I thought it best to bring you this message and update all on its own and keep it separate from this weeks XPM78-01 Möbius Progress Update 21-25 Dec. 2020 which will follow shortly. Hope you enjoy
Especially for all our friends and family who join us in celebrating Christmas as the crazy year that was 2020 winds down, Christine and I want to take the time to send ALL of you who join us here in Mobius.World our most eXtreme best wishes and share some of the joy that accompanies this holiday season no mater what has gone on in the months before and during.
While Christine and I were deeply disappointed to not have set sail last year and that we were not able to enjoy Christmas 2020 as we would have wished, surrounded by our family, friends, children and Grandchildren, we were still able to be with them via modern mediums that made us feel a bit less far away. And we both feel truly grateful to have each other to go through all we have together and that we have been able to remain happy and healthy through out the whole year.
No matter how and whatever happens, we ARE surrounded by our friends, family and nothing but LOVE! Could we be any more fortunate? I don’t think so!
Oh, and did I mention that Santa found us two turkeys in Turkey with no problem again this year, which believe it or not is our fourth Xmas in Turkey and our eighth Xmas together. Mrs. Santa was eXtremely generous this year with not only her kisses BUT also with her gifts! I am still in disbelief of the apparent and serious error in Santa’s bookkeeping which somehow misplaced MY name at the very top of his Good Boy list which resulted in me unwrapping THIS awemazing new bit of kit on Christmas morning!
Christine and I have been lusting after a drone for over six years or more but when we sold Learnativity our previous 52’ sailboat, we kept telling ourselves that it would be smart to wait until Möbius was finished and we really had the use case for a drone. Apparently that time is NOW and boy was it ever worth the wait!
This is the latest model from DJI the Mini 2 and we are both still shaking our heads in disbelief of what this truly MINI drone is capable of:
It weighs a scant 249 grams which makes it just below the legal limit where you need to have a license to fly it, though we will get ours anyway.
Captures 4k video at 30 Frames/sec and 100Mbs
Shoots 12MP photos in JPEG + RAW
Can fly for 31 minutes on one battery charge and up to 16 m/s = 36MPH/58km/hr
Flies in 29-38km/hr wind (gee why would that be important to us?)
Controller has a range of up to 10km
OK, I’ll stop gushing now but YES! it is an eXtremely eXciting new toy for both of us!
How Mrs. Santa managed to get this delivered to me her in Turkey and before Xmas will remain one of life’s little mysteries but this is one VERY happy little Christmas elf right now.
Timing is perfect as we now have a drone for a month or more so we can get all our licenses and permits to fly legally and get in some practice time before we launch and take off in Möbius with this little guy to capture all our new adventures from above and all around.
Oh, and when I said I had been mistakenly put at the very TOP of Santa’s Good Boy list, I wasn’t kidding because this even came with DJI’s “Fly More kit” which includes:
* a very nice and equally mini carrying bag
* 3 batteries,
* a super smart 18W USB-C charger that is a 2way general purpose USB device charger
* 3 sets of extra prop blades
WOWSA!! But who am I to doubt Santa and Mrs. Santa so I will just say THANK YOU!!!
Therefore let this serve as an early warning that you will soon be seeing LOTS of video footage shot from the unique vantage point of this newest member of our family on Möbius. Stay tuned as the adventure continues from above once we set out to sea the world from our new floating home mv Möbius.
Both Christine and myself want to wish all of you an eXtremely Happy Holiday season however you chose to celebrate it and we will be back to you next week with more best wishes as we all say farewell to 2020 and start ringing in 2021.
A bit of a slow week progress wise on XPM78-01 Möbius this past week as our work week was unexpectedly reduced to four days due to a complete power outage at the Antalya Free Zone where Naval Yachts and about 30 other shipyards are located. We are now entering the wet winter season here in Antalya and while we have been having some spectacularly beautiful blue skies and sunny days, the rain has also been arriving along with LOTS of thunder and lightning last weekend. I assume this is what took out the power in the Free Zone and gave us all an unexpected “snow day” off as we used to call it when I was a kid growing up in various parts of Canada where we would often get so much snow overnight that the roads were all impassable and so all the schools would close. Oh drat said all the parents, Oh Yayyyyyyy, said all us kids! While I’m still very young at ❤ I was now saying “Oh Drat!” at not being able to work on Möbius at Naval but I just turned my bike around and pedalled back home to work from there so it wasn’t a totally lost day.
Several members of Team Möbius were not working on Möbius this past week but for those of us who were we did get lots done so I have plenty for this week’s Show & Tell for you and I also have some photos to share that I didn’t have time to include in the past few blog updates. So grab a comfy chair and tasty beverage and let’s go see what happened onboard the Good Ship Möbius for the four days of December 15-18, 2020.
You will figure out this week’s Update title as you go through this posting where many of the jobs being worked on started wtih the letter “T” such as the dinette Table, the Tender, Teak shower floors and TreadMaster. A bit like when Sesame Street would be “Brought to you by the letter T” perhaps? and you will soon see what the “Ado” is all about so let’s get going ……………………….
