Electrical | Möbius World

Mr. Gee is Cagey & Exhausting Progress Update XPM78-01 Möbius Jan 11-15, 2021

by Wayne | Jan 16, 2021 | Boat building, Electrical, Electrical Systems, Interior, Interior, Plumbing, Systems, The Gardner | 6 comments

Another busy week for Team Möbius as we all focus on getting her finished and ready for her Splash Day first kiss with the sea, which we are now counting in weeks rather than months or years, so exciting times here at Naval Yachts to be sure. As is often the case near the end of an eXtremely big project and certainly at the end of Project Goldilocks, most of the work is on all those “small jobs” chasing down all the loose ends from previous work installing all the systems, cabinetry, propulsion, etc. And as most of you would know from your work on projects it is the last 5% of a job that seems to often take 50% of the time! However, good progress is being made and I will take you on a whirlwind tour through all the little things that got done this week which add up to be an eXtremely BIG deal as it gets us another week closer to Launch Date.

So strap yourself in and hang on for this week’s Show & Tell tour of the Good Ship Möbius for the week that was January 11-15, 2021.

HELMS:

You may recall from reading previous posts that we have been very busy finishing off lots of those “little jobs” to complete the Upper and Lower Helm Stations and that continued this week.

This is the Llebroc Tradewinds CX High Back helm chair that will be our perch when piloting Möbius from the Upper SkyBridge Helm and Nihat and Uğur got that all mounted and through bolted this past week.
We needed to wait until the TreadMaster had all be glued down to all the aluminium floors in the SkyBridge and then we could mark out the exact location of the 6 through bolts for the base of the pedestal.
Directly below this Upper Helm Chair base is this area above the Galley so Nihat removed the 50mm/2” EPDM insulation foam to expose the area where the supporting plates and through bolts would go.

This is a good example of why all the panels on the ceilings and many on the walls are made to be easily removable by using FastMount clips which are the White dots you can clearly see against the Black ceiling framing in the photo above. Being able to remove any panel in a few seconds is an eXtreme time saver for such jobs.
There can be a tremendous amount of force exerted on that base when a good sized adult is perched way up on top of the Helm Chair in rough seas so Nihat & Uğur installed some 20mm AL plate on the underside of the AL floor plates and then ran the through bolts from the pedestal base to sandwich the whole assembly and create an eXtremely solid pedestal for this Upper Helm Chair.
As is so often the case with these “little” jobs, all the time and work is in the preparation and the actual installation goes very quickly. So once they had all the prep work done with the support plates and drilling the holes it didn’t take them long to torque down these six 316SS C’sunk bolts and the Upper Helm Pedestal was all done and ready for the adjustable base plate and slider of the chair to fit over the top of the AL piston you see here. This piston has a powerful gas lift cylinder inside that makes it easy to raise/lower the Helm Chair about 30cm/12”.
In front of the Upper Helm Chair, this custom made Switch Panel for all our external lights finally arrived and fit like a glove in the opening below the Standard Horizon GX600 VHF-AIS.
Hilmi had already installed all the wires so it did not take him long to get all these switches wired up. We tested out all the lights and everything worked just as planned.
Such as these Green Navigation Lights that Hilmi is checking out here on the Starboard/Right side of the SkyBridge coaming.
Red Nav Light on the Port side working just as well.

BTW, a fun way to remember the Red/Green orientation is “There’s no Red Port Left” (thanks for the correction Max!)

TreadMaster on these side decks is all ready to be glued down which they also completed this past week.

Christine and I installed the two 24” touch monitors as you saw last week and there are a few more “little jobs” need to be looked after but this Upper Helm Station is nearing completion now which has been great to see.
Similar story down below at the Main Helm where we also installed the two 19” touch monitors last week and this Helm is now also getting close to finished.
This is the Llebroc Bandera Series 2 Helm Chair which, similar to the Upper Helm Chair, needs to have its pedestal mounted and through bolted in the floor.
We needed to wait until Ramazan had finished installing all the Ado LVT vinyl flooring and then layout the location of the solid block floor that had been installed here for the through bolts to go through the 50mm/2” thick insulated and heated floor.

Drilling and installing these through bolts is a bit tricky due to all the cable trays filled with electrical cables running underneath this floor in the Basement, but we lowered the cable trays and drilled all the holes with no problem after lots of careful measurement.

This is where we left off on Friday so Uğur and Nihat will pick up here when we all get to work Monday morning.
Just behind the Main Helm Chair we had to do the same kind of layout and prep for through bolting this Zwaardvis Triton Deluxe adjustable pedestal for the Dinette Table.
In addition to the Up/Down adjustment of the pedestal itself you can see here how the Zwaardvis T-System XY slider bolts on top and allows us to move the table fore/aft and left/right by 200mm/8” which enables us to put the Rosewood table in the Goldilocks just right position for eating/working, lounging of made down into a bed. The little Black unit on top will be fastened to the underside of the table and you just pull that Black lever and the cable releases the “brake” while you slide the table in the XY axis you want and then release to lock the table in place.

Very KISSS – Keep It Simple Smart & Safe!
By Friday Faruk, Orkan and Ali had finished up the remaining “little jobs” with the TreadMaster non-slip surfaces. Both Side Decks and the front platform in front of the hinged Solar Panel bank is now all completed.
As is this small area around the Lewmar EST65 Warping/Kedging winch.

OTHER ELECTRICAL JOBS

Our head Sparkie Hilmi had a busy week as well.

He installed the Black Foot Switch for the Warping/Kedging winch above, so one more little job checked off the punch list.
Finished wiring up all the components in the Upper Helm Station. Kobelt WalkAbout remote control box in the upper Left corner, Nogva CPP clutch controls below it and Horn, Engine Stop & Start buttons on the bottom.

Std Horizon GX6000 VHF-AIS top center with the External Light Switch panel below which we saw earlier.
Right of the VHF is the Vetus Bow Thruster joystick and the Furuno NAVPilot 711C below it. Maxwell anchor windlass control upper Right with Kobelt 7170 Jog Lever below. Round gauge on far upper Right is the Pitch angle of the CPP propeller and hiding under the plastic is the Kobelt 6501 electronic control head for the Gardner Throttle and Nogva CPP Pitch adjustment levers.
Looking through the WT door off the Aft Deck and peering into the dark space above as you walk through into the SuperSalon, you might be able to make out the neat little alcove up above that Hilmi and Christine worked on this past week.
Here is a closer view with the upholstered panel removed to show the components installed in this well protected space. Far Left is the Axis M7104 Video Encoder that puts our non IP cameras onto the network,
In the middle is one of several Planet Industrial 10/100TX Ethernet switches and the incredible Kingdel i9 9th gen mini computer that Christine put together to be our Boat Computer #2.

HOUSE BATTERY BANKS

Yesterday (Friday 15th) Hilmi and I spent some time down in the Basement working to finish off the installation of the 24 FireFly Carbon Foam batteries which make up our 1800Ah 24V House Battery.
Hilmi has all 24 batteries wired up in their 6S4P configuration where six 4V batteries are wired in Series to create four 24V @ 450Ah banks which in turn are wired in Parallel to create a single 24V @ 1800Ah House Battery which gives us a total capacity of 45kWh to power all the AC and DC circuits onboard. While we can safely take these Carbon Foam batteries down to 20$ SOC State of Charge, we will typically not take them below about 50% SOC so as to maximize their cycle lifespan and still give us up to 900Ah or 21.6kWh to keep us safely and fully powered up at all times.
Before we look after the last step of organizing and supporting all the cables, Hilmi, Ramazan and I worked on this very KISSS way of holding each of the 24 4Volt cells in solidly in place under all conditions. Each 4V cell/battery weighs 43kg/95lbs and by wedging each battery in place using these composite foam pieces you see in these photos.
Right beside Möbius, Naval is building a big fancy 20m catamaran out of very high tech composite materials and this foam board was all left over “scraps” that caught my curiosity so I tested out some samples and this stuff is awemazing!

It is literally light as a feather and I can beat it with a sledge hammer and not put a dent in it! I’ve tried soaking it in water, vinegar and acetone with no absorption or other affects so I had an Aha! moment and thought this was the Goldilocks solution for a KISSS battery hold down system you see here.
Along the sides, while difficult to see here, a two stepped piece of composite foam snuggly wedges in place between the sides of each pair of batteries and the aluminium tank sides and the thicker upper stepped part holds the batteries down by the ledge along the outer edge of each battery case.
Down the middle a T shaped piece of composite foam is wedged into the 40mm/1.6” air gap where the sides of the batteries meet. If you look closely (click to enlarge any photo) at the foam piece on the far Left, you can see how the T cut out fits on top of the ledge on the Blue plastic battery case. When the AL plate lids are bolted on top this will squeeze the batteries tight against the AL floor down at the 25mm ‘’/ 1’ thick Keel Bar

I’ll be back next week to show you how we have organized and tied down all these big 25mm² / 4/0 cables and then bolt on the 6mm AL cover plates with gaskets to seal the whole battery compartment which is then vented with thermostatically controlled fans to keep the batteries cool and well vented.

LIFELINES!

Christine has been working onboard Möbius every day for the past few weeks now and took on one of the larger jobs remaining; installing all our Dyneema Lifelines. I’m not sure if she is holding on out of pride of her work here on the Aft Deck or to help keep her tired little body upright after a grueling week.

