Well as you might have noticed time got away from me and I didn’t succeed in getting the Weekly Update posted for last week. But wait, I’ve got some great excuses! The week was not only more densely packed than ever with the ever increasing progress on Möbius but I also received THE best Birthday gift on Thursday evening when my Beautiful Bride and newly minted Captain Christine flew back into my arms from Florida!
But wait! There’s more…………….! After only a few hours sleep, we were up very early Friday morning and drove back out to the airport to catch our flight to Dusseldorf for the big “BOOT” show that is one of the world’s largest where we met up with several fellow boat builders and some soon to be boat builders and had a fabulous weekend get away swimming in a totally different boating pond.
I just wanted to let you know that we are both alive and well and I will do my best to make up this lapse in the weekly Progress Updates by putting together “2 for the price of 1” blog post this weekend that will cover all the progress for these last two weeks of January and some shots from the eXtremely large and fun Dusseldorf Boat Show.
Hope you find the extra wait to be worthwhile and thanks for your patience with me.
This was a week full of wonderful gifts the first of which is that Möbius now has her one and only official Captain!
Christine flew back to Florida last week in large part to finish here marathon of testing and certification with the USCG for her 100 Ton Captains License. Christine first received her 100 Ton license a few years ago in her early twenties but things have changed a wee bit in the ensuing years and this USCG license now covers many, many more topics and at great depth so this was truly a marathon of new learning and studying for many months.
After a full afternoon and evening of testing Christine passed every one of the individual qualifications with flying colours and was informed that she is now a fully certified USCG 100 Ton Captain with the “six pack” option as well which additionally entitles her to captain boats with up to six paid guests aboard. We don’t have any plans to use that, but she had this designation previously when she used to run a chartering business in the Caribbean so she figured she might as well keep it and added that to her testing and certification.
So please join me in congratulating and welcoming Captain Christine aboard her newest boat, the Good Ship Möbius. Way to go my Beautiful Bride! I could not be more proud of you nor want to serve any other Captain at sea or in love and life.
And if you promise not to tell anyone, I’ll let you in on a little secret ……………………………………………………. I get to KISS that Beautiful Captain every night before we go to sleep so yes, the rumours are true, the little Möbius Cabin Boy is sleeping with the Captain!! But don’t tell anyone OK???
But wait!! There’s more!
As if having a newly minted Captain wasn’t already enough fabulous news, we got more this week with the confirmation that three of our five children and two of our three grandkids now have their flights booked to come join us here in Antalya for American Spring Break in April! Daughter Lia, husband Brian, son Skyler and granddaughters Brynn and Blair will be here for over a week in what has become a bit of a tradition of having a family get together during this time when teacher Brian and the kids are all off school. Hard to tell just where Möbius will be or in what condition at that time but we will at least get to spend time sharing our new home with these dear family members as well as showing them this part of the world which we have come to love so dearly as well. More to come on all that as it happen but now let’s get on to the other news of the week with what has been happening with the building of the first XPM here at Naval Yachts.
NEW ARRIVALS:
Just to mix things up a bit, I’ll start with the “New Arrivals” this past week.
Any guess what Yigit knows is all wrapped up in inside this pallet full of boxes? Uğur lent a helping hand and was just as curious. The unusual L shape of the two big boxes might give you some clues…………….. How about if I tell you each box contains one of the same thing and give you a peek inside this one to show you the colour of the Ultra Leather? Heating up your clues with a glimpse inside the other box and its slightly different colour leather. And some of you more boat savvy people might recognize the brand logo? That’s right! How fitting that Möbius’ Captain’s Chairs should arrive this week just in time for Captain Christine to test out on her return next week. I will hold off unboxing until she is here so will give you this example from the LLebroc company web site to give you a better idea of what the “Bandera Series 2” Captain’s Chair will look like. We went with this higher backed and more snug fitting Tradewinds CX HB model for the Upper Helm in the SkyBridge where the motion might be more pronounced due to being up higher above the waterline. You can use your imagination to map the colours you see in the two examples above onto these chairs while you await the full unboxing with Captain Christine. I did pull out one of the footrests which as you can see are up for the task of matching the eXtreme strength of the XPMs. I’ll show you the even more robust air adjustable pedestals when we set them up.
I had put a Llebroc helm chair on our previous boat “Learnativity” and after sailing her largely single handed for the first ten years I literally lived in that chair 24/7 on the many ocean passages I made and LOVED this chair. When Christine joined the crew in 2013 she was equally amazed at how great these chairs are to spend hours and hours in while being super comfy and super safe. We have tried out many other makes and models but always kept coming back to Llebroc and so we decided to do as we have done with much of the equipment on Möbius and go with what we know.
Another example of Llebroc helm chairs. We met up with Nick Covey at the Llebroc booth at FLIBS the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show last year and kept going back over the three days we were at the show and Nick could not have been more patient and expert in answering our non stop questions as we dug into all the details of their new chair construction, features, materials and options and then sat down with him and ordered up the two Goldilocks just right just for us chairs. Now we can’t wait to be sitting in them aboard Möbius so stay tuned as we get to installing them.
OK, on to the next new arrival and next quiz; what’s inside these two new wooden boxes that arrived this past week? This one is a little more obvious with these two boxes being so clearly branded but for those not familiar this is the propulsion system for our Tender. The XPM Tender, which is being designed and built here at Naval Yachts will be all aluminium, of course! with a hull length of about 5m/16.45’ and beam of about 2m. It will have an inboard diesel engine powering a jet drive and that’s what’s in these two boxes.
Many of you will be familiar with the Yanmar name of marine engines and this is a 2 Litre 82kW/110HP four cylinder 4JH4-HTE model. Most notably for me this is a rare model that has “old school” mechanical fuel injection rather than electronic common rail. A “must have” for me for two reasons; I can maintain and repair it with tools and equipment I carry onboard and there are no electronic black box to be damaged by things such as lightning strikes. It is turbo charged but I’m good with that based on my previous experiences and should be good for many thousands of hours of operation and serve us very well. For those wondering why we chose such a powerful engine for our Tender it is largely because we intend to have our Tender be our emergency propulsion system in the highly unlikely event that Mr. Gee our Gardner 6LXB main engine should become completely incapacitated and I was unable to get it up and running. Given that this is a Gardner, that is eXtremely unlikely but as you’ve read here many times we practice “Readiness for the Unexpected” in the design and build of XPM’s and especially our Möbius. I will have lots of details on how we will make this work in future posts. We bought this engine and jet drive as a complete package from Denpar Marine and Selim Yalcin has been outstanding to work with putting this all together with us. It is a very complete package and about the only things we need to add is a water lift muffler and a starter battery. This is the gauge cluster that comes with the Yanmar and all the other components from alternator to cables and filters are in the crate with the engine.