First though, we interrupt our regular programming for a word from our sponsor, well MY “sponsor” so to speak.
** Wayne’s “mushiness” Warning!!! This next bit is NOT technical boatbuilding stuff so if that’s what you are anxious to get to, scroll down to the next section please.
For the braver souls and fellow romantics, read on……………
Happy 7th Anniversary of our First Kiss Captain Christine!
* If you have not already done so you may want to read my previous post here on 22 November for some context. It was titled “The simple comment that Changed My Life Forever Better” which it tells the story about how Christine and I first connected thanks to this little character; “Barney the Yorkshire Terror” . If you read that story you will already know that I’m a hopeful romantic. (who would call romance helpless?!?!?!!?!?)
Given our rather unconventional first connection and all the equally unique adventures that followed, we have a LOT of different “anniversaries” and we LOVE celebrating every one of them, every year.
My favorite anniversary though is the one we celebrate today, December 19th of our very fist kiss on the very first day we met in person when Christine flew all the way from her sailboat in Florida to where I was on my sailboat in Fiji and I snapped this very fist photo of her as she walked into the Arrival gate at Nadi International Airport on 19th December, 2013.
Christine says that for her it was “Love at first Skype”, which happened about a month earlier and I won’t refute. However for me it was THAT FIRST KISS when we finally first met in person on 19 December, 2013 and I knew for sure that I had just kissed (and been kissed back I might add!!!) by the woman who would become my best friend, my lover, my wife, my Captain and my partner in life, for life.
Happy 7th First Kiss Anniversary my Love! Can’t wait to get started on our next set of adventures for the next 7 years together! First though, lets start by enjoying this First Kiss anniversary day with these flowers in our cozy little apartment in Antalya.
OK, OK! Now back to our regular programming ………………..
All this aluminium beauty comes from the Zwaardvis Pedestals company in the Netherlands and it is all “boat jewelry” in my eyes. This Z-axis or vertical height adjustable pedestal has 2 stages for maximum height adjustment which is assisted by an internal gas lift cylinder similar to what you might have on the rear hatch of a SUV. You order these by the weight of your table top so the assist is just right and changing the height an easy single handed operation by simply releasing one or both locking handles, moving the table up/down to the height you want and closing the levers. The XY slider, allows us to move the table 200mm / 8” fore/aft and side to side to also get the XY position of the table just right.
Up high and close in for eating or working and then down and out for more of a coffee table setup and then all the way down to put the table top and surrounding seats all the same height to create a very large bed for those rare occasions we have more overnight guests than our lovely Guest cabin with a Queen + Pullman bed can accommodate.
This is where Ramazan started on Tuesday with the solid 50mm / 2” solid Rosewood edging all glued with biscuit joints around the circumference. Then he has put a large 40mm / 1.6” radius around all the edges and given it a good sanding. Now the table moves up to the 2nd floor Finishing Room where Neşet here is inspecting all the surfaces with a very fine eye in order to …… ……. find any remaining small spots that need filing in order to make them glass smooth after this first coat of clear Polyurethane “varnish”. Then it is “rinse & repeat” four more times to build up the five coats of PU that goes onto each piece of Rosewood cabinetry.
This is how it looks after the 2nd coat has been applied and is ready for wet sanding before the 3rd coat is sprayed on.
“T” is also for Teak Shower Floors
We didn’t want any Teak on the exterior of Möbius, nor any SS, paint, etc. but we welcomed the use of Teak to make the removable floor inserts in both Showers.
Orkan is the Teak Decking specialist and Naval so he was the perfect guy to apply those deck making skills to these interior floors as you can see he has done masterfully here.
In keeping Low Maintenance as a top priority, we didn’t want to have a Teak grate style flooring so we came up with this self draining system where all the water simply runs off the four sides through these recesses and then runs over to the drain in the center of the fiberglass shower floor below.
These floor plates have a series of fiberglass “feet” on the bottom to keep the air/water space between the teak and the fiberglass and they can be easily lifted out to clean underneath from time to time.
We use diaphragm pumps almost exclusively for all our water, bilge, crash pumps on Möbius as our experience has taught us that these are FAR superior to centrifugal style pumps in that they have that proverbial “suck a golf ball through a garden hose” type of suction power and require NO filters or screens so they almost never clog.
The IC or Intelligent Control that Whale has added to these pumps makes them work all the better by having a simple solid state water sensing probe embedded in the Yellow manifold you see here which automatically turns the pump On/Off as needed and allows you to connect 2 different sources of Grey Water which we use to drain both the Master Bathroom/Head and Shower floors.
Simple and efficient, what’s not to like?!! At the other end of the size scale of our diaphragm pumps is this brute underneath the Stbd/Right workbench in the Workshop. It does double duty being both our high volume/high water bilge pump and our Fire “hydrant” system that pumps sea water from the Sea Chest to a fire hose and nozzle stored in he Aft Hazmat locker. Several of you were curious about this pump so HERE is a link to the basic specs on our Feit PVM 1R diaphragm Pump.