We are using Dyneema for all our lines and rigging as it just SO superior to standard lines and Stainless Steel twisted wire being stronger, safer, kinder to the hands, easy to inspect and monitor. Christine is going to do a separate blog post here with all the details so I will leave you to read that when it goes up in a few days.

Being as pleased and proud of her as I am though, can’t resist just a few photos of her handiwork to whet your appetite for more.

Simple eye splice where each Lifeline begins with this “Luggage Tag” style attachment to the 40mm/1.6” thick walled AL stanchion posts.
The top Lifeline is 90cm / 36” above the deck and the bottom one is a custom Goldilocks Just Right height to help keep our stubby legged Barney the Yorkshire Terror onboard.
Where the Dyneema Lifelines simply pass through a Stanchion these short lengths of 10mm / 3/8” AL pipe have been welded at the height of each of the 3 Lifelines.
For Lifelines that we need to remove regularly, she splices a Pelican Hook on the other end with a simple endless loop around the end gate stanchion pipe.
Along the length of each Lifeline, to provide adjustment and re-tensioning over time, Christine has spliced on two Black aluminium “donuts” and then lashed between the two with smaller diameter Dyneema. This one is just temporary while we are testing out the layout but will give you an idea how this system works.

SuperSalon is Floored!

Ramazan has quickly become a Master at installing the Ado LVT vinyl flooring we are covering all the floors in all three living compartments on Möbius. For orientation of this photo I am standing about where the Main Helm chair is looking Aft at the stairs leading up to the Aft Deck. Ramazan has about half of the Ado LVT vinyl planks installed on the Right side in front of the two door style 130L Fridges in the back and 2 70 liter drawer freezers in the foreground. The bare plywood rectangular piece on Ramazan’s Left is the hinged hatch that lifts up to access the stairs down into the Basement under the whole SuperSalon floor.
Here is what it looks like from the opposite end, standing in that WT door off the Aft Deck looking forward to the Main Helm at the front of the SuperSalon. Galley is partially visible on the far Right.
A few hours later and that Basement Hatch is almost fully covered and Ramazan did a fabulous job having it blend in almost invisibly to the rest of the floor.
Main Helm and Dinette Table floors all laid down and I’ve started to lay out the locations for the pedestal bases of the Helm Chair and the Dinette pedestals.
Flooring all done in the Galley now.
With the LVT flooring all done in the Master Cabin and the SuperSalon, Ramazan transferred his attention to the Corridor and Guest Cabin area which will likely the the most time consuming as there are 10 tank access ports he needs to lay the flooring around.

Here in the Corridor that connects the stairs up at the top of the photo coming down from the SuperSalon, to the WT door into the Workshop which is where I’m standing to take this photo. He pulled up the temporary plywood covering that has been covering this area so he could level off the tops of the Blue rigid foam board for the final marine plywood to go on next. Easy to see how PEX tubing for the In-Floor heating is snaking through the foam and the aluminium tape helps reflect the heat upward through the plywood.
Plywood is now screwed in place to the wood frames underneath and Ramazan has started to lay down the Ado LVT vinyl planks.

Stay tuned for next week’s episode where he will likely finish off all the vinyl flooring.

Mr. Gee gets Cagey!

You may recall from last week’s Progress Update that I had designed this pipe rail or cage setup attached to the four motor mounts I had designed months ago and work continued on this week.
Here is where we left off last Weekly Update with the front and rear rails or “staples” that Uğur and Nihat had installed.
On Monday, Uğur and Nihat finished off the “cage” by bolting on the two lengthwise tie rods to complete this very rigid cage around Mr. Gee. As with so many elements on Möbius this serves multiple purposes, one is to provide a safety element when we are doing our hourly engine room checks on a passage and a sudden lurch in the boat’s movement might cause you to loose your balance and reach out to grab one of the hot or moving parts of Mr. Gee. Now this “cage” provides you with a safe cool hand hold all the way around.

Second purpose of this pipe cage is to provide the frame for the four support rods that need to go up to support the dry stack components of the Halyard exhaust system. These four “ears” or tabs have been welded on to provide the lower attachment point for those four SS support rods.
Cihan and Mesut fabricated four of these SS support rods in no time by welding some SS slugs into the end of each SS pipe and threading it for the Heim joints that would go in each end.
I am just test fitting the Heim joints here so the SS lock nuts are not yet in place but you can see how this simple setup creates a Goldilocks support rod that is of course all very KISSS Keep it Simple Smart & Strong.
Here is what it looked like as we shut down yesterday. Next week Cihan will install the front two supports but already the exhaust dry stack is eXtremely solid and I can barely make it move when I grab it and shake it for all I’m worth.
Two other important “little” jobs Cihan and I worked on this past week were the mounting of the Morse cables to the Nogva CPP Pitch lever and the throttle lever on Mr. Gee, and the solenoid for the shutoff lever on Mr. Gee.

I whipped up this little sketch on my new favorite drawing board; cardboard! No work of art and rather embarrassing for a former Draughting/Drafting instructor but it works well to outline my basic ideas and communicate them with Cihan with no problems given my poor Turkish language skills.

I just love working with Cihan and everyone on Team Möbius because it is such a collaborative relationship. I did that initial sketch you see above and discuss the key parameters with Cihan and ask him to run with it and build whatever he thinks will work best and is easiest for him to build. This is the modified design he came up with and fabricated in minutes out of some 10mm / 3/8” aluminium plate.
The purplish colored Morse cable on top here transfers the mechanical movement from the Kobelt electronic Actuator box up above on the ER wall down to thee throttle lever on Mr. Gee to change his RPM and then the 24V solenoid underneath moves the engine shut off lever below.

A similar Morse cable comes down from the other side of the Kobelt Actuator to move the Pitch control lever on the Nogva CPP Servo Reduction gearbox but I failed to get some photos of that.
Her is a better angle of the finished result of the Throttle cable on top and the Shut off solenoid below.

Two more jobs checked off the list!
Another prime example of how these “little” jobs take a BIG amount of time was finishing off this very busy area around Mr. Gee’s oil filter. The bronze block on the Left has four fittings in it, the top one I’ve installed one of the two direct oil pressure gauges and then the Black line below it takes the pressurized oil directly to the valves in the cylinder head. The bottom two outlets I have just plugged off for now but will soon have an oil pressure alarm sensor installed.
On the Right side of the big cast Oil Filter canister is the Black oil pressure adjustment valve and then that beautiful bronze oil temperature thermometer and a 2nd oil pressure gauge on the far Right. The reason for two oil pressure gauges is that the one on the Right measures the oil pressure when it is highest coming directly out of the oil pump inside the crankcase whereas the one on the far Left measures the oil pressure at the far end of the line just before it gets pumped back into the crankcase. This setup allows me to instantly see the difference from start to finish of the oil pressure to the engine and enables me to quickly spot any problem long before it advances.
There are also digital equivalents in the form of temperature and pressure sensors that will put this data onto our N2K network where I can log it by the minute and have a full history of all these metrics being logged every second of every day.

And that’s a wrap for the week of January 11-15, 2021 people! Thanks so much for getting through yet another one of Wayne’s rambling Weekly Progress Updates and in spite of my pathetically long response time to them, PLEASE do add your questions and comments in the “Join the Discussion” box below.

I hope to see you again next week.

-Wayne

There will be NO Slip Sliding Away on Möbius! XPM78-01 Möbius Weekly Progress Update Jan 4-8, 2021

by Wayne | Jan 10, 2021 | Boat building, Cooling, Electrical, Electrical Systems, Exhaust, Exterior Decking, Hull, Interior, Interior, Plumbing, safety, Systems, The Gardner | 15 comments

And 2021 is off to rapid start as the first week of the year has already whipped by me in a flash. Very busy times here as we all push to finish XPM78-01 Möbius and get her in the water by the new target Launch Date of February 12th! Which BTW, is now only 33 calendar days and 25 working days from now. Yikes!!

However, as we all learn over time, deadlines are good things to help us keep our eyes on the prize and get things done so as to ensure that there is no “Slip-Sliding Away” of our Launch Date! Therefore, I am going to stick with using this fixed Launch Date to help keep the positive pressure on all of us on Team Möbius to “get ‘er done” and as my 4 year old granddaughter Blair says (with gusto!) “Let’s DO this!”

I’ll take that advise to heart with my introduction to this Weekly Progress Update and jump right into this week’s Show & Tell of what all happened aboard the Good Ship Möbius this past week of Jan 4-8, 2021

Non-Stick on the Bottom:

Continuing the very rewarding trend of late of hitting lots of different milestones of this build, work began this week on preparing the bottom of the hull for its foul release bottom paint. First step was to clear out all the equipment and materials which had been accumulating underneath the hull on the shop floor.
It helps to have a forklift of course so it didn’t take too long to move everything elsewhere at Naval Yachts and have a clear floor space under Möbius to work on.
Next up was to get rid of the short little hull support posts and replace them with these longer steel tubes that connect just under the Rub Rails and slope down to the floor where they are secured into the concrete with long lag bolts.