Castoldi Jet drives in Italy might be less well known to you as jet drives are not as common as outboards but they have been building jet drives, both as complete Jet Tenders as well as just the Jet Drives themselves for over 50 years since 1962. They are one of the largest manufacturers of jet drives and we are eXtremely excited about how well this will power Möbius’ Tender. As per the DD in the model name, this is a Direct Drive which helps us with our focus on KISS Keep It Safe & Simple by having a direct connection through a short cardan shaft CV joints. This section view Yigit created lets you see the whole assembly. Castoldi designed this 224DD model to be specifically matched with and direct driven by this 110HP Yanmar which factored into our decision as well. As drive systems go, this is a relatively simple and eXtremely tough setup. The majority of the drive itself is all solid cast aluminium with the impeller and its housing being all stainless steel. One other very nice feature is inside the bubble wrap on the right side of the crate here which is a solid aluminium mounting frame which will be welded directly into the AL hull of the Tender and ensures a perfect match for the AL body of the jet drive itself to bolt to. Jet drives are most popularly known for their use in recreational jet skis but they are also very commonly used in workboats and tug boats due to their phenomenal steering and 360 degree of thrust which enables them to “hold station” at any point no matter what the forces of currents or tides might be doing. For us this figures well into our both our day to day use of the Tender making it very easy to maneuver as well as acting as a tow boat or tug boat if we ever need to help out other boats in distress or ourselves.
Then there is the playful side of our Tender when we are using it to explore our surroundings, take multi day trips up rivers and estuaries and most of all having fun with our grandkids and other family and friends. Having no propeller makes this all MUCH safer and have extremely little draft so we can get into the shallowest of areas, swamps and sandy or coral strewn bays.
I look forward to showing you MUCH more about our Tender in upcoming posts but let’s get back to the progress Team Möbius made this week.
PLUMBING:
Let’s start with this handsome and fun loving guy, Cihan, our prolific plumber. He’s getting ready to plan out the installation of our wash down system with both Fresh and Salt water pump outlets on the Foredeck and Aft. We’ll show you more of that next week as the installation gets underway. Cihan also our master of mounts and he is getting ready to create a new set of mounts for these two Johnson Aqua Jet Uno Max 5 chamber diaphragm pumps with built in 2L accumulator tanks to eliminate any pulsing and have very even flow. These provide all our house water pressure throughout the boat and we have two for redundancy. If one goes out a simple flick of a switch brings the other one online. Here they are all mounted on their noise cancelling soft mounts and ready for plumbing and wiring. Each pump produces about 20L/min/5.2GPM at about 2.8 bar/41 PSI and should keep us with all the fresh water pressure we ever need. Cihan installing two more of these 24V Johnson Viking 16 diaphragm pumps on the WT Bulkhead in the Basement with the Master Cabin on the other side.
One of the running jokes on the Team is that for a boat with “no bilges” we sure have a lot of bilge pumps! 16 to be exact. This is in reference to the characteristic of having all our floors being tank tops and hence other than under the engine there aren’t really any bilge areas. Rather we have “gutters” running down both sides of the hull where the tank tops angle down to join the hull at a 90 degree angle for maximum strength such as you can see in this example by the steps going up from the Corridor in the Guest Cabin area.
They will likely almost never see water but each one still needs its own bilge pump as they do not run through from Cabin to Cabin area.
This shot looking forward towards the bow from the aft end of the Master Cabin is a good example of Cihan’s plumbing prowess everywhere you look. Hull sides now filling up with plumbing carrying everything from Fresh, Black and Gray water, fuel, vent lines, Bilge water, hot water and now the floors are filling up with their runs of the Red PEX tubing for the in-floor heating. Finished wall partitions now going up for the Shower and Head in the upper Left. Same story back in the Guest Cabin now that all its cabinetry has been taken back to the Cabinet shop on their way to the Finishing Department. Some of that PEX tubing snaking its way through the Master Shower floor with manifolds for hot and cold water on the hull sides on the Right. Vertical Black pipes in the Yellow collars are for the drains from the Shower and Head floors we saw a few weeks ago with the nifty “smart water sensor” in the little Yellow manifold just visible on the middle far Right which connects to a diaphragm pump in the Forepeak. I got a few questions about how the in-floor heating PEX lines were fitting into the rigid foam board insulation with the 10mm / 3/8” marine plywood atop so I grabbed this close up to show how that looks. You’ve previously seen how they used a hand router to easily create the U-shaped grooves in the foam, then lined those grooves with aluminium tape and pressed the PEX into place. The plywood flooring goes atop all this and traps the PEX in the grooves so it can help transfer the heat to the vinyl finish floor. Simple to install and use and provides THE best heating of a home we know of. My toes are tingling in anticipation already!
These are the Supply and Return PEX lines as they enter and leave the Master Cabin into the Basement where they connect to the little circulation pump and in-floor water manifold. More of Cihan’s pump mounting. This is one of the circulation pump for the Webasto BlueCool chiller. This is located under the workbench on your Right as you enter the Workshop from the Swim Platform. If you were wondering what that wood disc is in the photo above it is this mock up of the 75L/20USG IsoTherm Calorifier which is essentially our Hot Water Tank. The real unit has not yet arrived so we’ve been using this wood mock up to position it under the Stbd/Right side Workbench.
Chiller on the Workbench above, Watermaker in front, water pressure pumps in front of Calorifier and Day Tank at the far end. Okan seen here along with Cihan and Nihat have fabricated this hanging mount setup to tuck the Calorifier nicely up out of the way and with no danger of any water reaching it from the shelf below. Last but not least for this week, Cihan is also responsible for plumbing the Webasto Air Handlers which have either chilled or hot water piped to them with a large fan blowing air through the liquid to air heat exchanger, like the radiator in your car, which then flows through air ducts to warm up or cool down the room.
Yigit seems to have Cihan scratching his head as we work through the best locations for the two air handlers up here in the SuperSalon.
We decided the one on the Stbd/Right side will work best here in the big area created by the side decks outside those big picture windows. This still allows me plenty of room to be able to get inside this area through this big opening behind the Dinette seat whenever I need to service or work on any of the plumbing or wiring running through this area.
ELECTRICAL:
There was a LOT of progress with the electrical systems onboard Möbius this week and Hilmi and his team were very busy.
Can you guess what this example of their work is? Help if I show you where those Red & Black cables lead to next? Correct! These are the 6mm2 / 10 AWG cables connecting the 14 Solar Panels to the 14 MPPT SmartSolar controllers in the Basement. The cables run through this welded in place penetration and will be sealed with special class rated watertight foam just before we launch. Cables then run along the upper roof area as in the first photo and then down through the flexible conduit in the I-beam window mullions and down into the Basement. The cables in the photo above will soon plug into the three 320W panels that lay on that hinged frame atop the front roof area of the Pilot House in front of the SkyBridge. When we are anchored, this Solar Panel filled frame will be raised to be horizontal using the hinge on the edge along the SkyBridge window glass to create a massive wind tunnel bringing fresh air through that large vent you see to the left of the wiring in the photo above. Click to enlarge this (or any other) photo and see if you can find the hidden Hilmi?
On the Right you can see the Red & Black solar cables he is running down through the conduit in the window mullions and then down into the Basement. Having 14 Solar Panels in three different banks up on top and all connected to their own MPPT controller results in seeing these Red & Black cables everywhere you looked this week. Such as these ones laying on the Galley countertops by the stairs up to the Aft Deck. And these ones over on the Starboard/Right side …….. ……….. and these ones coming down from the Arch into the ceiling of the Guest Cabin and running forward into the Basement.
This is the penetration tube through the ceiling where these Solar Cables exit out the bottom of the Arch tubes and then run along the White cable trays you can see in the background here. Peeking through the oval penetration tube before the cables went in, you can see the base of one of the Arch tubes above and the slot through which the cables run.