* 24V 0.75 HP motor
* 120 Litres/min / 32 USG/min
@ 7 meters / 23 ft Delivery and 4m / 13 ft Suction
“T” is also for TreadMaster:
Another job continuing on from last week’s Progress Update is the laying of the last of the TreadMaster on all the aluminium decks and stairs. You can read all the details of the method in the previous posts and here is the TreadMaster Team; Faruk (Left) spreading the epoxy adhesive, Ali bringing the cut-to-size piece of TreadMaster to lay down on this epoxy, and Orhan following behind getting ready to cut the next piece. Ali in position with the piece of TreadMaster that Orhan has pre-cut as Faruk evens out the peanut butter consistency West Systems epoxy with his V-notched spreader. More “Rinse & Repeat” and they soon have the Aft Deck fully covered with TreadMaster. After drying overnight Ali covers all the fresh new Treadmaster wtih protective cardboard as these will continue to be high traffic areas during the rest of the build. Taking a quick tour around the boat to show some of the other areas getting the full TreadMaster treatment.
Treads on each of the Spiral stairs up from the Aft Deck to the SkyBridge ready for their TM. et Voila! Super safe, easy on the feet stairs up to the SkyBridge. And same going back down. Rough cut TM set in place down the Starboard/Right side of the SkyBridge with the 20mm / 3/4” spacers fast glued in place to keep the spacing just right while they are being epoxied down. With all the SkyBridge deck sheets of TM cut to finished size with their radiused corners, Faruk and Ali get busy gluing them all down. SkyBridge Helm Chair just set here for now. Once the TM all dries it will be moved aft to the Helm Station and through bolted in place there.
Hmmmm, with a view like this maybe a good spot for a 3rd or 4th Llebroc chair?? Swim Platform done. Stairs on both sides going up from the Swim Platform to the Aft Deck all TM’d now. Side Decks ready to have their TM glued down. Front Deck all done and dusted!
Protective cardboard all taped down. Anchor Chain Stopper all mounted so this Anchor Deck can now have all its TM glued down. And the Forepeak Hatch has its Bofor Dog Latches all mounted and has received its full TreadMaster treatment.
Much “Ado” about Flooring!
This will just be a preview to wet our appetite for next week’s Möbius Progress Update and will complete the rest of this week’s title riddle for you. This is a stack of the Ado LVT or Luxury Vinyl Tile “click-in-place” floor planks that we are using in all the interior floors on Möbius.
Ado is a HUGE Turkish building materials company and one of their specialties is Luxury Vinyl Tile or LVT flooring systems typically used in very high traffic situations such as airport terminals, commercial buildings and residential homes. LVT is completely waterproof, Fireproof, made for use overtop of in-floor heated floors, quiet and eXtremely tough with life spans over 20 years even in very high traffic applications such as airport terminals so it seemed like the Goldilocks Just Right choice for Möbius. This link will show you the white highly textured “Aperta 2010” we have chosen to use from their “Viva Series”. As per this label on the boxes, this is the “Click” type with a 0.7mm thick “wear Layer” as per the Tech Spec illustration above. Tough to focus on but this is my attempt to show you how the interlocking “Click” system works. I suspect many of you will have installed flooring with a similar system in your homes and boats as this has been popular for over 20 years in the building trades and is a very DIY system. Difficult to show how well textured this flooring is, but think well seasoned and aged wood decks on boats and homes and you’ll have it just right. We have tested samples with bare wet feet and it has proven it will be eXtremely non-slip throughout the boat.
Stay tuned for more as the Ado flooring installation begins next week.
”T” is also for Tender:
Nihat (seen here) and Uğur only worked on Möbius two days this week but I have all of their work from last week to catch up with you on so still plenty to show you as they finished off their “hot works” stage of welding up the aluminium jet drive tender hull. Nihat has now had an eXtreme amount of practice at grinding down the welds on all the hull plates on Möbius herself so he was VERY fast at getting all the Tender’s welds flush and all the corners nicely radiused. meanwhile, inside the Tender, Uğur was busy cutting in this access to the area underneath the bench seat in the Steering Console. Like Nihat, Uğur is also very fast and he had this hinged seat lid all done in one afternoon from start to finish.
We will either just make up some rectangular seat cushions for the seat and back or perhaps buy some “bucket” style fish boat seats to go in here. Uğur was even faster at welding in these two Lift Bridle attachment points up at the Bow. And mere minutes later, these two matching ones at the Aft end corners down at floor level. Next up was fabricating and attaching these two boarding safety handrails that go on either side of the flat Bow. Uğur is a master at these nicely radiused bends at any angle which work out better than using a hydraulic pipe bender for small numbers of bends.
A series of evenly spaced cuts with an angle grinder make it easy to form these different radius bends. And then each cut is welded back solid. All the welds are ground down and sanded and you’re done!
