID. In addition to the Sea Chests for bringing salt water into the boat we will also have Sea Chests for taking Gray and Black water out. Both the Intake and Exit Sea Chests extend up well above the Waterline, about 30cm / 1’ so I can service them while the boat is in the water and each have a thick flange on top for a clear Lexan cover. Having a clear cover allows me to quickly inspect what’s going on inside and if needed I can either remove a small threaded plug in these covers large enough to allow me to stick a wood dowel “broom handle” or the like and push out anything that might be sucked up, or swims up and blocks the pipe.
Ask me how I know?!!
Here is the Intake Sea Chest being fitted in the forward Starboard corner of the Engine Room.
Once it is welded VERY securely into the 15mm thick bottom plate of the hull it will be fitted wtih offtake pipes leading into large dual water strainers which in turn feed into a manifold with take offs for the wet exhaust system, watermaker and aft deck wash pump. OK, we’ve seen the progress on wood, fuel and water so let’s finish up with fresh Air and Light. Uğur, Nihat and Sezgin continue with their work installing the ten big hatches which will bring in all the fresh air and natural light below decks while we are at anchor. Dorade boxes will look after the fresh air when we are underway and the hatches are closed but we spend the vast majority of our time over the course of a year at anchor so the hatches are critical importance.
The two large rectangular boxes you see flanking the large opening above the Engine Room will provide the air in and out of the Engine Room and Workshop as well as being used for our Outdoor Galley with BBQ, sink, counters, etc..
We are out on the forward area of the Aft Deck behind the Pilot House where there are stairs down into the SuperSalon or up to the SkyBridge. This is all overtop of the Guest Cabin and Christine’s Office and the hatch you see Uğur welding above is overtop the Guest Cabin shower.
The 450mm / 18” square one on the bottom of the photo on the left is overtop of Christine’s Office desk and the large 700mm / 28” one under the spiral SkyBridge stairs is overtop the Guest Cabin Queen bed.
Below all this action, the ever present Mehmet is prepping the big 10mm / 3/8” thick frames that go around the perimeter of the Engine Room enclosure and provide the sealing surfaces for the large hinged door that keeps the large opening into the Engine Room you can see two photos above, all watertight. With all that action happening on the Aft Deck and around that Engine Room hatch, the big hatch door has been moved up to the bow and is being cleaned up and prepped for its finish welding hinges and “dog” which are used to latch it tightly shut. Meanwhile, down on the shop floor below the slightly smaller Forepeak hatch door up on the Anchor Deck at the Bow is being fabricated. and seen here upside down ready for the stiffening grid and gasket flanges to be welded in place. Here’s the flip side of that Forepeak hatch which is what you’ll see when up on the Bow. I’ll finish up this very loooooooong weekly update post with this random shot of some of our fuel and water tank access port covers seemingly forlornly awaiting their turn to go aboard and be installed. But wait! There’s MORE!!!
Last night Christine and I had the huge privilege to attend the wedding celebration of one of our Team Möbius members Burak and his fabulous wife Melek. This is a few others other Naval Yachts people, all working with us as part of Team Möbius and joining in on this joyous night celebrating love, life and happiness. Congratulations Melek and Burak! Seeing you so happy makes us happy!!
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