And of course EVERYTHING insulated with at least 50mm/2” of the ubiquitous Black EPDM foam. Similar oval AL penetration tubes in the SuperSalon floor/Basement ceiling are filling up with all the cables which need to run In/Out of the Basement which is Grand Central for ….. ……. our Electrical System. This is what Grand Central Electrical Station looked like early in the week as they ran the Solar Cables and started to build the “Blue Wall” that where most of the bright Blue Victron boxes will mount. One of the primary reasons we designed the XPM78 with this cavernous Basement area which is 1.2m / 4’ high running under the entire area of the SuperSalon floor, is to provide plenty of room for mounting most of the Electrical System components. One of the great benefits of building in aluminium is that we can easily weld in walls such as this one they are building overtop of the two big House Battery Banks that you see Hilmi on the Right standing in.
And the flood of Victron Blue boxes begins!
Victron 120/240V Isolation Transformer on the Left for the rare occasions when we have shore power. Two Victron MultiPlus 120V 3000W 70A Inverter/Chargers in front on the far Right
As you can see this open mounting system provides lots of room for spacing each of these high heat producing devices well apart from each other and providing plenty of air flow around all six sides of each box. Here is a shot of two of the three big Victron MultiPlus 240V 5000W 120A Inverter/Chargers on the other side of the wall.
Each one of these devices has its own thermostatically controlled fan pulling air in from the bottom and out through those two slots on each side and same on the back. The whole Basement is similarly ventilated with thermostatically controlled fans to ensure that all the Basement residents keep their cool which is eXtremely important as heat dramatically and negatively affects their performance and they will shut down all together if they get too hot as many other boat builders and owners have discovered the hard way.
More Blue Boxes will be moving into this neighborhood soon as will the central DC and AC Distribution Panels with their respective high amp switches, fuses and circuit breakers.
On the other side of the mounting wall above we are also using the WT Bulkhead just in front of it to weld in these five black rubber covered AL brackets for an additional mounting surface for all 14 of the Victron 100/20 SmartSolar MPPT controllers and their junction box. With each Solar Panel having its own dedicated MPPT controller keeps each panel independent from the others to minimize the effects of shading on any one panel and maximise overall solar output. A simple AL plate provides both some protection for some of the many bilge pump lines running behind it and a large open surface for easy mounting and future access to all the MPPT controllers and junction box. This AL plate is not only the perfect surface for easy mounting it serves double duty as we often do by providing a giant heat sink for all the heat coming from the heat sinks in each MPPT controller. A justifiably happy Hilmi with his handiwork surrounding him as he puts in all three of the 240V MultiPlus Inverter/Chargers on the Right and begins mounting the top row of the smaller SmartSolar MPPT Controllers on the plate on the Left. 12 of the 14 MPPT controllers now mounted with their accompanying cable trays ready to receive their respective Red & Black Solar Cables and then the cabling to connect the output from each MPPT controller to the central bus bars and circuits breakers in the junction box in the middle. Maybe we will call this Blues Ville? But trust me, I will be singing anything but the Blues when I’m working in this area over the years and have this glorious amount of space and easy access to every hose, wire and device. My fellow boat owners will appreciate just how rare and precious this is. It also adds to very real benefits of faster installation time, reduced maintenance time and costs, better cooling, easy spotting of problems, leaks, etc. What’s not to love?
WORKSHOP & ER PANELING:
The Alucobond Brothers, aka Yigit and Okan finished fitting the aluminium/composite AlucoBond sheets that cover all the EPDM foam insulation in the walls and ceilings of the Workshop and Engine Room. Once they are all fitted they will be taken out while they finish putting in penetrations and other work in the ER & Workshop so they are using sprung in place plywood sticks to hold the ceiling panels in place for now. As we showed last week, one of the great features of using AlucoBond is that you can put in a small V-shaped kerf on the back side and then bend the board along that line to create a vey smooth and strong bend of whatever angle you need. So that is how they have bent this ceiling panel to wrap around the huge ER Hatch opening in the Aft Deck. Makes for a very strong, safe and easy to clean surface throughout notoriously difficult to keep clean ER walls in most boats.
RUDDER & TILLER ARM:
The Rudder received lots of TLC from the team this week as they installed it with its Jefa roller bearings and began the critical fitting of the Rudder Post and Tiller Arm up in the Workshop. These hand cranked jacks supported the large heavy Rudder and enabled precise vertical adjustment of the position of the Rudder Post to the Tiller Arm and Steering gear. Which is what is going on here with the humongous 127mm/5” solid AL Rudder Post now in position supported top and bottom by Jefa Self Aligning roller bearings which you saw a few weeks ago. The largest White flange here is the top of the Upper Jefa self aligning roller bearing where its lip sits atop the machined edge of the welded in Rudder Tube. On top of that is a special White ball bearing ring Jefa provided to look after the vertical thrust forces. Then the Black anodised AL collar will slide all the way down and be locked in place to the Rudder Post with the SS set screws you can see on its outer circumference.
For the coup de grâce the solid CNC machined AL Tiller Arm is set in place on the Rudder Post and setting atop the Black collar to lock the whole assembly in place.
The two halves of the Tiller Arm are clamped in place with the SS key inside.
The two vertical pins are upside down here but they are where the Heim joints on the ends of the hydraulic Kobelt cylinders will attach. Down on the bottom end where the Rudder Post fits into the Rudder Tube, there is a 6cm/2.5” thick Delrin bushing to provide a smooth slippery surface whenever forces want to push the rudder upwards. A simple job for our in-house machine shop to turn from this big block of White Delrin. And create this White Beauty to fit snuggly into the Rudder Tube. There will be two large radius grooves cut into the outer circumference to provide a space for the special adhesive that will be pumped through small holes drilled through the 10mm / 3/8” thick AL walls of the Rudder Tube.
The lower Jefa roller bearing rests atop this Delfin bushing and is adhered to the Rudder Tube with the same method of pumped in adhesive which once set makes for a solid single assembly. Now we need to be able to rotate that massive Rudder through its full 90 degrees of lock to lock travel so we unboxed one of the two 24V Kobelt Accu-Steer HPU400 Hydraulic Power Units and double checked all the geometry and dimensions for mounting them on a shelf above the top of the Rudder Post. Lots more details on that as the installation happens next week.
GUEST CABIN CABINETRY:
As a reminder, here is how the Guest Cabin is laid out. The couch pulls out to make a Queen bed and the Pullman Berth folds down from the upper Right area to make a good adult sized single bed. Plenty of bookshelves and storage when Captain Christine is using this for her Office with her desk along the Aft wall on the far Right with plenty of storage areas built into its far end.
In spite of appearances to the contrary on board, the cabinetry for the Guest Cabin is coming along wonderfully with Omer over in Naval’s Cabinetry Shop next door so let’s go check in with Omer. Here is is working on the Desktop in Christine’s Office in the Guest Cabin. The rectangular opening will provide access to the Webasto Air Handler that mounts inside a cabinet at the far end of Christine’s desk up against the Stbd/Right hull. To keep this super solid and yet light he has built this with these boxed frames laminated from that same super lightweight marine plywood made from Poplar. Once both top and bottom are skinned with 16mm plywood this lightweight assembly becomes incredibly solid and stays perfectly flat. In the foreground is the cabinet riser that sits atop the outboard end of Christine’s Desk and covers up that rectangular access hatch to the Air Handler which Omer is working on in the background. Not something I should need to access very often but we put a high value on easy access so we design in features such as this. Of course all the lower surfaces are coated with Ro$ewood and Omer is an true artisan and craftsman when it comes to creating works of art with his veneering skills. This starts with him selecting the just right set of matching flitches of Rosewood veneer, cutting and matching the pieces together to create the most beautiful flow of the swirling grain and then taping these in place on the outer surface. Once ready, the bottom surface is coated with thermal reacting glue and put into the heated veneer press to clamp the veneer to the underlying plywood and then back to his workbench as you see here for machining the solid wood edges and joinery. Features such as grooves for the indirect LED floor lighting and my infamous Blue Horizon Line need are machined next with tools such as this small handheld router. These are all parts which make up the settee in the Guest Cabin which pulls out into a Queen Bed. The pull out end of the bed is on the far Left here and the interlocking slats which allow the bottom of the couch/bed to slide in and out are stacked on the Right.