40mm / 1.6” OD thick walled AL pipe These safety boarding hand rails needed to be removable so we played with a few positions and picked this one. We used the very simple bolted flange system that we have used throughout the building of Möbius. The thicker (10mmm / 3/8”) bottom flange is threaded and welded to the hull itself to create a base for the thinner top flange welded to the handrails to bolt to with NO penetration of the hull itself. All four bases get tacked in place with the Handrails bolted to them so we can test for just right position before fully welding the threaded bottom flanges to the hull. Super Polisher Nihat then comes in and cleans up the welds and the hull areas around them and it is all done!
I will probably pick up on the work to complete the Tender by installing the Castoldi 244 Jet Drive and the 4 cylinder Yanmar HTE 110HP engine, but that will all need to wait till after we launch Möbius so this may be the last you see of the Tender here for the next few months but do stay tuned for that and the test drive! And that’s going to be a wrap folks for the 4 day week that was December 14-18, 2020 here at Naval Yachts and onboard the Good Ship Möbius.
Thank you SO much for taking time out of your busy day to join me here and hope you will do so again next week. Love to get your thoughts, questions and suggestions on any of the above so please type them into the “Join the Discussion” box right down below.
Seven years ago today, this little fella, aka Barney the Yorkshire Terror, changed my life in ways and degrees that I am still unable to fully comprehend.
More accurately, it was seeing him for the first time in the short 25 second video below that captured my attention, so take a look and a listen and then come on on back for the rest of this wonderful story.
Friday November 22nd, 2013 started out no different than any other of my days in Fiji at Vuda Point Marina, where I, ably assisted by Ruby the Wonderdog, was working feverishly to complete the latest and largest renovation on my 52’ steel sailboat sv Learnativity. As with most such boat projects it was taking MUCH longer than expected and I was working non-stop because the Cyclone season begins in November and I should have left for Majuro in the Marshall Islands long before now. (click to enlarge the map or any photo) These two maps will fill in some of the geographic information and the short story is that in general, as a liveaboard sailor, to be outside of the cyclone zone in the South Pacific, you want to be no more than 10 degrees from the equator. Vuda Pt. Marina is on the far SW corner of Fiji sits at 17º41’04”S
177º23’02”E so it well into the Cyclone Zone and yes, you can ask me how I know!
The atoll of Majuro, pictured here, is at 7.0667° N, 171.2667° E is well below the 10 degree limit and I had been there twice before to get out of the Cyclone Zone and just loved it so I was anxious to get back there ASAP.
If it were a straight line, the passage to sail those 24 degrees from Fiji at 17° S to Majuro at 7° N is about 2895 km/1799 miles/1563 nm but the actual sea miles of this passage are about 2000 nm, assuming not much tacking, would typically be about a 14-15 day sail. But for me, a stop in the tiny spec of an island called Rotuma is a must. Rotuma is a much longer and fascinating story which I serendipitously stumbled upon when I read that it was still part of Fiji even though it is WAY up in the far NW corner about 500 nm from any other part of Fiji which meant I could wait till I got to Rotuma and still officially check out of Fiji.
So this stop over adds a few days to the passage and has taken me 17-18 days in the past. OK, Wayne but what the heck does this have to do with the Barney video that changed your life so incredibly?
Ahhh, right.
So back aboard the good ship Learnativity, that Friday morning 7 years ago, Ruby the Wonderdog (my little Black Spoodle who had been with me since I started my single handed sailing adventures in San Francisco in March 2007), and I were up just after sunrise as usual for most sailors, had fixed my breakfast and was sipping my morning Latte and enjoying yet another beautiful sunny morning up in the cockpit of LTY (Learnativity).
This was typically the only time each day when I could sit and relax a wee bit catch up with all the Emails and other online content that had come in the past 24 hours. As I was zipping through all those Emails I came across an auto-generated one informing me that there was a new post on the Write on the Water blog which was of the several hundred blogs that I subscribe to on a wild range of topics.
Little did I know that clicking on that link was going to be one of the most life changing events of my already VERY eventful life!
Seeing that “Write on the Water” name, I vaguely recalled that I had been subscribed to this blog several years ago because, Christine Kling, one of four writers/sailors who wrote one post a week on Write on the Water (get it?), and she was not only an author of some very good best seller mystery novels, she was also a fellow single handed and very experienced sailor, currently sailing around the Caribbean islands on her sailboat sv Tale Spinner from her home Port in Ft. Lauderdale Florida.
The link opened up the blog post fine, but there was no text, no story? Simply the Title “Barney the Yorkshire Terror” and that little face staring up at me with a “Click to Play” button on his nose. I hit Play and as I suspect he might have just done for you, Barney gave ma a good morning chuckle. It also piqued my curiosity as to how this cute little animated dog video had been made? So I quickly fired off a short comment to the author which just happen to have saved and it reads;
Wayne says: November 22, 2013 at 07:17 am (Fiji Time) Very cute and fun Christine. I too am out single handed sailing with my 6 year old “Spoodle” Ruby the Wonderdog and we are currently in Vuda Pt. marina in Fiji finishing up the latest refit in preparation for the next few years sailing through the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and making my way through Indonesia. I’d be interested to know more about how you made this little video if you care to share? Also enjoying your books and have several loaded on my Kindle for upcoming passages. Thanks for all. Wayne
I finished up my coffee and Email updates and got back to work on Learnativity.