You’ll note too that the upper part of the hull sides have now been covered in plastic to keep their freshly sanded surfaces clean.
The two newest members of Team Möbius, Ali kneeling on the Right and Mehmet standing on the Left, get to work grinding down the welds below the waterline and removing the layer of Aluminium Oxide Al₂O₃that has formed since these hull plates were first welded in place over two years ago. The automatic and rapid formation of Al₂O₃is one of the big benefits of building hulls from Aluminium as it is a very had and durable protective layer that prevents any further oxidization or corrosion. However Al₂O₃ is equally good at “protecting” the hull from paint, which is part of the reason why we are leaving all the exposed aluminium on Möbius unpainted. The one exception is below the waterline where we need to prevent marine growth from forming as this creates a lot of drag on the hull as it slides through the water.
So you need to remove all the Al₂O₃ before the first coat of epoxy primer goes on. This is the first round of removing the Al₂O₃ and then just before the first coat of primer is sprayed on, they will give it a light sanding with orbital sanders and a wipe down with Acetone to make sure the AL surfaces are completely clean and oxide free so the primer will bond well

The only item below the waterline that does not get painted is the big 1m OD beautiful Bronze Nogva CPP propeller, though later on, it too will get some special treatment to prevent fouling as even the slightest bit of grown or roughness on a propeller blade causes severe reduction in transferring power from the prop to the water.
The special tube we cut through the Rudder can now be be filled in so Uğur tacked this elliptical AL plate to block off the hole for now. Whenever we might need to pull out the prop shaft, this hole allows me to do so without having to remove the Rudder which can add a lot of time to the prop shaft Re & Re. This will get covered with some epoxy filler and sanded flush with the surface of the Rudder plates as a super slippery Rudder also helps a lot to increase the efficiency of the Rudder and Steering overall.
Another important part of the preparation for the bottom paint is taking off the upper edge of the “Boot Stripe” at the very top to make the transition from the bottom paint to the unpainted aluminium above. This is made SO much easier now that we have laser levels to use rather than the laborious process of measuring every few feet as I’ve had to do in the past to establish what you hope is a level straight line. In keeping with the “lean & mean” exterior esthetic, the Boot Stripe and the bottom paint will both be Black but the Boot Stripe will be glossy Black Polyurethane whereas the Bottom Paint will be the matt finish of the silicone based International InterSleek 1100SR

For those not so familiar with bottom paints, most boats use an Anti-Fouling type of paint which prevents micro organisms from growing on it by having various biocide chemicals such as copper, tin and now more modern toxins which try to prevent growth from forming. This has been done for centuries with many old wooden boats having their bottoms sheathed with sheets of thin copper.
Looking nice and straight to me!

Anti-Foul type bottom paint doesn’t last too long, 6 months to 2 years max, before it either wears off or looses all its anti fouling chemicals and you have to haul out, remove all the old and paint on new coats which is neither quick nor inexpensive, to say nothing of the environmental concerns.
Instead of “Anti” foul we are going to use international InterSleek 1100SR which is a Foul RELEASE type of solution which in the simplest terms is a coating of silicone fluoropolymer which is akin to the non-stick coating such as Teflon on frying pans. When I was a young boy I was struck by the idea of “Better Living Through Chemistry” and my daughter Lia is an Organic Chemist so this more modern and much more effective different kind of chemistry that creates Foul Release paint was a no-brainer for me.
A little kick up at the stern end of the bottom paint to add a bit of flair!

When moving, nothing sticks to the hull but when we sit at anchor for weeks or months at a time, grown will still form on our InterSleek bottom BUT it all comes off with a simple wipe with a cloth or sponge so the amount of time and effort it will take us to “dive the bottom” and clean the hull will be drastically reduced from our previous boats even though Möbius has a much larger bottom surface.
Uğur looked after one more bit of preparation for the bottom painting by sculpting the Exhaust Exit pipe which is not far above the waterline and below the top of the Black Boot Stripe so it too will be painted.

I will talk more about the Foul Release and InterSleek1100 paint as we start applying it in the coming weeks, so to finish up for now let me just add that Foul Release type bottom paints and InterSleek are not well known by most boat owners but it has been the norm for large commercial and military ships since the 90’s. Based on their experience the InterSleek1100 should last for around 5 to 7+ years, so we are eXtremely anxious to see how it performs for us on Möbius. Stay tuned for the next couple of years to find out!

Non-Slip up on Top:

Just as important as keeping our bottom Non-Stick to prevent growth, we need to keep all our decks and floors up on top to be very Non-Skid to prevent us from slipping when walking around, often in bare wet feet and a energetically moving boat.

For all our decks and other exterior AL surfaces we are using what we think is the ultimate Non-Slip material called TreadMaster which has the tag line “The Original Anti Slip Deck Covering” which has lasted for more than 20 years for many of our friends.

In previous weekly updates you’ve seen the Team covering all the Main Decks and stairs with Treadmaster and this week the finished off the last remaining items such as these AL stairs from the Aft Deck down into the Workshop.
We will leave all the “Slip Sliding Away” to Simon & Garfunkel while we stay put safe with our feel solidly in place on our TreadMaster and that composite grid flooring down in the Workshop and ER thanks very much!
We left what could be the most dangerous or at least slip-prone deck for last; these narrow slopped Side Decks that flank the SkyBridge. Orkan was able to use all the left over TreadMaster from doing the Main Decks to cut out all these smaller “tiles” of TreadMaster to cover these Side Decks and here he has them all cut out and flipped over upside down ready for the AL Side Decks to be sanded and cleaned.
Faruk and Ali could now get busy mixing up the West Systems epoxy adhesive and gluing each piece of TreadMaster into its final positions on the Side Deck surfaces and squeezing out the epoxy to every edge with the HD roller you see here in the foreground.

And in the words of Jean-Louis, Voilà c’est fini!!

TreadMaster is now all done and one more milestone achieved. Well done Team Möbius!!

Much ADO about Non-Slip Inside Too!

Last week you may recall seeing Ramazan finish installing the ADO vinyl LVT flooring in the Master Cabin and he has that now all finished.
Keeping ourselves safe at sea requires that ALL our floors are very Non-Slippery and as you can perhaps make out in this photo, we chose these Ado LVT vinyl floor planks in large part due to the highly textured nature they have that is similar to old well worn woodgrain on patio or pool decks.
His final job to finish the Master Cabin was the two stairs leading up to the Port/Left side of the bed and the removable access lid beside the Shower. These are the only vinyl flooring that is glued down, the rest is all “floating” so it can expand and contract in different temperatures. Here is is using some very heavy weights to keep these pieces flat and squished onto the underlying marine plywood while the adhesive dries overnight.
Master Cabin flooring all finished, Ramazan moved onward and upward to the SuperSalon and moved everything off the floors in there and gave all the plywood base a thorough vacuuming and cleanup.
First task for the SuperSalon floor was to install the wood framing and rigid insulation on the large hinged hatch that provides access down into the cavernous Basement that lies below the AL floor of the whole SuperSalon.
After checking that each plywood floor panel was solidly screwed down, Ramazan stared to do his layout for the floor planks.
Starting with this reference line for laying down each row of planks perfectly parallel to the centerline of the boat.
Click – Click, assemble one row of planks.

Click – Click, lock that row into the previous one laid down.

Rinse and Repeat, with lots of careful scribing and fitting around all the radiused Rosewood toe kicks surrounding all the cabinetry.

Screens, Screens and more Screens!

Winding back the clock by a few days, another eXtremely big milestone for Christine and I happened this week and this photo should give plenty of clues as to what this was.

Can you guess what we are up to here?
Hint.

It has something to do with these two unfilled spaces front and center at the Main Helm.
That’s right! Time to unbox and install all our beautiful big, sunlight readable, touch screen LiteMax helm monitors; two 19” here in the Main Helm and then two more 24” up on the SkyBridge Helm and then on each side of the Main Helm will be another 43” monitor on the Right and a 50” TV/Monitor on the Left.

After a LOT of research and some help from a fellow passage maker, Peter Hayden over on “Adventures of Tanglewood” we finally tracked down the OEM manufacturer of most marine MFD’s and monitors and bought all five Helm monitors from LiteMax in New Taipei City, Taiwan.
The two 19” Main Helm monitors are LiteMax NavPixel Marine model NPD1968 and this link will give you all the technical details for those wishing to know more. The specs that mattered most to us are that these are fully sunlight readable with 1600 nits (a good phone screen is about 300 nits), AOT touch, high shock & vibration resistance, IP65 waterproof and can be powered from 9-36V DC.
Both monitors slide into this hinged plate above the Main Helm dashboard and allow us to tilt these monitors however we wish to have the best line of sight and least reflection. Captain Christine is peeling off the protective plastic layer to check out the non-reflective screens below.
Another feature we value highly is that these monitors have physical and easy to reach control knobs and buttons. Always frustrating to try to figure out how to increase the brightness as daylight arrives and you’ve had the screens turned down close to black for night time viewing.
Didn’t take us long to get the two 19” monitors mounted into the Main Helm and so we moved up to the SkyBridge where these two openings on the Upper Helm Station were begging to be filled.
First we removed the rear AL panel to give us access to the inside so we could tighten down the very well done mounting screw setup on these monitors.

We also put in a layer of thin EPDM foam rubber to fully seal each monitor into the AL Helm Station.
They fit into their openings like a glove and as you can see the big opening we had designed into this AL Helm Station provided easy access all around each monitor to secure them tightly against each frame.
These 24” monitors are LiteMax NavPixel model NPD2425 with similar specs as the one’s down below. Plenty of connection port choices on the back including the power terminals on the far Left which will be connected to our 24V DC system and then via DVI-D to our onboard boat computers.
As you might see reflected in the plastic protective covers, I took this shot with my camera at eye height when you are sitting in the SkyBridge Helm Chair so this will give you a good sense of the perspective you’ll have when conning the boat from up here with great visibility of the entire Bow and Anchor Deck up front.
When I wasn’t looking Captain Christine snapped this shot of me finishing up the installation under her watchful eye.