I have used this sliding “fingers” style in several beds I’ve made for my homes over the years and it works extremely well and lasts forever so seemed to be the just right choice for this multipurpose couch and bed onboard Möbius.
MASTER CABIN CABINETRY:
Back onboard XPM78-01 Omur and his team have gone on to the next stage for this room where they are now bringing all the cabinetry components back from the Finishing Shop with their expertly applied 5 coats of Poly Urethan varnish and being assembled and attached to their respective foundations on the floor, ceiling and walls. This early rendering of the Master Cabin will help you visualise this Master Cabin. You are standing in the entryway door looking diagonally forward to the glass walled Shower in the far Port/Left side hull. Standing in the shower looking Aft along that same diagonal you see the raised King Bed with all its drawer storage underneath, closets and bureau of drawers on the Left and entry door in the far Left corner leading up the stairs to the SuperSalon. Celal has just finished setting the hanging closet at the bottom of those stairs. Omur and Selim now begin to put all the jig saw pieces together as they assemble all the other Master Cabin cabinetry. They have the Bureau of Drawers in place on the far Right and are here working on the bottom of the closet cabinetry that goes in front of it. Doesn’t take them long to put the puzzle pieces back together but it is a bit tricky sliding this into place on its base. But that too goes well as they fit the bottoms of the vertical dividers into their respective set of biscuits which have been inserted into the base of the closets. The module for the stacked Washer & Dryer slides in next. Horizontal divider where the ubiquitous Rosewood handhold and Blue Horizon Line will attach is set into its slots. Working his way counter clockwise around the room Omur preps the foundations for the Vanity Sink that sets up against the WT Bulkhead with the Forepeak locker on the other side. Next set of puzzle pieces that make up the Vanity Sink base cabinet and upper Medicine Cabinet. Both of those cabinets now in place and Omur is taping off the corner surfaces to protect them from the squeeze out of the sealant between them for any spills around the sink which rests atop that Ro$ewood surface. Carcasses all in place now ready for their drawers and doors and …….
……… just to wet your appetite for what is to come this is the sink that will be mounted in there. Just wait till you see what this looks like in contrast to all its Rosewood and leather surroundings! On to the next set of cabinetry, the big Master Bed platform, flipped on its side here starts to go together. Headboard rises all the way up to the ceiling where there will be a large overhead dropped ceiling box that you’ll see next week. However you can already get a sense of how much storage space there is under the bed alone. Looking aft overtop the bed shows how some of the storage will be in large open spaces such as the Birch lined one on the Left and then much more in the twelve drawers which go into the Rosewood lined cabinets at the base of the bed facing the Shower and along the sides of the walkway past the bed on the Right. Leaving you with one of the thousands of little details of the interior and evidence of Hilmi’s handiwork, this is the 24V power wires for the indirect floor lighting from a continuous strip of LED lights set into a groove in the underside of the overhang of the cabinets from the toe kick frame.
And th-thh-thhhhhh That’s all for this week folks!
Hope you enjoyed this latest update on the building of the Good Ship Möbius aka XPM78-01. We sure appreciate having you join us and we are particularly grateful for all the comments, suggestions and questions you send in so don’t be shy and please add your latest contributions in the “Join the Discussion” box below.
Captain Christine will be back on Thursday night so just four more sleeps for me to wait! Not that I’m keeping track or anything.
Oh, and just to let you know in case it delays next week’s update post, we are going to fly to Dusseldorf for the huge “Das Boot” boat show there next weekend. So if any of you happen to be attending this big event please do be in touch and we can try to meet up.
We decided to go partly as a treat to each other for a break from all the non-stop action here and also to pick up more parts and equipment for Möbius to bring back with us on the plane. We get back on Monday afternoon so we’ll show you what new arrivals we have brought back with us and have Captain Christine unbox those Helm Chairs for you so do stay tuned for all that and more.
First week of the year and we have 2020 off to a great start with all the progress on Möbius this week. I just got back from taking Christine out to the airport this morning as she flies back to Florida to finish her 100 Ton Captains License testing and start her year off right with the gift of some Gramma time as well as seeing family and friends in the Fort Lauderdale area. And of course she left with four empty suitcases to fill up with the latest flurry of parts and equipment to bring back with her when she returns on the 23rd. She’s taken to calling herself Möbius’ Mule with all the bits of kit she has been transporting through airports the past two years.
We have been having spectacular Winter weather here in Antalya. Crystal clear skies make for colder temps in the mornings and evenings, down to 1C/34F at 6am when we left to drive to the airport, but it was 15C/60F by noon with views of our surrounding mountains like this and full moonrises that have been magical.
With that prelude let’s go check up on Team Möbius at Naval Yachts this first week of 2020, Jan 6-10.
ELECTRICAL:
I will have the “Sparkies”, Hilmi and his electrical assistants start us off this week.
You may recall a similar shot last week as Nihat continued to work on getting the integral battery compartments ready for the 18 4V Carbon Foam batteries which will make up our 1350Ah @24V House Battery Bank which is the heart of the whole electric system on Möbius.
Here, Nihat is cutting in the openings where the huge 120mm2 / 4/000 AWG cables that connect the three individual 24V banks to the main DC bus bars and high amp distribution panel. That Distribution Panel will set in the rectangle just above Nihat’s head on the left of this picture and I’ll show and explain more about that once that is being installed.
The in house composite fabrication department whipped up these two containment boxes for the two battery compartments and dropped them off in the Galley. The batteries fit snuggly into these boxes so we subsequently decided to cut them way down so they are only about 100mm/4” high to act as Battery Containment Trays rather than full height battery boxes. We did this to increase the air circulation around all the batteries to be sure that we can keep the heat down if it were to build up with high rates of charge in tropical climates. Even though the probability of these fully sealed Carbon Foam batteries ever allowing any of their internal fluids escape is eXtremely small, containment trays are an AYBC requirement and just a smart thing to do.
These Battery Containment Trays are a snug fit inside the frame on the Battery Compartment floors so their bottoms are held tightly in place and can’t move. You can also see the slot for the connecting cables to pass through that Nihat was cutting in the opening photo. Celal is a new addition to Team Möbius and he has been busy helping Hilmi, barely visible behind, install the Victron MultiPlus inverter/chargers and route all that big 120mm2/ 4/000 red and black cables. For a sense of size of those integral Battery Compartments, Celal is standing in the middle one and you saw Nihat comfortably working inside the forward one in the opening photo. Not the most exciting shot but the arrival of all the cabling for our 14 solar panels arrived this week and that’s very exciting. You can click to enlarge if you’d like to see the specs on this cable which reads:
Photovoltaic Cable H12222-K 1 x 6 mm2 1kV 90C
This is cable specifically designed for transmitting all the Watts of power from each panel with minimum voltage loss and able to take sustained UV and marine exposures.