Next morning, same routine and as I was enjoying my first coffee and going through the latest Emails, one was a WordPress comment from the Write on the Water blog, which thanks to the wonders of cloud storage and my somewhat geeky nature, I also still have a copy of so you can read it for yourself.
Apparently two of Christine’s blog followers had asked the same question so as you can see her response was to both Wayne and Gerald. Nice of her to respond I thought as so many such questions go unanswered, and so being Canadian and just doing what I think is important, I wrote back a short note to thank her for getting back to me and that I would try out this little “My Talking Pet” app and maybe use it to make one with Ruby the Wonderdog. And then it was back to work for me and I never gave it another thought.
Well, as I was to learn weeks later, Christine was quite taken aback that someone had actually said “Thank You” ? Apparently when she dutifully answers all the thousands of questions a famous author receives, she rarely receives anything but more questions and never a Thank You. Who knew???
And so she wrote me back, and the following Email was on my screen as I was sipping my first coffee the next day: (click to enlarge if you want to read it)
No need to read the whole Email, but if you do, you will see what a catastrophic error she makes in the very first sentence when she starts off with; “Hi Wayne, Thank you so much for the interesting note full of info about you and your boat. I love getting long emails, so don’t ever
worry about writing too much.”
Oh the poor innocent dear! She has NO idea that she is saying that to Mr. Neveraparagraphwhenasentencewilldo! Though she might have started to clue in when I wrote back:
I will spare my full response, lucky you!! and just share the first of my brief four page Email response. Not to worry, I am NOT about to share ALL our Emails back and forth in the coming days and weeks, again Lucky, Lucky you!
Suffice it to say, that the Email exchanges got longer and longer and more and more often.
Then Emails led to voice calls which followed my same “brevity challenged” arc.
Voice calls quickly led to Skype calls and let’s just say neither one of us got too much sleep in those first two weeks or so as we were living literally on the opposite sides of the world and I was on the other side of the International Date Line so we were not only many hours apart in different Time Zones, we were also on different days! Hence we were both on Skype calls in either the wee hours of our respective mornings or on very late night hours. Our internet connection had quite literally become the “International Date Line”.
Think about it for a minute and I’ll wait till you get it ……………………………….
OK, OK, enough already Wayne!!
You know where this is going so let me just quickly summarize what happened from there.
Video calls are fascinating, especially when you start logging hundreds of hours of them with someone you have never met. They pretty much cancel out any chances that either of you can be “faking it”, so you do end up learning more and more about the very real person on that screen for hours and in your ears and in hour head. But it still isn’t the same as the “real thing” and so at some point we started to talk about how, when and where we could meet up in person and find out if all the sparks that were flying back and forth through the ether were really real or just our twitterpated imaginations?
It was now December and so my first suggestions had been that I would sail up to Majuro and get Learnativity safely moored there as I had done in the past few years and then get the short flight from Majuro to Honolulu which happens 3 days a week and we could meet there. A bit longer but easy to get flights for Christine to fly from Florida to Honolulu and so that was the tentative plan. Emphasis on “tentative” of course because WAYNE still needed to finish the work on LTY, get her all sea worthy and ship shape for a relatively long passage and only then be able to know what sort of dates we could fly and meet.
Of course things never go as planned, especially when it comes to big boat projects. I was working longer and longer days, as was Christine who was in the midst of finishing and publishing her latest book at the time “Dragon’s Triangle” and we were both getting more and more frustrated that our “Launch Date” for this distant blooming romance seemed to be getting more and more elusive and later.
Hmmm, why does that sound so familiar??
Several hours into one of our Skype calls at that time, partly out of pure frustration, partly for some levity, I said something like “You know what would be really crazy, would be if you just flew here to Fiji and we could have our first date be the sail up to Rotuma and Majuro”.
Keep in mind that it is now only about two weeks before Christmas and I was sure that she would not want to be away from her family in Florida over the holidays so maybe Honolulu in the New Year would be best after all. So we started to look a the calendar and figure out the likely length of my sail up to Majuro and what dates early in the New Year we might be able to fly there and meet. So I simply asked “What date do you think you could fly?” And surely she understood I was talking about her flying to Honolulu right?
I had already learned that Christine can have some VERY “pregnant pauses” with her responses so I just patiently waited after asking what date she thought she could fly as I watched her eyes look up as if she was searching some calendar on the ceiling and then watched her lips moving a bit as she seemed to be doing some calculations in her head. After several minutes of this, she looked back at me on the screen and said “Tuesday”.
Huh? “Tuesday” I said? What do you mean “Tuesday”?
Never missing a beat and with a very quizzical look on her most serious face, she said; “I can be in Fiji on Tuesday.”
This was all happening late on a Friday night on Christine’s side of the International Date Line and in a very rare for me “pregnant pause” with my mind reeling with what I thought I had just heard I think I simply said “Are you kidding me?!?!?!”