We are eXtremely excited to get these bad boys all powered up and connected to our boat computers but that will have to wait until next week so stay tuned for that.

POWER!

Speaking of powering things up, whenever Mr. Gee is running we have up to 24kW of power from the two Electrodyne 250A @28V alternators he is spinning down in the Engine Room. Here is a peek at the cabling that Hilmi completed this week which takes the AC output from the stator windings directly to the externally mounted Electrodyne Rectifiers over on the far Right side of the Workshop.
Each of these Electrodyne beautiful brutes has two individual alternators inside and so there are six cables coming out of each alternator to carry the 3 phase AC current. So Hilmi put his hydraulic lug press to good use crimping all 12 lugs onto each cable.
That shot up above is of Big Red #2 which is driven by the PTO off the bottom Left of Mr. Gee which you can see a wee bit of in the very bottom Right of this photo.

On the Upper Left here, this is Big Red #1 which is mounted up above on this 40mm/ 1 5/8” AL plate I fabricated and bolted onto the pad on Mr. Gee’s cast aluminium crankcase just for this purpose. This will be driven by a cogged “timing belt” setup which I am busy fabricating right now and I will show you more of next week.

Here though you can see the other six cables coming out of the Junction Box atop Big Red #1 on their way over and out of the ER to connect to the Rectifiers that are staying nice and cool out in the Workshop.

Mr. Gee Gets Cagey

Those with eXtremely sharp eyes and memory might notice a new addition to Mr. Gee this week?

Keeping with our KISS or Keep It Simple Safe & Smart approach, I designed a dual purpose AL pipe “cage” to wrap around Mr. Gee to provide solid hand holds whenever you are near him while he’s running. This then also creates the perfect base for the four support rods that go from the pipes of this cage up to the exhaust dry stack system up above which I will show you more of next week.

I pulled off the 2D drawings from my Fusion 360 3D mode above, sent them over to Uğur on WhatsApp and he and Nihat got busy transforming these 2D drawings into 40mm AL pipe reality down on the shop floor.
Same technique you’ve seen us use before, Uğur and Nihat create these large radius bends by cutting a series of slots on the inside of the curve in the 40mm thick wall AL pipe, bends them and then tacks them in place.
We then test fit them in place on Mr. Gee and once tweaked into just the right fit Uğur welds the slots closed.
As you might notice on the model rendering above, each “staple” shaped rail will be bolted to AL plates that span the motor mounts we fabricated here at Naval.

Uğur could now weld on the 20mm / 3/4” thick base plates and weld all the bend slots closed.
Nihat picks up with his angle grinder and quickly cleans up all the welds to create smooth soft curves.
That gives Uğur time to go back into the ER and drill and tap all the threaded holes in the Engine Mount plates so the finished staples can be bolted in place.

Uğur and Nihat were only available Monday and Tuesday this week so this is where they left off and will pick up again tomorrow (Monday) morning to bolt in the longitudinal pipes and start fabricating the support rods that attach to the four AL tabs you can see they have now welded to the tops of each stable rails and will connect to the SS dry stack exhaust pipes you can see here.

We’ve Been Hosed!

Our eXtremely productive plumber Cihan was also with us for Monday and Tuesday and he made great progress plumbing in a lot of hoses and other items so let’s check that out.
This is outside the Aft Stbd/Right corner of the Engine Room Enclosure with the plate removed that covers the far end where the prop shaft enters the ER and connects to the Nogva CPP Servo Reduction Gearbox via the Blue (purple looking here) dripless Tides Marine shaft seal.
Up above and off to the far Right side of the prop shaft, you can just see the silver coloured AL heat exchanger with the bronze elbow which is what Cihan is now plumbing with this white hose.

This is the heat exchanger that cools down the fresh water/antifreeze mix that circulates through the inside of Mr. Gee and that is what this white hose carries to/from Mr. Gee and the heat exchanger.

If you look at the black composite end plate on this heat exchanger you can see that Cihan has already connected the hose that carries the cool sea water from the Sea Chest in the ER.
Inside the ER on the Right side of Mr. Gee you can now see where two of the white sea hoses connect to Mr. Gee. The top hose in this photo will carry fresh water coolant from the integrated water pump on Mr. Gee and the bottom hose carries sea water out of the long Bronze Engine Oil Heat Exchanger back to the Coolant Heat exchanger we saw in the photos above.
My apologies for not having time to draw up some better illustrations to explain how these heat exchangers all interconnect but for now this photo will show you two of the pumps in this system. The round aluminium pump in the center of the photo above is the integral Garner centrifugal water pump which pumps fresh water/antifreeze coolant back from that silver AL heat exchanger we saw earlier.

The Bronze Jabsco pump on the Right is one that I am in the process of mounting and it is the impeller pump that pulls sea water from the ER Supply Sea Chest into the “IN” labelled port and then out of this pump into that bronze elbow with the Blue painters tape up above. This sea water then runs the length of that Bronze Engine Oil Heat Exchanger bolted to the side of Mr. Gee and exits via the white hose you can see two photos up from here and goes down to that silver AL heat exchanger we saw at the beginning.

The longer white hose in this photo carries Mr. Gee’s fresh coolant back to that silver AL Heat Exchanger.

Clear as mud to most of you and a pathetic job by this former mechanics teacher but best I can do for now folks.
The other new addition this past week was Cihan’s installation of this Blue Beauty which is the big “sand” filter which removes most of the sea critters and debris from the salt water supply for the Delfin 200L/min watermaker.

This is not found in most boats and are normally used in large swimming pool installations, but I long ago discovered that these are the “secret” to extending the life of the other two sea water filters on the watermaker last for months rather than weeks. This filter is filled with a special kind of sand known as Zeolite and it is the first line of defense to filter out the sea water being pumped out of the Sea Chest into the watermaker.
There is a six way valve on top which you use to change between running the seat water through the filter and back flushing it in reverse once in a while to fully clean out all the debris that has been collected by the Zeolite sand. Simple, easy and eXtremely effective.
Super simple in design and to use and plumb with just three ports: Top Right SS hose barb is where sea water is pumped into the filter by the low pressure high volume 24V pump connected to the Sea Chest. Bottom Right is where the cleaned sea water exits and is pumped over to the two standard filters behind the watermaker. Far Left with the SS elbow is where the dirty back flushed water exits and goes out the exiting sea chest in the ER.
In the background on the wall behind the white watermaker housing on the bottom Right, you can see the three other WM filters; the pair on the Left are the Primary/Secondary sea water filters and the one off to the Right is a carbon filter to remove any harmful chemicals in the fresh water you use for back flushing the WM at the end of a run.
As usual of late I’ve got more photos to show you than I have time and dinner is once again waiting with my eXtremely patient and beautiful Bride on this Sunday evening so I’m going to call this a wrap for now and do my best to cover more next week.

Thanks for joining me on this first posting of 2021 and I hope it helps in some small way to get your new year off to a good start. How about if YOU start your New Year off by adding your comments and questions in the “Join the Discussion” box below? They are all true gifts to me and much appreciated!

See you next week.

-Wayne

Bye Bye 2020; Hello 2021 We are clearly floored! XPM78-01 Möbius Progress Update Dec. 28-31, 2020

by Wayne | Jan 3, 2021 | Boat building, Electrical, Exhaust, Fuel System, Glass work, Interior, Interior, Plumbing, The Gardner | 0 comments

Though I continue to shake my head in disbelief, it does indeed appear (on Jan 2nd as I write this) that this tumultuous and challenging year that was 2020 is rapidly ending and 2021 just as rapidly beginning. Actually, it is now Jan 2nd as I am writing this so as usual, Wayne is way behind!

As with many of you I suspect, seeing the end of 2020 is somewhat welcome as we look to put most of the severely challenging aspects we experienced in 2020 behind us. However being the “terminal optimist” I am, my observation would be that the end of 2020 is all the more welcomed with exponentially increasing trend lines of positive progress that is happening around us as 2020 winds down. This progress is both in the most important and macro view of the truly awemazing progress that has been made with more and more effective vaccines and testing for Covid-19 as well as in my much more micro perspective of finishing and launching XPM78-01 Möbius. I think most of you might agree that ending the year with positive progress rapidly rising is certainly a welcome change from when it was all going the other direction,

One of the words I would personally chose to describe 2020 is “accelerant”. My brilliant and beautiful daughter Lia is a very successful chemist and one of the many things I learned through her is that, as Wikipedia words it

“Accelerants are substances that can bond, mix or disturb another substance and cause an increase in the speed of a natural, or artificial chemical process. Accelerants play a major role in chemistry—most chemical reactions can be hastened with an accelerant.

My point here being that I think that as we put 2020 in the rear view mirror and perhaps provides us with the 20/20 or better “vision” that hindsight most often does, we will see that 2020 was very much an accelerant for trends that were already happening prior to the beginning of 2020 and increased the speed and rate of change of these trends which were BOTH, positive and negative.While making sure to attention to and learn from those negative trends I chose to focus on the positive trends which have been equally or great accelerated by the events of 2020 and which I will try to further in 2021 and beyond.