MC4 connectors are used to join each cable to the solar panel cables and we run on positive and one negative lead from each panel down to the Basement where it connects to its own MPPT controller, Victron’s SmartSolar 100/30 MPPT controller. Hilmi was also busy up on the Forepeak putting in cable trays and running the pair of large 120mm2 / 4/000 Red & Black cables which supply over 700 Amps of 24 volt power to the Distribution Panel in the Forepeak. Over on the far left side you can see the other cables for 220V AC and will also go into the Distribution Panel that will be on the far Right. It will supply power for everything from the Maxwell VWC 4000 Windlass, Lewmar 65EST winch, Vetus Bow Thruster, Black & Gray Water pumps, lights on the Bow Mast and others.
PLUMBING:
Cihan was busy as usual with the many different systems requiring his plumbing skills so let’s check up on his progress.
Up in the Master Cabin you may recall he had previously mounted these two S bends drains for the Shower and the Head/Bathroom floor that feed into the new Whale IC Gulper drain pump system. However upon testing it we found that the height of the floor was going to be a bit too close to the top of the S-bends and we were concerned it would sometimes not flow well as the boat moved. So Cihan quickly swapped them out for these simple elbows and the automatic water sensor in that yellow manifold against the hull on the left worked perfect every time and would pump water out as fast as we could pour it in from the bucket.
There is a one way valve at the diaphragm pump that is in the Forepeak which is on the other side of the WT Bulkhead at the end of the Master Cabin on the far right of these photos and this valve seals off the drain lines you see here so there is no concern about noise or smell.
Down in the Basement Cihan continued plumbing the in-floor heating system. Hot Supply water manifold is up at the top and colder white/blue manifold below. He has finished plumbing the main Supply/Return lines on the right and has them all insulated in black EPDM to reduce heat loss as the water flows to and from the in-floor heating system from the DHW Domestic Hot Water system. Now he needs to mount the three 2 speed Circulation Pumps, one for each Zone/Cabin’s loops of PEX in-floor tubing.
Cihan had previously fabricated the mounts for each pump and bolted them to the vertical frames of this WT Bulkhead with the Guest Cabin on the other side. Each pump has its own Hot Water line from the Supply manifold so they were plumbed next. Third Supply line going in here. Some of you inquired about the PPR type plumbing being used for all our potable/drinking water onboard and so I grabbed this action shot of Cihan and Celal using the thermal welding tool to join the PPR pipe to its fitting on the right. The aluminium arm extending out of the welding tool has two fittings on the end, the one on the right side slides into the female end of the fitting and the other fitting goes over the male end of the pipe on the left. Wait a few seconds while the PPR melts then pull the tool out and slide the pipe into the fitting. Done! Very different than with PVC piping which uses liquid glue to melt/weld the joints but same idea of welding the plastic parts together and creates a permanent leak free joint.
Close to finished now and ready for the Supply/Return PEX lines to be run from here to and from each in-floor heating zone which we should see happening next week. However, does this drawing that just showed up in the Master Cabin help you figure out what DID happen this week?
Maybe this close up of the drawing will help?
Aha! The drawing is Yiğit’s latest work of coming up with the ideal routing of the continuous loop of 15mm / 5/8” PEX tubing which has to wind its way through all the floor areas while carefully snaking around the tank access lids and furniture foundations. There is also a minimum bending radius of 6X the PEX tube diameter so 6 x 15 = 90mm/3.5” so Yigit used a 180mm circle to layout all each of the bends where the PEX turns around and doubles back.
Adding to the challenge, you also want the beginning Supply end of the PEX loop, which is in the Upper Left corner of the drawing, to go through the areas where you want the most heat and you want to have more tubing per square cm in these areas which in this case is the floor of the Shower and Head/Bathroom in the Upper Right. I had mapped out the basic routes but it was quite the Tetris or Rubik’s Cube like puzzle for Yigit to solve. As you can see he did so brilliantly as usual.
Once he had the route all figured out Yigit then printed out the centerline of this route in full size sheets and Omur and Selim are now carefully laying them out and taping them accurately in place on the rigid foam board floors. With the paper route lines all taped in place they are ready to start cutting the U-shaped grooves in the rigid foam floor boards with a small handheld router. The foam board chips created with the high speed router bit makes quite a mess so Selim follows the router with the vacuum which made for a very clean operation and easy to follow the line with the router. Here is where they left off by end of the day Friday. They will finish the routing next week and line the grooves with aluminium foil tape to increase the radiation of the heat upward into the 10mm/ 3/8” plywood floor which will attach to the white epoxy perimeter foundations.
GALLEY GARAGES & SUPERSALON CABINETRY:
However Selim and Omur where mostly busy this past week with an even more exciting bit of progress as they completed the vacuum bag gluing of the Rosewood veneer to the Galley Garages you saw last week. Here is a stack of our Ro$ewood veneer awaiting their turn to be carefully selected and taped into matching grain patterns for the lower half of the wall panels and other cabinetry throughout the boat. Costly and time consuming in the eXtreme? You bet but in our eyes and souls at least the beauty is even more eXtreme and something we will be looking at for decades to come so an easy to make investment decision for Christine and me.
See what you think as you see the completed results in the coming weeks. As you saw last week, all three sides of these Galley Garages, including their doors are laminated at the same time inside the vacuum bags and then they carefully cut through all the slots around each door. With the doors released they can apply the Beechwood veneer to all the inner surfaces and route around all the solid Rosewood edges and fit them to each of their respective Garage openings. Which is what Selim is doing here as I enlist his help to give you a bit of a preview of what’s to come from the work of these master craftsmen.
As they create works of art like this. And this.
Just wait till you see these swirling waves of grain patterns pop when they come out of the Finishing spray booth! A justifiably proud Omur and Selim finish the final fitting and sanding so they can send this all up to the Finishing Department. It was impossible to capture this whole four sided assembly of all the Galley Garages so I shot this short video scan to share this beauty with you a bit better. Rosewood in Rotation if you will ………………………
GUEST CABIN:
Not to be outdone, Omer was equally as busy singlehandedly doing all the cabinetry in the Guest Cabin and Corridor Workbench areas so let’s go check that out.
Looking forward along the Port/Left hull side where my Office/Workbench resides and the Guest Head/Bathroom on the Right.
** Note: the shower that would normally be in the bottom Right corner has been removed to show this view. Sitting on my Office Workbench looking straight into the Entryway to the Guest Cabin and the pull out couch on the far Starboard/Right side. Stairs up to the SuperSalon on the Left, WT door into the Engine Room & Workshop on the Right. On the Left corner of the Entryway is the Guest Head and Shower on the Right. Back to reality, Omer has the double duty “Swiss Door” all fitted with its surrounding frame for the Guest Head/Bathroom. Continuing the Blue Horizon Line theme that runs throughout all the interior spaces, the top half of this and all other vertical panels will have light Green/Gray leather covered removable panels set into them.