She wasn’t kidding and while I don’t remember much of those next few days, I found myself standing in the Nadi airport early on the morning of December 19, 2013 intently watching the passengers of the just landed red-eye flight from LAX walk to the baggage claim when THIS vision of loveliness walked through those glass doors and into my heart. We drove back to the marina where I had Learnativity pretty much finished and waiting for her to see for the first time and we were both giddy with excitement, nervousness and disbelief that this was all REALLY happening?!!!
I had borrowed my dear friends Ian and Coleen’s car to drive the 25km or so to the Nadi airport from Vuda Pt. Marina as their beautiful big boat mv Summer Spirt and had been my dock neighbors as you can see here, for all the months I had been there in Fiji over the last few years.
This is our first photo together, thanks Coleen, on the aft deck of Summer Spirit. Ian and Coleen invited us over to mv Summer Sprit for lunch and so they could meet this mysterious woman who their dockside friend Wayne had been talking with and about endlessly for the past month. Fast forwarding through the months and years that followed:
We had a VERY eventful 18 day “First Date” passage up to Majuro and that’s a much longer story for another time. Captain of my heart by now and the only REAL sailor onboard. We made it to Rotuma for another longer story of our first New Year’s Eve. Crossed the equator for the first time as a couple after multiple times by ourselves. And Wayne was FINALLY able to swim across the equator, yet another much longer story for another time. Sailed into the atoll of Major with no rudder and no steering. Another story for another time.
Flew back to Florida to meet Christine’s family there, then flew to St. Martin to drop of Ruby with our dearest friends the Alonso’s who were living there on their boat sv Discovery.
Took off a few days later for a whirlwind tour of Europe that Christine had previously all planned out as research for her next book that became “Knight’s Cross”. First stop the island of Malta Where I proposed up on a grassy hillside overlooking a little harbour in Malta. And she said YES!!!
OK, OK OK!!! Seriously this time, ENOUGH WAYNE!!!!
More of those stories for another time.
Right now, I sit here in Antalya Turkey with my Beautiful Bride of six years making us another one of her delicious meals and we have a bottle of bubbly in the fridge that I’m about to go pop so we can celebrate the 7th anniversary of our First Contact.
Which was all thanks to THIS little guy who is sitting here at my feet tonight.
Thanks Barney!
I am the luckiest and richest man in the world all thanks to YOU! Happy Anniversary!
As you will soon see, Summer is not the only thing that is officially here. Captain Christine has now officially registered XPM78-01 Möbius with the Jersey Ships Registry in the island Port of Jersey and I can’t resist the chance to start off this week’s update with this riddle:
Can you find the TWO Canadian’s in this photo? While you ponder that question and search the photo above for that missing 2nd Canadian, a few more details on our choosing to register our new boat/home Möbius in Jersey which should provide you with a few more clues to solve the riddle above.
Quick history & geography update;
Jersey is one of the Channel Islands which lie Gulf of St. Malo in the English Channel between the south coast of England and the North coast of France.
Not to be confused with its neighboring island of Guernsey nor with New Jersey in the USA, as per this overview on Wikipedia Jersey, officially the Bailiwick of Jersey (who knew Bailiwick was a real word?!?), is a British Crown dependency[8] located near the coast of Normandy, France.[9] Some other Fun Facts for you about Möbius’ new Home Port, the Bailiwick of Jersey:
Jersey was part of the Duchy of Normandy, whose dukes went on to become kings of England from 1066.
After Normandy was lost by the kings of England in the 13th century, and the ducal title surrendered to France, Jersey and the other Channel Islands remained attached to the English crown.
Jersey has a separate relationship to the Crown from the other Crown dependencies of Guernsey and the Isle of Man, although all are held by the monarch of the United Kingdom.[13]
Jersey is not part of the United Kingdom,[15] and has an international identity separate from that of the UK,[16] but the UK is constitutionally responsible for the defence and international relations of of Jersey.[17]
Population (2019 estimate) is 107,000
Currency is British Pound sterling
Time Zone is Greenwich Mean Time UTC 0:00
OK, all very interesting Wayne but WHY register Möbius in Jersey?
As a Canadian I am amongst the few who qualify to register our boat with the British Registry of Ships in Jersey and fly the Jersey Red Ensign flag.
When traveling under the Jersey Red Ensign flag we have the full support of British consular services and British Royal Navy protection worldwide.
VAT-free temporary importation into EU for non-EU residents
Renewal every 10 years with no annual charge
OK, back to the riddle. Did you find the second Canadian in this photo?
The second Canadian is the flag!
You would have to know your flag history MUCH better than I do to have spotted this, but the flag I am holding is the Canadian Red Ensign used from 1921 to 1965 …… …… until the current Red Maple Leaf flag was adopted in 1965.[1] The Maple Leaf flag also replaced the Canadian Red Ensign as the civil ensign of the country. Way more than you ever wanted to know about Canadian flags I’m sure but for Christine, who came up with the whole idea, and I this is the perfect Goldilocks just right flag for us to sail under on Möbius.
Getting back to where I started this latest tangent, to complete the formal registration of XPM78-01 Möbius in the Bailiwick of Jersey we needed to send them photos to prove that we had “marked and carved” as it is officially called, the transom of the boat with the correct sized and placed letters of the boat’s name and Port of Registration.