Very selfishly, those trends include the accelerated rate at which Christine and I hope to finish the building of Möbius and start a whole new trend which we can also accelerate, that of returning to our life at sea as full time liveaboards as we pick up where we left of in “wandering, pondering and wondering the world one nautical smile at a time.” You can be the judge of how well we do at this if you chose to continue to follow our adventures here on the Möbius.World blog as we make the transition from building to cruising. Wish us luck, we’re going to need it!

OK, after yet another “brevity challenged” opening, let’s get to what you really came here for; this week’s Progress Update Show & Tell for the 3.5 day week of December 28-31, 2020. New Years is a VERY big deal here in Turkey and so everyone on Team Möbius and Naval Yachts was very anxious to finish up at 13:00 on Thursday and get the New Years festivities started. It all worked out very well on the calendar as well as this gave all of us a 3.5 day weekend to celebrate the end of 2020 and ring in 2021. As in many parts of the world there was no shortage of fireworks for Christine and I to enjoy from our 9th story apartment here in Antalya as we toasted this dual closing and opening of windows in our world. We hope that however and wherever you were for New Year’s Eve 2020 that you too were able to celebrate this annual transition and that 2021 will turn out to be one of if not the best year we have ever had.

Why is Wayne Floored?

Two very good reasons this last week of 2020 has me so floored and this is the first; Uğur and Nihat installed the grated floors in the Engine Room surrounding Mr. Gee! This is the same very cool composite floor grating that you’ve seen us installing for the floors in the Forepeak and the Workshop. eXtremely rigid, impervious to all chemicals, easy see-through to the bilge spaces below, easy to install and lift out when needed.
Very simple aluminium L-bar framing to support these floor grates which Nihat and Uğur have perfected now and weld up in a jiffy. This is the frame for the raised floor at the Aft end of the ER.
By raising the floor here about 200mm/8” above the two side level floors flanking Mr. Gee, we were able to make this all one level floor across the whole width of the ER.
In addition to the Safety factor when moving about in the ER during our hourly ER checks on passages and when I’m working in there, the grating also protects the hoses, solenoids, dipstick, etc. on the Nogva CPP Servo Gearbox and the two heat exchangers on either side of it.
Then we dropped the two side floors down to be about 50mm/2” above the tank tops so as to give me the maximum amount of space on either side of Mr. Gee when I’m servicing and working on him. This Port/Left side is the service side of the Gardner 6LXB where the majority of components are such as the fuel injection system, dipstick, on engine fuel & oil filters, throttle lever, etc. so it is wider and longer and relatively clear of other obstructions other than the sea water exit manifold that connects to the exiting Sea Chest in the top Left corner.
Purposely a bit busier on the opposite Starboard/Right side where the dual sea water intake strainers and the sea water supply manifold live and connect to the Supply Sea Chest partially visible in the upper Right corner here behind the 127mm/5” ID exhaust hose as it exits the ER and runs under the Day Tank to exit out the side of the hull.

The red hose is now ready for Cihan to install on the side of Mr. Gee where it will transport the engine coolant (water + antifreeze) out of the ER and through a heat exchanger loop inside the Webasto IsoTherm Calorifier/water heater tank where it gives up some of its heat to our DHW Domestic Hot Water system and reduces the need for the Kabola KB45 diesel boiler to provide our DHW whenever Mr. Gee is running.
I am very happy with the way this has all turned out and how much it adds to our priorities of Safety, Comfort and Low Maintenance inside the ER. In the next week or so Uğur and Nihat will be fabricating and installing the Exhaust System supports which will add even more safety to working in here and I’m already excited about showing you that.

Master Cabin is Floored!

And what is the second reason I ended the year being so floored?

Hmmm, it sure doesn’t look that it has to do with increasing the comfort of the big bed in the Master Cabin?

Oh wait! This is where Ramazan has put all the planks of LVT vinyl flooring for the past 2 days so that little ceramic heater in the upper right corner can bring the temperature of everything up 20+ degrees C / 68F where Ado, the manufacturer, recommends for installation.
These LVT planks are installed as a “floating floor” so no adhesive is used so that the vinyl can expand and contract a bit without causing any buckling or warping. As we will be taking Möbius through the full spectrum of temperatures from the poles of Antarctica and the Arctic down to the tropical heat on the Equator, we need to account for these kinds of conditions.

Each plank “click locks” to the next plank on both sides and ends so the installation is relatively easy but quite time consuming on a boat where there are almost no square corners or parallel lines and so all the planks at the ends and sides of each room must all be carefully and accurately custom cut and fit.

Here is a good example of that where Ramazan had to carefully cut the LVT flooring to fit just right around this area just inside the door on the full height wardrobe as you enter the Master Cabin.
Ramazan started by laying out the Centerline of the hull and using that to provide the lengthwise reference line for laying down all the LVT planks. Then he worked from there putting down the LVT planks parallel to this Centerline and cutting the edges to fit just right up against the Rosewood wall panels.
The blank plywood rectangle under the vacuum is one of the many places on the Master and Guest Cabin floors that need to be removable to allow you to get at the access ports to the water and fuel tanks below all the floors. This one in the Master Cabin is the largest of all because it spans the corners of four individual water tanks which we located here for that reason.
Hey! I would have sworn that there used to be a removable access panel here?!?

Ramazan is quite the flooring expert having apparently laid down a lot of this LVT flooring and you can see this on display here where he has been able to make the joint where the ends of the LVT blanks butt together with almost no gap at all.

On the rare occasions when we need to remove these sections of the floor to inspect or clean out a fuel or water tank, we simply use one of my favorite tools, an industrial suction cup like this which you’ve seen us using to install the big 26mm thick laminated glass panels round the Pilot House a few weeks ago.
We won’t get to installing these until a bit later but in anticipation of the inevitable questions about what happens to these removable floor panels in the unlikely event of a full roll over (lets hope!), we will be installing these SS floor anchors. I’ve used these floor anchors from PYI before on previous boats and they not only work eXtremely well, they are more bits of kit on my “boat jewelry” list for being so beautifully designed and built.
Flooring pretty much all done in the Master Cabin and here is a full length shot of the floor alongside the bed leading to the stairs up to the SuperSalon.

We are eXtremely pleased with how all the various colours, materials and textures have all come together. Not bad for two very inexperienced interior designers don’t you think?

And the indirect dimmable LED string lighting really helps to not only increase the Safety factor throughout but also really uses the Silver/White colour we chose for these LVT planks to maximum advantage in reflecting and diffusing that light across the floors and around the edges.
What better way to show you the flooring than by getting down on floor level? Best I could do to try and show you the texture of these LVT planks which works eXtremely well as a non-skid surface even with bare wet feet.

BTW, the LED strip lights are just being test fit right now and will soon be installed into their grooves with some clear silicone to keep them fully hidden and well secured.

Fitting out Mr. Gee

Cihan was able to return for two days this past week and he is always a treat for me to work with and is super productive. Remember those red hoses that connect Mr. Gee’s hot water to the Calorifier you saw in the ER in the Flooring section above? Cihan now has them all connected and starting to insulate them to keep the heat in the water and out of the ER.
This is the front Stbd/Right side of Mr. Gee and we are tapping into his AL coolant manifold up on top of the cylinder head to return the coolant from the Calorifier.
We then tapped into what was a drain plug fitting in this lower coolant manifold where the water comes out of Mr. Gee’s side mounted centrifugal water pump.
Over on the opposite Port/Left front corner of Mr. Gee, Cihan now has the diesel fuel return line hose connected now.
With Cihan being so busy on other jobs at Naval I’ve been busy lending a hand by fabricating some of the mounts he needs to complete jobs such as mounting one of the big Electrodyne 24V 250A alternators on that same upper left corner of Mr. Gee you see in the photo above.

KISS right? Some 20mm/ 3/4” thick AL plate gives the neccessary strength and rigidity to support this hefty alternators that tip the scales at 33kg/73lbs each. Ask me how I know?!
Once I had the two plates all drilled for the four mounting studs on Mr. Gee and had worked out the precise location of the alternator so that its serpentine belt pulley would be aligned and on the same plane as the other three pulleys I could drill and tap this 40mm/1.6” thick mounting block.
After test fitting this on the Electrodyne alternator the mounting block needed a bit of trimming to fully clear the body of the alternator when bolted in place but nothing that my super handy Milwaukee angle grinder could make short work of.
Here is the final result with Big Red #1 now fully fitted onto Mr. Gee.

I’ve lost track of how many times I had to lift all 33kg of this beautiful red beast up and down to get these mounts all worked out but I’m thankful for the workout that helps me keep my girlish figure I guess!

Also pleased with the way this mount will work out position wise to give me good access for future maintenance and with being rock solid to carry on the Gardner tradition that Mr. Gee demands.
For those wondering, the six terminal studs on the sides of the junction boxes on each Electrodyne are where the AC current comes out of the two “Siamese twin” alternators inside each Electrodyne and then carry that 3 phase AC current over to the external Rectifiers mounted outside the ER over on the Stbd/Right side of the Workshop.
That AC current will be carried by those 12 Red cables, 6 from each Electrodyne, that you can see coiled up to the Right of the alternator and in some of the photos in the ER Flooring section above.

Next up for me is to work on getting all the cogged belt pulleys mounted and aligned but that will have to wait till next week.

I Can See CLEARLY NOW!