If you look closely (click to enlarge any photo) and in the render above you can see where the leather panel will go on the wall to your Right as you go up the stairs to the SuperSalon. Omer had taken that door back to his workbench in the Cabinetry Shop to finish the solid Rosewood edging and finish prepping this door to head over to the Finishing Department. You can see how these doors are made to be very solid yet very light with their foam filled cavity cores. This is an approximation of what the cabinetry inside the Guest Cabin. Christine’s Office on the Right, Pullman Berth on the far Stbd/Right side hull, pull out couch/Queen bed below and L-shaped Bookshelf wrapping around the Left corner. However here’s what it looks like right now! Omer has been taking all the cabinetry back to his workbench to do the final preparation before he sends it up the boys in the Finishing Department. Seen upside down, we are looking in from the end of that Bookshelf which will soon have a panel set into it where the Pullman Berth begins, Omer is finish sanding the solid Rosewood edging that runs around the perimeter. Bookcase has now been flipped right side up and in the foreground you can see that Omer has started to build the dividers and shelves which turn this into a very functional bookcase. These dividers and middle shelf have solid Rosewood outer edges with White interior surfaces. A thin layer of phenolic has been laminated onto all these white surfaces to provide the just right surface for the White lacquer to form a perfect flat and smooth surface.
ALUMINIUM WORKS:
Switching from Rosewood to Aluminium now, Uğur, Okan and Nihat very busy making their typical great progress this past week which for them was mostly all about covering all the interior wall and ceiling surfaces in the Workshop and Engine Room with AlucoBond which you saw them starting to do last week. One of the features of AlucoBond which makes it the ideal choice for all these removable wall and ceiling surfaces is that it can be easily bent to form smooth strong corners with a very safe radiused edge. If you look closely at the bend on the bottom right of the photo above you can see how a small kerf has been cut not quite all the way through the 5mm / 3/16” AlucoBond to allow them to hand form these bends. Which is how they are building these corner transitions between the wall and ceiling panels in the workshop. Stbd/Right side Workshop here. Here is the Port/Left side looking from floor level by the WT door leading into the Corridor and Guest Cabin areas. Facing Aft here along the AL workbenches. HazMat locker on the far Right end. Stepping forward a few steps to look across to the Aft Stbd corner and the WT door out to the Swim Platform. Uğur is kneeling on the Rudder shelf and you can see the Rudder post tube on center behind him. Stepped corner details just inside the Swim Platform door. Webasto BlueCool V-Series chiller has been mounted to the built in AL shelving. All equipment is mounted with appropriate types of vibration reduction soft mounts such as these. Next up on the AlucoBond list is the Engine Room. So Uğur and Nihat have installed the L-bar frames and they have started cutting panels to fasten to them. Well, as you have seen the first week of 2020 has all of us on Team Möbius off to a good start as we all push ourselves for the final leg of this part of the adventure leading up to Launch Day! That is still several months off but will be as soon as we can possibly make it. Be sure to subscribe by putting your Email into the “Subscribe” box on the upper Left corner of every blog page so that you don’t miss any of these weekly updates and you can join us on this leg of the Project Goldilocks adventure.
And please continue to add any and all comments and questions in the “Join the Discussion” box at the bottom of every blog post. I do apologise for taking longer than I’d like to respond to your comments I assure you that I’m reading every one as it comes in and will respond as quickly as the build allows.
Hope your first week of this first year of the new 2020 decade is off to an equally good start and see you here here next week.
First and foremost Christine and I, along with everyone on Team Möbius here at Naval Yachts, we want to wish all of you a VERY Happy New Year and the hopes that 2020 will be the best circumnavigation of the sun for all of us. It is shaping up to be a VERY good year for us as we all work relentlessly towards launching the very first XPM and our new home Möbius in the next few months.
While it does often remind me of that saying “when you are up to your neck in alligators, it is hard to remember you are there to drain the swamp”, this adventure continues to be an awemazing experience for us and very much remains a labour of love and combined work of art and engineering.
And while we gladly chose to use a “pay it forward” approach to this blog and do our best to openly share all aspects of turning our vision into the reality of the very best Goldilocks just right, just for us boat, we REALLY appreciate the thousands of you who chose to subscribe and join us on this grand adventure. It means a great deal to us and you add a huge value to the whole experience so a very heartfelt THANK YOU! going out to all of you as we get this new year and this new decade started.
Click to enlarge the photo to see the first of many New Year’s Eve kisses standing in front of our already beloved Möbius with some of the crates in front that are piling up as more and more new equipment arrives.
When you are married to your best friend and your Captain who also happens to be the most Beautiful person you know, you take EVERY chance you get to kiss her!
Naval Yachts sent everyone home at noon on New Year’s Eve and reopened on Jan 2nd so we all enjoyed a 3.5 day work week. Christine and I enjoyed the chance to have time together to engage in deeper discussions about the thousands of decisions needing to be made and new learning about such scintillating topics as NMEA 2000 network topologies so we spent much of our “time off” comfortably sitting in front of our large 50” monitor at home to have all our reference info easily displayed for both of us to see, point to and modify. Different strokes for different folks right and being the crazy couple we are, this was great fun for us.
In the foreground you can see that Christine is getting lots of help from Commodore Barney aka the Yorkshire Terror and if you click to enlarge and look closely on the couch behind Christine’s back you can just make out Ruby the Wonderdog who is also supervising her work.
New Year’s Day dawned with clear blue skies and sun to light up the mountains which surround us and showed off their freshly snow covered tops. Not what many people imagine when they think of Turkey but we love this country and even more so her people, food and sights. We are very anxious to move aboard Möbius and get back to life at sea but we will also miss this special place that has been our home based for over two years and our Goldilocks location to built our Goldilocks boat; just right, just for us. We did take a bit of time off on New Year’s Day to go for a long walk to some of our many favorite spots along the Med coastline that is only a few blocks away and a large newly constructed park along both sides of the new inlet they are putting in which will eventually have a large superyacht marina in the waters you can see here. If we were to have any regrets it would only be that we don’t get or take enough time to enjoy our incredible surroundings every day. This spot along a beachfront walk is at the very far West end of Antalya and only a few blocks from both our apartment and Naval Yachts in the Antalya Free Zone.
In the background you can see how the city of Antalya stretches along the crescent coastline to that point you can see in the distance in the upper middle of this photo.
All very beautiful and fun BUT even we couldn’t top the news the next day that Naval Yachts had expanded VERY significantly with the arrival of the very first girl in the Dinc family for several generations.
Meet the newest member of the Dinc family; Okyanus Ida, born Jan 02, 2020 at 2.65kg. Baby and Mom both doing great. Dad Baris, we’re not so sure?!
Welcome to this most awemazing world Okyanus Ida! Oh the places you will go and the Love you will know.
Well, I certainly can’t top that but let’s get back to boat building shall we?
ELECTRICAL:
I’ll start with a brief update on what the Sparkies or electricians have been up to this week and see if you can guess what Hilmi, our electrician seen here driving the forklift, is moving up onto the front deck of Möbius?
Hint, they are VERY heavy! Many of you will have guessed correctly that these are the two pallets full of our batteries. I know many of you have been patiently awaiting my Tech Talk discussing our new battery choice and the details of our whole DC system and I’m afraid I need to test your patience a bit longer as I just have not had the time to finish that article, but it should be done and posted within the next week or so. The not so well kept secret many of you have already figured out is that we changed the battery type we are using for both the 24V @ 1350Ah House Battery Banks and the Gardner Start Batteries from OPzV Gel type to Microcell Carbon Foam batteries by FireFly International.