Earlier in the week Christine rode her bicycle over to a printer she had discovered last year and they printed out a set of vinyl self adhesive Black block letters of Möbius and Jersey. Meanwhile, I did a quick layout of our Official Number and Gross Tonnage on a piece of 5mm aluminium plate to be my guide as I used my fabulous little Milwaukee cordless router to carve these numbers. I gave it a quick sand blast, painted over all the numbers with some Black spray paint and then sanded the surface to reveal just the numbers.
Asper the requirements of the Jersey Ship’s Registry, “the official number and the tonnage calculation should be permanently carved or marked on a small plaque which should be fixed onto the main beam or on a readily accessible visible permanent part of the structure inside the vessel. A plaque is usually approximately 20cms x 10cms and should contain the official number and tonnage figure.” And there you go XPM78-01 Möbius is officially ship # 749887.
On her weekly Friday inspection Christine brought along the vinyl letters and while everyone else was at lunch we carefully laid out and applied the letters on the Aft Transom. These vinyl letters are just a temporary stand in while we await the arrival of the CNC waterjet cut aluminium letters but were enough for us to take the required pictures to send to the Port of Jersey Registrar. In my youth I once had a job putting decals and lettering on semi trailer tankers so I knew the trick about spraying the surface with some water and dishwashing liquid so you can float the letters onto the aluminium plate and still adjust their position to line each one just right and we soon had the job done.
We called in some cheap labour to do a bit of final cleanup. And soon had our boat all officially named and ready for some photos to prove it. First photos we needed are to prove the height of the letters of the boat name and at 160mm/6” tall we are well above the minimum 100mm requirement and that’s all the photos we needed and Christine has sent these on their way to Jersey and they will mail us the official paper Registration document.
With the stern of Möbius backed up against the aft wall of the shipyard it wasn’t easy to get a shot from the rear like this but I managed to climb up onto a little ledge on the wall and squeeze off this shot to send to the Jersey officials. Lucky me; in my eyes and heart I’ve got the most Beautiful Bride AND the most beautiful Boat there is!
Our new “baby” is born! Please join us in welcoming XPM78-01 Möbius to the world.
Displacing a mere 66.83 Gross Tons, little # 749887 in the British Ships Registry and our newest boat and home has officially arrived.
Did I happen to mention that this is an eXciting new milestone for both of us?!!
Captain Christine, AKA my Beautiful Bride, completed her latest circumnavigation of the sun this past Sunday March 15th and as is our policy, we give experiences for gifts rather than “things” so we flew over to London for a few days as one of her experiential gifts was to fulfill a live long wish to see a play at one of London’s iconic theatres, the Apollo Victoria.
Wish granted.
Wish fulfilled!
Happy Birthday Baby! As usual in London, there are way too many great choices but I decided that Wicked at the Apollo Victoria would be the just right choice for my musical loving Captain and as her smile after the experience seems to indicate that I guessed correct. It was a great play and we both enjoyed it and the whole experience thoroughly. We flew over to London Gatwick on Thursday night so we had the whole day Friday before going to see Wicked at the Apollo and the Spring weather was fabulous so we took advantage and drove the whole SE coastline from Brighton to Whitstable just north of Canterbury. It was cool and windy but very sunny so perfect for a good Birthday drive. The ocean is like a magnet for both of us and it is constantly calling our names so we drove up around the SE corner to the little harbour town of Whitstable where I’d been once before and I treated my Birthday Girl to some of THE best Fish and Chips at Wee Willie Winkles. Why drive all the way around the SE corner to the Canterbury area you ask?
Because that is were Mr. Gee, our Gardner 6LXB engine is from and we can’t be THAT close and not go for a visit to Gardner Marine now can we? Plus Christine had not been yet and of course there were a few “bits and bobs” I needed to pick up for Mr. Gee’s “born again” process.
In this photo I am talking with James who is an walking encyclopedia, as is everyone at Gardner Marine of both the history and the technical details of all things Gardner and he graciously let me pick his brain for several hours as we walked around the expanding Gardner Marine facilities. This is a picture from my first visit to Gardner Marine several years ago to meet Mr. Gee for the first time just after he had been taken out of a tugboat on the River Thames after almost 50 years of non-stop service. Michael Harrison who is the CEO of Gardner Marine spent the better part of that day with me to answer all my questions and take me through the finer points of the 6LXB engines. While we didn’t know it at the time it was a harbinger that was not able to meet with us this visit because he had just returned from a trip looking after some other Gardner engine installations in Spain and France so he was taking the precaution to self isolate himself at home until he could be tested. As we know now, we were all about to be in a similar situation.
Back to the present, James is taking me through just one of three of the side by side two story buildings which hold the treasure trove of “a few” Gardner engines of all ages and sizes as well as all their rebuilding equipment and eXtreme eXtensive spare parts inventory of Gardner Marine. They are about to expand into the fourth building next door as business continues to grow. Can you tell that I’m in one of my “Happy Places”???