Saving the “Clearly” part of this week’s title for this last part of our Show & Tell this week as this is another one of those big milestone events in the build for Christine and me. It actually all started more than a month ago when this photo was taken. Do you see the clues as to what this is all about?
Does this closeup help you guess?
Correct! This was when the acrylic team from Hakan Glass was onboard back in November to build the hardboard templates for each of the 15 removable acrylic windows that will allow us to make the whole SkyBridge weatherproof!
Let me backup a bit and show you the design that I worked out with the guys at Hakan Glass. This test sample they made will help me show you how it all works.

Four basic components ……………………
1. The clear 8mm / 3/8” thick cast acrylic sheet that forms the tough windows. Cast acrylic is more heat and scratch resistant than common Plexiglass which is usually extruded. Acrylic has a tensile strength >10,000 lbs/sq inch and an impact resistance about 17 times greater than ordinary glass and under high impact, (cyclones anyone?) it won’t shatter and if it does break it fractures into large, dull-edged pieces.

Acrylic is also eXtremely clear, half the weight of glass and resistant to most chemicals.

Clear, Safe, weatherproof, not easily scratched.

Low Maintenance – Check
2. Aluminium anodized U-channel extrusions for the track frames that hold the acrylic sheets in place. Note that the U-channel on the Left has its upper side cut down to be half as high as the regular one on the Right as that is key to how this system works as I’ll explain in a minute.

Being anodized AL these U-channel extrusions are easy to keep clean and never oxidise.

Low Maintenance – Check
3. Black EPDM rubber edge molding that keeps the sheets tightly in their frames so they don’t rattle or move.

Simple, Secure & Quiet

Comfort – Check

4. To add some Secret Sauce to the mix let’s stir in two strips of these silicone magnetic seals that are typically used on glass shower doors.

Simple to use, Clear, Long lasting & Weathertight.

Comfort + Low Maintenance – Check

Now let’s put it all together to see the solution we’ve cooked up for Möbius’ SkyBridge.

Remember how we cut off half of the height of one side of the lower U-channel? That’s what you are seeing here. With half the height of the inside wall of the bottom U-channel, you can push the acrylic sheet all the way up into the full sized upper U-channel which allows you to now push the bottom edge of the acrylic panel into the U-channel and then push it down and presto, you’re done!
My inspiration for this design comes from something most of you would likely know from putting bug screens in and out of the outside windows in your home. You know the ones where you remove them by pushing the frame of the bug screen up into the top U-channel in the window frame and then pull the bottom out of the lower U-channel which it now clears.

There is always great elegance to me in simplicity.

But what about where two acrylic sheets need to butt together on the long side stretches of the SkyBridge you ask?

Aha! Simple, just press a length of these silicone shower door strips onto each edge and their internal magnets snap the gap shut.
Last step, with each acrylic panel installed just press the Black EPDM rubber edge molding firmly into the small space between the inside edge of the AL U-channel to lock the acrylic tightly in place.

et voilà!

You’ve can now clearly see those beautiful views all around you from this premium vantage point high above the water while all the wind and rain stay outside and you are completely dry and comfy inside.
Wait …………………. What’s that you say? You are now in the tropics and it is hot and humid? You want those high up beautiful views more than ever but you also want some good breezes and fresh air?

No problem. Möbius has you covered. Just lift out as many of those acrylic window panels as you’d like because every one of them is removable!
But how would you remove them you ask?

Ahhh, remember out little friend from the previous section on how we lift out the removable floor panels? Yup, that same little fella works even better to grab onto those sleek smooth acrylic panels and quick lift up and out comes the panel to be stowed away while all those fresh tropical breezes flow through and keep you cool and smiling.

Well, you get the idea.

OK, now let me quickly flash through what the process looked as the talented boys from Hakan Glass cooked up this recipe of 4 simple ingredients I had put together:

Start by cutting some of these 3m/10’ lengths of anodized AL U-channel in a table saw to take off 1/2 the height of the one edge for the bottom and some of the side frames.
Glue the U-channel pieces to the tops and bottoms of the AL framed openings of the SkyBridge and its roof using clear industrial epoxy adhesive.
Once all the lengths of U-channel have been affixed, tape off the joints where the U-Chanel joins with the frames of the SkyBridge on the inside and outside ….
……. then apply a small cove of black Sikaflex 296 to completely seal these joints and add a nice visual accent to these edges.
Cut and fit hardboard to create templates for each removable acrylic window panel.
Cut and fit the two magnetic edge seals where two acrylic window panels meet to make sure that the size of the templates are just right when they are pushed Up/Down into place and the two aft corner panels are also pushed sideways into their vertical U-channels.
Rinse and Repeat for all 15 window panels surrounding the SkyBridge and then take the templates back to the Hakan workshop to cut them all to size.
Two weeks later, make Wayne’s day by bringing all 15 acrylic window panels to him on Möbius.
Clean up all the edges of the acrylic panels and start fitting each numbered panel to its awaiting U-channel frames.
Finish off the Black Sikaflex sealant and remove all the Blue painters tape.
Let Wayne double check that the EPDM seals squeeze each acrylic window panel to his just right Goldilocks fit to help them seal and be rattle proof.

Sheesh! Some Owners are SO fussy!
Peel off all the protective plastic covering on the outside and ….
……. inside of each acrylic panel.

Note the 10 year guarantee!
Clean up the Sikaflex seals on the inside and clean off all the aluminium with solvent.
Let Mr. Fussy get his kicks by checking out how slickly and strongly these magnetic strips old the vertical edge joints together and get tighter as the wind pushes against them.
Sides and Aft end panels all in place now with their magnetic seals and Black edge trim.
Finish putting in the Black EPDM strips on the three front facing windows.
Stand back and take a tour around the boat to admire this outstanding job!
Crystal clear view out the Aft facing windows from the outside and …..
…… the inside.
And all clear from the Upper Helm Captain!
And looks eXtremely sharp from the outside too!

Well done Hakan Glass! Gold stars to you all with our thanks for such clearly outstanding work!
And that’s a wrap for the week, the month and the year that was 2020!

Happy New Year to one and all and we can’t wait to bring you the final episodes as all of us on Team Möbius renew our efforts to finish off Project Goldilocks and put this awemazing boat, and her Owners where they belong; IN THE WATER!!!

See you again next week as we get 2021 off to a rapid start!

-Wayne

Much Ado about “T” Progress Update XPM78-01 Möbius 15-18 December 2020

by Wayne | Dec 20, 2020 | Boat building, Cabinetry, Christine, Electrical, Electrical Systems, Exterior Decking, Interior, Interior, Systems, Tender, Wayne | 8 comments

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 ………………..

“T” is for Table

For those who were not with us last week, we saw Ramazan get started building this ro$ewood Table.
Which, when finished, will be mounted atop this very cool air assist height adjustable pedestal with that X-Y slider you can see in the background.

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.

The shower drains use the relatively new Whale Gulper IC Intelligent Control automatic Gray water pumping system. (click for full resolution of this or any photo)

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.

-Wayne

What if Beauty & the Beast had a Love Child? XPM78-01 Möbius Progress Update 07-12, 2020

by Wayne | Dec 13, 2020 | Anchor + Ground Tackle, Boat building, Cabinetry, Cooling, Electrical, Electrical Systems, Exhaust, Interior, Interior, Plumbing, Systems | 10 comments

With Team Möbius back to work and augmented by additional sub-contractors the rate of progress was at an all time high this past week so there is a LOT to Show & Tell you about this week. I will apologise in advance that this week’s Progress Update may be a bit rushed both because I have so much to cover and it is now already mid afternoon on Sunday here. But before I jump right into all the progress updates, some other news from around the shipyard for you.

FINAL PLANS are SIGNED & SEALED!

The biggest news for Christine and I this week is that we finalized all the details for the final finishing of XPM78-01 Möbius with Naval Yachts and signed off on all the new addendum documents, which is what Baris (left) and Dincer, the founding brothers of Naval Yachts are smiling about here!
With projects of this size and complexity and especially for such a unique first XPM series build, there are a LOT of changes and adjustments along the way and a LOT of equipment, materials and sub-contractors that needed to be ordered and it has taken all of us more hours than we would like to know, to sort out all these details and get them all formally documented. So we were elated to have all four of us, Builders + Owners, sign off on this Friday afternoon.

Wayne Looses 1 old Titanium Screw and Gains 7 new ones!

Immediately after we all signed the new addendum on Friday, my elation transformed into something else when I spent several hours “under the knife” in the Dentist’s office! Another reason why this blog post will be a bit rushed as I’m not quite up to full speed again just yet.
For those curious to know, the scorecard from that surgery is that Wayne is now:

MINUS:

one molar and
one titanium screw (one of more than a hundred I have from a nasty motorcycle accident back in 1997) but now plus 6 titanium implant

PLUS:

7 titanium implant screws
some extra jawbone (grafts)
29 stitches

I won’t bore you with any more details but given the somewhat technical nature of my posts and for those curious about dental implants, as I was, here is these 2 illustrations will give you the basic picture of what’s involved.

Now it is just a waiting game to get the stitches removed in 10 days and then let the jawbone and implants merge for two months or so before I go back to have the ceramic (Zirconia) crowns put in and I can chew again!