This graphic which you’ve seen in previous posts will give you the high level view of the overall Electrical System on XPM78-01 and I’ll be doing a much deeper dive into these components in future posts. Back onboard, Nihat is working on the cross members for what we are calling “the Victron Wall” as it will soon have all the big blue Victron boxes mounted which include:
3 Multi-Plus 5kW 220V Inverter 120A Chargers
2 Multi-Plus 3kW 120V Inverter 70A Chargers
Isolation Transformer
Centaur 90-265V 50/60Hz “World” 24V @ 60A charger
2 Orion DC-DC 24-12V @ 7A converters
14 100/30 MPPT Controllers
With apologies for the poor quality this photo of the sketch onboard will show you the basic layout for this wall and some of its components. The main high amp DC circuit distribution panel will be in the middle flanked by the Victron components.
The 14 MPPT Controllers will mount on the other side along with several other DC related equipment. One of the many advantages of building wtih aluminium and having this cavernous Basement area under the whole SuperSalon floor is that we can put in these “walls” anywhere we like to create an enormous amount of surface area for mounting equipment.
Having so much area means we can space the equipment out to make access eXtremely easy and in the case of heat producing components like these Victron units, keep them much better cooled.
The whole Basement is also fully ventilated wtih both passive and active fan assisted ventilation which is separate from the same level of ventilation in the integral Battery Boxes which you can see on the Right.
Just about done, Hilmi with his back to us helps hold in the flatbar cross member that will soon be home to some of the 14 MPPT controllers.
PLUMBING:
Cihan was moving too fast for me to catch up with this week I only caught him in this one shot to show you some of his latest handiwork with the plumbing on Möbius. This shot is taken inside the Engine Room looking at the forward Starboard/Right corner.
Here he is connecting one of the water supply hoses to fill the Starboard ER water tank. Intake Sea Chest is right behind him and you can see the white perforated tray running across the WT Bulkhead which will soon fill up with more water hoses.
Nogva CPP Servo Gearbox in the bottom Right and Mr. Gee our Gardner 6LXB will soon be bolted in front.
Evidence of Cihan’s work is also evident up in the Master and I think some of you will be quite interested to some of you how we are going to handle draining shower and floor in the Master Cabin so let’s take a look. We are going to try out this relatively new Whale Gulper IC drain pump system. With our floors sitting on top of all the integral fuel/water tanks it is challenging to be able to use gravity to drain the water from the floor of the shower and the Head and this Whale IC system is the perfect solution.
If you click to enlarge the photo (works on all photos BTW), you can see the diagrams showing how this works.
This model handles two drains by having each drain hose go straight into the round yellow 2 way manifold you see on the right. Inside is a small electronic water sensor which is the IC Intelligent Control in the name and when it senses water it sends the signal to the Gulper diaphragm pump on the left to turn on and pump the water out of the manifold and into either the Grey Water holding tank or Sea Chest. When there is no water in the manifold sensor it shuts the pump off.
Here is what the drain looks like mocked up on the floor in the Master Cabin Shower. There is a matching one off to the Right just out of this picture which will drain the floor in the adjoining Head/Bathroom. A hose will connect the Yellow manifold to the horizontal Grey fitting coming from the shower floor.
You can see the Yellow 2 way manifold hiding in the center background and on the Left atop the White S trap is where the drain in the shower floor will be. Floor height is raised in the Heads to provide enough drop to gravity feed the manifold. The pump will mount on the other side of the WT Bulkhead in the Forepeak so the drain will be completely silent.
All very simple and automatic compared to the more common marine solution of having to turn on a pump manually or building in a shower sump box with a float switch and centrifugal pump which typically clogs very easily and requires frequent maintenance. Music to my ears and one of the XPM theme songs; Low Maintenance!
ALUMINIUM WORK:
Uğur, Okan and Nihat who is pictured here, continued where they left off last week putting in the grid for the removable Alucobond sheeting on the walls and ceilings of the Workshop and ER. You can see the aluminium L-bars in the aft most end of the Workshop are now in place and ready to receive the Alucobond sheets.
Nihat is also putting in some of the last bits of EPDM insulation foam on the Aft Transom wall where Cihan will soon be installing the two shelves for the Accu-Steer HPU400 Steering Pumps to mount directly overtop of the Rudder Post and Tiller Arm Head which sit right about where Nihat’s knee is.
Rotating about 90 degrees to the Left looking at the Starboard/Right side of the hull we see that the L-bar mounts are in place and ready for the Alucobond.
The Black/Yellow tool box and Blue bucket are setting atop the AL Workbench and cable trays on the ceiling and Port side wall are starting to fill up with electrical cable and plumbing. First two of the AlucoBond panels to be fitted along the Starboard/Right side of the ER and overtop the Day Tank. Sticks being used to hold the individual panels in place while they are being fitted. Sporting his fashionable New Year’s haircut, Uğur puts in the next panel Aft of the two above. Same story on the opposite Port/Left side looking Aft from the WT door from the Guest Cabin into the Workshop. The walls are next in the queue to have their Alucobond panels fitted. Pardon the poor focus but this is the system we will use to fasten all the Alucobond panels to the L-bar. Self drilling and tapping screws which have that special brass washer that is threaded on the outside circumference and the chrome cap is threaded on top. Looks like this all assembled and makes for a nice finished look.
Whenever I want to remove one of these panels to access what’s behind I just twist off the caps and undo the screws. KISS, Keep it Simple and Safe.
GUEST CABIN/OFFICE CABINETRY:
I tend to save the Cabinetry Team’s work for the end because otherwise their work with this Rosewood tends to steal the show and with doors like this make that quite easy to understand.
But now let’s go check in with Omer, Omur and Selim and see what’s new this week. Omer is in charge of the cabinetry in the Guest Cabin, Head, Shower and Corridor Office and we find him working on that “Swiss Door” we showed you last week when he was fitting it into place in the door frames onboard Möbius. Now he is trimming the solid edges with their radiused corners and rabbits/grooves for door seals. There are French Doors, Dutch Doors, Pocket Doors and so we’ve come up with this Swiss Door moniker for the two doors we’ve designed into the boat, one in the Guest Cabin and another in the Main Cabin. Both of ours are off the boat right now and this type of door is not well known but I was able to find this shot online that shows how they work. A single door which swings shut on two different doorways.
We figured these doors are a bit like a multi purpose Swiss Army knife and hence Swiss Door!
We had one on our former sailboat “Learnativity”, the source of a lot of ideas we are bringing with us onto Möbius. They eliminate one or more doors so a big weight savings and cleans up areas on the boat where you might have multiple doors all competing for space and swing room. More KISS
On Möbius here is what that door looks like looking out through the entranceway out of the Guest Cabin into the Corridor where my “Clean Workbench” office runs along the Port/Left hull. Swiss Door on the Right now closing off the Head/Bathroom, Shower on the Left. Door is hinged on the far side nearest the Corridor. Stepping out into the Corridor and looking forward to the stairs that lead up to the SuperSalon shows that same Swiss Door with its hinges about where the blue tape is. Your imagination shouldn’t have too much trouble seeing how it will swing open from here and shut against the door jamb in the foreground when our Guests would like some privacy or when Christine is working at her Office in there and wants to keep her pesky husband out! Back in the Cabinetry shop these are some of those door frames and door jambs ready to be glued up and finished. Laminated cores wrapped in Rosewood veneer and solid edges makes these both super strong and beautiful. Not that I’m biased or anything. Omer also worked on finishing up the Pullman Berth inside the Guest Cabin and for orientation here is a rough rendering of what the Guest Cabin looks like with the Pullman Berth hinging out of the Upper Right side of the back wall which runs along the Starboard/Right hull. It folds up to be out of the way as it is here and then easily folds down like Pullman Berths on trains and ships or a bit like a Murphy bed in homes. Here Omer is working on the single bed sized frame that folds down to make the Pullman Berth. Flipped over to show how the mattress will be fit inside this frame and stay secure as it is folded up and down. Before he glued it up, Omer took time to show this good example of how the biscuit joints work to create super strong glued joints.