My fellow gearheads will appreciate that places like this are akin to the Louvre for the works of art and engineering that Gardner Engines embody. Back to the Birthday Girl, we dashed back to London just in time to check into our lovely little AirBnB there and catch an Uber over to the Apollo Victoria to see Wicked.
Wow, Wee Willie Winkle Fish & Chips, Gardner Marine and Wicked at the Apollo all in the same day!?! Now you know why we call these “experiential adventures” and why we a life so densely packed with them. Next day we continued the adventure by taking advantage of being in London where one of our “god children” and most special people Kate now lives as she attends the London campus of Florida Sate University. While not sunny, the temps were Spring like and the lighting was outstanding for photos of beautiful women as you can see here. We spent the entire day, 22,000 steps Christine’s watch says, strolling throughout “Kate’s downtown London”. It might have been Christine’s birthday but I seemed to get much of the gifts such as chances for more hugs with the phenomenal and powerful women I am so fortunate to get to share this life with. London’s skyline may not be as high as some but it is a marvel to see such a mix of the new architecture ………. ….. and the old. But wait! There’s More!
While we had to fly back to Antalya a day earlier than originally planned we were able to meet up with some very dear friends, Robin and Jayne and go see the new acreage they and their children have just acquired out in the rural countryside not far from Gatwick airport.
This was on Sunday which was Christine’s actual Birthday and Robin’s is next week so we treated the both Birthday Babies to a fabulous Pub Lunch at a nearby 15th century pub. What could be more fittingly delicious and British than roast Beef with Yorkshire pudding and gravy with such good friends?
The perfect end to Christine’s 2020 B’day experiential adventure. Or so we thought ……………………….
Turns out that the adventure continued into the next day as our flights from both Gatwick to Istanbul and connecting flight to Antalya were both delayed and we didn’t get home until well after 3am on Monday. But it was GREAT as always come home to the welcoming party of Ruby and Barney. Particularly so in the the context of the current and rapidly evolving situation we all find ourselves in right now.
To Turkey’s credit everyone flying in from out of the country had to fill out new forms with all our personal info, flight and seat numbers and places visited so they can be aware of each person’s travel history. We were also all advised to “self isolate” ourselves at home and do as much “social distancing” as possible for the next 14 days. Naval Yachts to their credit as well has asked that we and any others who have recently traveled outside of Turkey self isolate themselves for the next 14 days.
Christine and I had decided to voluntarily join the new “self isolation Club” in any case so we will be staying home and won’t be going back to the shipyard for the next 14 days. While challenging and disappointing in the eXtreme, this was an easy decision to make as it is simply the smart and right thing to do right now. As my cousin who is also in a similar situation at her home in Qatar reminded me we are now members of a not very exclusive new Club!
As with the storms we encounter out sailing the world, Christine and I know that “this too shall pass” and we continue to count ourselves as most appreciative members of the “most fortunate people in the world Club”. We are both healthy and happy, we have each other and our friends and family and we see this as being the start of but our latest eXtraordinary adventures in this awemazing life we are so privileged to live.
I hope that all of you reading this are finding your own ways to be happy and healthy by doing whatever is best for you to get through this latest “storm”. As for me, I am grateful for this opportunity to be isolated with my best friend, partner, Captain, Bride and beautiful young lady. Could I be any more fortunate or appreciative? Me thinks NOT!!!
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.
Mrs. Santa was eXtremely generous this year with not only her kisses BUT also with her gifts! 
I am still in disbelief of the apparent and serious error in Santa’s bookkeeping which somehow misplaced MY name at the very top of his Good Boy list which resulted in me unwrapping THIS awemazing new bit of kit on Christmas morning!
Christine and I have been lusting after a drone for over six years or more but when we sold Learnativity our previous 52’ sailboat, we kept telling ourselves that it would be smart to wait until Möbius was finished and we really had the use case for a drone. 
Apparently that time is NOW and boy was it ever worth the wait! 
Oh, and when I said I had been mistakenly put at the very TOP of Santa’s Good Boy list, I wasn’t kidding because this even came with DJI’s “Fly More kit” which includes:
Ian and Coleen invited us over to mv Summer Sprit for lunch and so they could meet this mysterious woman who their dockside friend Wayne had been talking with and about endlessly for the past month.
![Jersey-Channel-Islands-_-JTs-Gigabit[2]](https://i1.wp.com/mobius.world/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Jersey-Channel-Islands-_-JTs-Gigabit2.gif?ssl=1 "Jersey-Channel-Islands-_-JTs-Gigabit[2]")
![Flag_of_Canada-Canadian-maple-leaf-f[2]](https://i0.wp.com/mobius.world/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Flag_of_Canada-Canadian-maple-leaf-f2.png?ssl=1 "Flag_of_Canada-Canadian-maple-leaf-f[2]")
![D8F19676-8B7C-400F-8383-884031A21980[2]](https://i2.wp.com/mobius.world/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/D8F19676-8B7C-400F-8383-884031A219802.jpg?ssl=1 "D8F19676-8B7C-400F-8383-884031A21980[2]")
Recent Comments