Möbius gets a New Neighbor

This actually happened two weeks ago so I’m a bit delinquent in posting this but we now have a new neighbor off of Möbius’ Stbd Aft corner.
She’s a Turkish flagged boat “Celeb” and is in the yard at Naval Yachts for some relatively minor work and some out-of-the-water winter storage.
Once again, our friendly neighborhood 72 wheel Yellow boat mover was called in for this move and it all came off without a hitch as usual.
There were more changes to the neighborhood a few blocks away from us over on the Free Zone side of the harbour where they are completely redoing the shoreside facilities to put in an all new humungous dry dock and other launching facilities.
This work has been going on for quite a few months already with the removal of the existing concrete walls, the whole rail launch and TraveLift launch facilities and a whole lot of dirt to enlarge the water area.

That leaves the Free Zone with no launching facilities but fortunately just on the other side of this harbor in the background here, is Setur Marina and so the authorities can open up the gates and let the boat movers bring boats in/out of the marina and into the Free Zone.

With Möbius’ launch date *hopefully* coming up early in the New Year it is likely that we may need to launch into Setur Marina rather than inside the Free Zone harbour. Either way works fine as the emphasis for us is LAUNCH ASAP!!

This pile driver has been running non-stop 24/7 for the past week putting in over 20 so far of these steel cylinders which I presume will be filled with concrete to form the underlying foundation for all the new concrete and dry-dock equipment to come.
OK, with this week’s episode of “What’s New in the Neighborhood”, let’s get back to the shipyard and get you caught up on this past week’s progress on finishing XPM78-01 Möbius.

LITTLE JOBS = BIG DEAL:

As I did in last week’s posting, let me quickly run you through a set of several “little jobs” which got looked after this past week. Some of you sent in comments noting that you liked the more rapid-fire sequences of work so I will repeat that here and please do let me know how well it is working or not by putting your comments in the “Join the Discussion” box at the bottom of every blog posting.

And as I noted last week these may be “little” in terms of amount of work, these jobs are all play very important roles themselves and perhaps most important of all are what define a FINISHED yacht!

First good example of how these little jobs can be so important was the finishing of the door into the Engine Room. Uğur and Nihat had fabricated and mounted this door many months ago but it needed to be fully insulated with fireproof EPDM insulation covered with the laminated aluminium/composite sandwich AlucoBond material you have seen being used to cover all the walls and ceilings of the Engine Room and Workshop.

They started by welding in these short lengths of aluminium L-bars for the AlucoBond to be fastened to.
Then Nihat cut the 50mm / 2” thick EPDM foam insulation and fitted each piece into their compartments.
AlucoBond is then cut to size and screwed in place.
Uğur than installs two of the same beautiful Bofor Dogs & Latches you saw him installing in the big AL hatches up on the main deck for the Forepeak and Engine Room.
Then the door can be remounted on its hinges while it awaits the 26mm thick tempered glass window to be installed to complete this door.
Next up for the same basic treatment was this hatch that goes into the floor in the SuperSalon to provide the only access to the cavernous Basement which sits under the entire SuperSalon floor.
Same 50mm EPDM foam is inserted into each of the little bays formed by the reinforcing AL stringers of this hatch, which is upside down here BTW.

Then Uğur spreads on a light coating of contact cement while ……….
……. Nihat cuts out the thick foil covered fireproof cloth that will cover and protect the EPDM insulation.
With the foil cloth all glued down, Nihat finished off the edges with some AL foil tape and this hatch was then mounted to the awaiting piano hinge in the Salon floor opening into the Basement.
The first of many “little” jobs in getting the below the waterline portion of the hull all prepped for the upcoming application of all the epoxy primer preceding spraying on the International InterSleek 1100SR Foul Release bottom paint we have decided to use.

Here Uğur has removed the propeller blades on the Vetus Bow Thruster and sanded all the internal AL surfaces.
I was able to pull my weight a little bit this week as well by finishing off some similarly small but important jobs, as well as one quite BIG BEAUTIFUL BEASTLY job on Mr. Gee, our Gardner 6LXB engine. More on that later.

The Black cone and disk up near the top Left here is the front end of the Chain based Hand Cranking system that I am now starting to mount. I have pulled it far forward here in order to mount the cast AL coolant tank.

Below this tank on the Right is the secondary fuel filter and return line and in the weeks ahead you will be seeing much more of that flat rectangular Pad in the bottom Left where I will soon be mounting one of the Big Red Electrodyne alternators.
A classic example of how Gardner leaves nothing to chance is this cast in place detail of how you need to use the correct type of anti-freeze and fill it to the correct level.
Big Red #2 near the bottom Left with blue taped box, as I’ve taken to calling the second 250A @ 28V Electrodyne alternators is the much bigger job I worked on this past week and I’ll cover that in more detail a bit later in this post. With this 2nd alternator now securely mounted to the side of Mr. Gee I was able to finish installing these beautiful copper oil lines that snake their way around Mr. Gee to carry his lifeblood engine oil to and from where it needs to go.

Large AL unit taking up the center of of the photo above and aft end here, is the complete fuel pump and mechanical injection system. The six vertical (5 Black 1 Red) levers you see in the photo above allow you to hand prime each of the 6 fuel injectors as well as shut off one injector at a time to check performance while running.

Burgundy cylinder in the top middle is the secondary oil filter housing with its copper oil lines bringing oil to/from this filter.
A few more finishing touches on Mr. Gee’s Stbd/Right side such as the exiting salt water hose now connected to the rear of this gorgeous cast bronze engine oil cooler, and the vertical braided SS mesh exhaust connector in the upper Left here is now bolted to the aft end of the cast iron exhaust manifold.
In the bottom middle of the photo above and up close here, the Black 24V Starter is now fully installed and connected. Two Red cables as one is from the twin FireFly G31 starter batteries and the other cable can connect the starter to the massive House Battery Bank in case the starter batteries should ever not be working.

Beauty & the Beast’s Love Child?

Take note in the 2 photos above of how Gardner attaches the starter to the massive cast aluminium crankcase with that silver strap and you can see in this illustration from the 6LXB Parts Manual how they attached the standard Gardner alternator in the same way over on the opposite side.

I wanted to mount Big Red #2, which is what I’ve come to call the second Electrodyne alternator, to the same place that Gardner used but would Big Red fit? Only one way to find out; try it! As did Gardner, I first made 2 shims from some AL 10mm plate to adjust the radius of the cast in place ribs to match Big Red’s 188mm / 7.4” outside diameter and bolted them in place as you can see here.
Here is an uncluttered straight on shot of the mounting base for Big Red #2. Fuel pump bowl in the upper Left corner, bottom of the cast AL injection pump running across the top and you can see the two “nubbins” where the hinge pin will slide through to hold the forked bolt that tightens the flat strap to cinch the alternator up tight.
That forked bolt is part # 11/19/20 in the illustration above but with Big Red being a bit on the Beastly side of the girth scale the original forked bolt was too short so I whipped up this new larger and longer version out of some SS plate and threaded rod.
I fashioned the fork out of a small block of SS and tapped it for a M10 threaded rod and threaded the two together. A SS nut to lock it in place and then for added safety and strength I thought it best to TIG weld the nut and threaded rod to the fork.
I will give you that I can be given to some hyperbole and eXaggeration from time to time but I think you need to give me that it is no eXaggeration to suggest that “shoehorn fit” describes this situation?!!
Each GE 250-24 Electrodyne alternator tips the scales at 40 kg/88 lbs and so again I will make my case that calling these Red Beauties Beasts is also no mere Hodgins Hyperbole!
As you might imagine, I had to take Big Red #2 in and out quite a few times as I adjusted its position and tested out the strap mounting setup to get that all to work out and still clear everything. Fortunately and as I’ll explain in a bit, took advantage of the fact that I had to take these alternators apart so I was able to cut their weight down quite a bit which made all my test mounting a bit less muscle building.
With the alternator temporarily held in place with some wood blocks I could test out the fit of this Black strap which is has a 10mm / 3/8” pin that slides through the bottom as you can see in the illustration above and the bottom of this photo.

Up at the top you can see the nut on the end of the upper forked bolt what cinches the alternator tight up against the radiused ribs you saw earlier.

I am close here BUT the large copper wires that carry the AC current out of the alternator need to come through that hole in the case across from my fingers, so I need to nudge it forward a wee bit more so the strap clears the hole.
Oh, and I also need to make sure that the length of this Jack Shaft with U-joints on each end that I am retrofitting to drive Big Red #2 from the Gardner PTO (Power Take Off) on the Left here.

(click to enlarge any photo)

I’m getting ahead of myself a bit so let me stop and provide a quick overview of these Electrodyne E 250-24 alternators that I’ve chosen to use and mount on Mr. Gee which I think will help you see how they truly are the Goldilocks combination or “Love Child” of Beauty and the Beast.
In addition to these basic specs my primary reasons for choosing these Electrodyne brutes include:

truly rugged “beastly” construction and weighing in at 40kg / 88 lbs each
Beautiful simplicity with only one moving part, the stator shaft and no moving electrical parts
More simplicity being Brushless with no brushes and no brush springs
One piece steel “double ended” housing with TWO alternators; one at each end.
Remote Rectifier which moves most of the performance robbing heat outside the ER
eXceptional life with 20,000 hours between recommended servicing

Here is what one looks like in real life. The box on top is simply a junction box where the 6 (3 from each alternator)AC current carrying wires emerge from inside the alternator body and connect to six large cables that go to the remote rectifiers outside the ER in the Workshop.
I ordered these alternators directly from Electrodyne in Oklahoma almost 2 years ago and spent a LOT of time with Dale Gould who is the Operations Manager at Electrodyne and he has been truly fabulous to work with on every level from getting these beasts built to the specs we decided upon, getting them shipped to me (not as easy as it sounds) and even creating little how to videos to show me how to do the alterations I needed on my end. Can’t thank Dale and his team enough nor recommend them more highly to you.