But what are those five holes for??? Aha! Yunus, our Stainless Steel guru has whipped up these SS hinges for the Pullman. One mounted in the lower sides of the outer cabinet which the Pullman Berth frame sits inside of.
Vent grills on the top are where the cold/hot air will come into the Guest Cabin/Office. With the Pullman bed frame all glued up and sanded, Omer added these strips of Beech to provide that thin gap running inside the corner between the strips and the frame sides. This is where they will tuck the leather that wraps around the outer surfaces of the Pullman and are pulled tight. More on that in coming weeks as the interior finishes begin to be added.
GALLEY COUNTERTOP GARAGES:
Not to be outdone, Omur and Selim were also hard at work on the cabinetry for what we call the Galley Garages that set atop all the Turquoise granite countertops as you can see rendered here.
Dinette or Settee in the foreground with Galley behind on the Left side, entry door and stairs down from the Aft Deck on the far Right side blocked a bit by the tall twin fridge cabinets and Lounge on the far Right.
This overhead shot puts the whole SuperSalon into perspective. Stairs down from the Aft Deck and second set down to the Corridor and Guest Cabin in the bottom Right. Continuing counter clockwise; Lounge area with Eames chairs, Main Helm chair center Left, stairs down to Master Cabin upper Left, Dinette/Settee, Galley in upper Right corner with Garages wrapping around all the countertops.
Omur checking the fit of the Garage doors on the Garages that run along the Stbd/Right side windows as prepares for laminating the Rosewood veneer to finish these off. Same set of Garages seen from the back edges that will run along the 28 mm glass side Pilot House windows. The cut-out where his hand is are where the vertical aluminium I-beam frames and window mullions set. Selim has been busy similarly finishing off this set of Galley Garages that run along the seatback of the Dinette/Settee. The glue bottle will help give you a sense of size and scale of the interior. Same glue bottle inside this other set of Garages which run along the Aft windows to show how these interior volumes vary.
You can see how Selim and Omur have finished off all the solid Rosewood edging around each door frame and have carefully filled and sanded all the outer surfaces flat and smooth. All this is in preparation for the final step of applying the carefully matched Rosewood veneer to all these exterior surfaces. If you check out the shapes of these Garages in the renderings above and notice the mitred corners where each set meet and make the 90 degree turn, you can appreciate how much of an Origami like puzzle it is to figure out the shape of the single piece of Rosewood veneer needed to wrap around all these exterior surfaces.
Here is on Garage’s veneer all carefully selected and taped together ready to be laminated to the cabinet behind. But just how are they going to manage to glue this single sheet to all those surfaces keeping everything lined up and getting the veneer tightly squeezed against the cabinet surfaces?
Clues to the answer lie in the strips of black tubing you may have noticed in a few shots and this one on the left. And you will also note how the open end of this cabinet has all been stuffed full of foam? Hmmmm, more of that black tubing running around all the corners and edges ………. More clues here with this vacuum gauge…… Which is part of this big vacuum pump and what you see in the background answers the riddle.
Yup, they are going to vacuum bag all the Garages and glue the Rosewood veneer on in a similar way in which the new high tech composite fiber such as Kevlar are being laminated in their molds. Each cabinet takes it turn being wrapped up in this special vacuum forming plastic and you can now see the purpose of that black tubing…….. …………. and the foam is to keep the plastic sheeting tightly sealed as it goes around corners and the foam is to keep the plastic from being sucked inside any openings on the ends as they take the vacuum up to about 600mmHg. That’s a LOT of vacuum, and you can see evidence of that in this shot where the veneer spans one of those cut outs for the window mullions we saw earlier and notice how the veneer is being pulled down into the vacant space by the vacuum inside. Hakan is helping Omur to monitor the progress and keep everything sealed as they pull down more and more vacuum on this largest of the four Garage cabinets and use the internal vacuum to apply huge amount of evenly distributed pressure on the veneer to adhere it perfectly flat against the inner core of the cabinets. This shot looking down the full length of this cabinet the reflection helps show how well the vacuum pulls the veneer tight and flat against the underlying cabinet. The fully vacuum bagged cabinets are left for at least 8 hours for the glue to fully set and then the vacuum is released and the plastic pulled off.
Now they can remove all the black plastic tubing and foam. The overlapping veneer can now be easily trimmed off with a sharp knife and others are cleaned up with a hand router. Like the caterpillar that finally emerges from his cocoon and becomes the most beautiful butterfly our Garages emerge from their plastic cocoon to reveal THIS beauty! I had to touch it to make sure it was real. I could stare at this all day and this is the ROUGH out of the bag finish! And just wait till you see what these Garages look like once they are all joined together in the Galley sporting their swirling Rosewood grain all matched up. Omur showing us some of how that magic happens as he checks out the next pieced together sheet of matching Rosewood for the Garage which runs perpendicular to the long one on the ground to the left that we just watched emerge from its cocoon. Selim helps to carefully position the veneer in just the right spot which is marked off on the tape to register with a matching mark on its Garage cabinet as it gets ready to be vacuum bagged. A closeup of the long cabinet showing how the veneer and the solid edging match up. Next step is to radius all these corners with a 5mm router bit for that “quilted” look I so like and has been done throughout all the cabinetry on Möbius.
But WAIT! There’s MORE!!!!
Upstairs in the Finishing Shop, that team has started to apply the 5 coats of clear PU varnish to some of the cabinetry that has recently been finished so let’s finish off this week’s Progress Update with a peek in there. These are some of the cabinets from my Clean Workbench/Office in the Corridor we saw earlier. Check out how well the Rosewood contrasts with the inner Beech surfaces. Only 2 of the 5 coats of PU and already looking awesome to my eye. Here is the cabinet you may remember seeing a few weeks ago inside the Guest Cabin Head with the little White sink on top. Some might say why bother to finish off areas like this bottom of my Office cabinet with the groove for the indirect LED floor lightning strips when only a mouse would be able to see it?
Why?
Because I know it’s there and it makes me VERY happy knowing it. But I don’t think anyone will question why we are going to such lengths and expense to use Rosewood for all our interior when you see results like this starting to emerge. Mother Nature is as close as I come to religion which is a big part of why I am so filled with profound joy when I’m out at sea.
IMHO, she outdoes even her awemazing self with examples like this. Do your eyes and your soul a favor and click on this image, ideally on a very large and very good screen and join me as I just sit in awe as I stare at this perfectly flat surface that convincingly fools my eye into thinking it is a beautiful brown curtain being pulled back to reveal that creamy depth inside.
NOW you might understand why I refer to Möbius as a combined work of art and engineering. I can’t top Mother Nature so I will leave you here as I go back to stare at her latest magic.
Thanks for joining us again this first week of 2020 and year of the launch of XPM78-01 Möbius.
![IMG_20190117_144519[1]](https://mobius.world/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/IMG_20190117_1445191.jpg "IMG_20190117_144519[1]")
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