In the interim, I ended up changing how and where I was going to mount these two beastly beauties on Mr. Gee and so I now needed change the location of these Junction Boxes from where I had originally asked Dale to position them. Not a big deal and I always welcome any chance to get “up close and personal” with every bit of kit on Möbius as I’m also the guy that needs to maintain everything and keep us up an running at all times in all conditions.
The aluminium Junction Boxes are bolted to the steel housing and to reposition them I needed to re-drill and tap (thread) four new holes for the new position.

First step was to remove the two pressed on aluminium ROTORS which have all the permanent magnets embedded in them and rotate around a few millimeters away from the stationary Stator coils you see here.
With the Non-Drive end Rotor off I could now remove the Rotor on the Drive end by pressing out it and its shaft from the internal hub and bearings inside the case.
This close up of the inside of the AL Rotor let’s you see how all the permanent magnets such as the two I’m pointing at here, are embedded into the AL Rotor.
I know this is riveting Show & Tell for so many of you, NOT! but the disassembly goes pretty quickly from here so I’ll speed through the process even faster for you from here.

Top Lid comes off the Junction Box enabling me to disconnect all the wires from their studs in the sides of the Junction Box body.
Each set of Stator windings, one at each end, can now be unbolted and …….
…… pulled off of their tight fit to the central hub inside the housing allowing me to now carefully pull the three large gauge solid copper wires and terminals out through the holes in the housing one at a time.
One end Stator windings removed, ready to spin around and do the same to remove the Stator windings on the other end.

Removing 4 Allen head bolts, one seen in the bottom Right here, let’s me remove each Junction Box.
Full dis-assembled now!

Possibly resembling Dr. Frankenstein’s workbench I am already LOVING my new Workshop and all 11 meters of workbenches!
I marked the new location of the Junction Boxes with felt pen and so now it was a simple matter of lining up the 2 holes in the bottom of the Junction Box with the new holes in the housing and clamping them in position. I could then use the 4 bolt holes in the Junction Box as a template to mark the corresponding center marks to drill into the housing.
I had carefully taped off all access to the inside of the housing to prevent any metal chips or dust from getting inside and it was a bit tricky to drill the 4 holes into the housing at this angle but it worked out fine and I could then cut the 10-32 threads into the housing with my tap set.
And now re-attach the Junction Box in its new permanent location on the housing with the 4 Allen head bolts you see here in each corner of the Junction Box.
The trickiest part of the reassembly was fishing the thick stiff solid copper wires back through the hole in the Junction Box and housing as they just barely have enough room to fit through and the hole is behind the Stator windings, but it all went smoothly and I soon had all 6 Stator wires and both Field Wires all back in place and ready to connect to their awaiting studs in the sides of the Junction Box
One done; one to go!

But I need to wait to mount the Junction Box on the lower Big Red #2 on the side of Mr. Gee as you saw above because I need to strap it in first and THEN I can bolt the Junction Box to the housing OVER TOP of the strap.
As you can see, all my trial and fit had made a bit of a mess so I needed to put back some of the Beauty into these two Beasts with a good sanding and repainting.
I just happened to have this short little Jack Shaft left over from another project and in a lovely stroke of synchronicity it worked out to be the Goldilocks solution to drive Big Red #2 from the gear driven PTO on Mr. Gee. So it needed a matching paint job as well.
With all the openings and AL rotors all plugged and masked off it didn’t take me long to shoot these with three coats of Red International “Perfection” epoxy.
Although it was not the ideal shade of Red, a bit on the orangey side ….
…… they definately looked better than when I started and were now all ready to be installed onto Mr. Gee.

Hopefully Dale and all his team at Electrodyne will like what he sees too.

Now let’s quickly get onto the mounting of Big Red #2!!

I will try to mount BR#1 next week so stay tuned for more scintillating story telling then!
By now I was getting pretty quick at mounting BR#2 to the side of Mr. Gee and I wanted to do one final test fit of the Junction Box to double check that everything really did clear.
To my absolute joy and delight everything just barely cleared! Click to enlarge this photo or any other and you can see how close some of those fits are.
If you look closely you will see that there are a LOT of close fits!
I think this must be some polar opposite of Murphey’s Law where the stars align and every close fit actually cleared!

Fortunately for me, mounting Big Red #2 on that upper flat pad you saw earlier will be a breeze compared to this one and I hope to get that done next week and will show you the results.

CHAING STOPPER:

Up at the Bow on the Anchor Deck, we needed to install this latest bit of boat jewellery; our gleaming solid SS Lewmar 13mm Chain Stopper!

It is a very simple system that can become eXtremely critical if your snubber line breaks in a big storm and you need to have a way to “for sure” hold your anchor chain to the boat no matter what. Yes, ask me how I know!
Uğur and I quickly sketched up the design we thought would work best to solidly bolt this Chain Stopper to the deck framing and he had it all fabricated out of 20mm / 3/4” AL plate and was welding it to the Anchor Deck plate.
Simple arched platform that elevates the Chain Stopper to be at the correct height of the chain as it comes off the gypsy chainwheel on the Maxwell VWC 4000 windlass and then the Chain Stopper is through bolted with 4 M16 SS bolts and nuts.
A bit of Blue Threadlocker to make sure these never come loose but are still easy enough to unbolt if ever needed.
One more “little but important” job done and checked off the list.

ELECTRICAL WORK:

Hilmi was a welcome addition back on Team Möbius this week and he was right into the same theme of completing many more of those little but important electrical jobs.

He started with this one; putting in the connections for Mr. Gee’s two G31 FireFly Carbon Foam starter batteries.

First Hilmi mounted the Red Start Battery Shut Off Switch and ran the cables from there to the Battery Box locations.
Each battery will be enclosed in it’s own dedicated plastic battery box and mounted at the very far end of the Stbd/Right side wing of the Workshop underneath the Day Tank and up against the WT Bulkhead there.

They go forward another 40cm/16” from here and their lids just clear the 127mm/5” rubber exhaust hose that runs overtop of them.

Now time to tame all these electrical snakes slithering out of the Engine Room!
One of the best features of our decision to put in a dedicated Engine Room enclosure is that we can keep this an “Engine only” Engine Room and locate almost everything else OUTSIDE the ER where they are much cooler, easier to access, less likely to be exposed in the case of fire and much easier to comply with all the ABYC and CE fire safety requirements.

No batteries, no electronics, no fuel filters or tanks; nothing but Mr. Gee and his immediate systems such as heat exchangers and exhaust.

What wires we do need to bring inside the ER, mostly for the Electrodyne alternators, come through this one penetration under the floor of the same Stbd wing of the Workshop on the other side of this photo.
Hilmi takes it all in stride as usual and he, Ramadan and Cihan soon have the new cable trays in place ……
…… and start routing and fastening the cables in place alongside …….
……. and then under Mr. Gee.

Cihan does EXHAUSTING WORK!

Möbius’ Engine Room was a busy place this week as Cihan and Ramadan installed the Halyard Exhaust System which has been patiently waiting its turn down on the shop floor underneath Möbius for many months now.

As you might have noticed in some of the photos above, I had already installed the flexible SS woven mesh that bolts vertically to the aft end of Mr. Gee’s exhaust manifold.

So the fist part of the “dry” section of the Halyard Exhaust components to go in was the75mm/ 3” ID vertical SS riser you see here rising up here in the lower Right corner.

The two “wings” on this riser are where the two support rods will connect down to Mr. Gee to help stabilise them.
My personal favorite bit of kit from Halyard is this beautifully crafted and polished SS water injection elbow which Cihan is assembling to its silicone bellows.
Peering down for an inside view, you can see how the water jets are all distributed evenly around the inner circumference and make sure there is a very even spray and mixing of the seawater that is pumped through them with the exhaust gases exiting Mr. Gee.

This is where the exhaust changes from dry to wet and where most of the noise and the heat is removed by the mixing of the seawater and the exhaust gases.
Simple job now for Cihan to slide the soaped up silicone bellows to the awaiting downward angled 127mm / 5” pipe on the Halyard “Combi” Silencer/Separator that has previously been mounted on its dedicated shelf on the front ER WT Bulkhead wall.
Almost a year ago now, Yigit and I had spent several months working with Oliver and his team of engineers at Halyard HQ in the UK to design this Goldilocks Exhaust System for XPM78-01 Möbius. Together we exchanged countless 3D models that we were each creating and so it was wonderful to see this all fall into place like an accurately cut jig saw puzzle.
Even Cihan, who has installed countless exhaust systems in the many other yachts he has worked on was very impressed and asked “How did you DO that??!!”
With everything dry fitted and checked Cihan and Ramadan could now tighten up all the connecting bolts and SS hose clamps.

Using plenty of Tef-Gel on all threads of course!
All that remained to be done was install the three rubber hoses needed to complete this Goldilocks exhaust system. Over on the far Left side is the Black 75mm/3” ID hose that quickly takes all the seawater in the bottom of the Silencer/Separator down to the dedicated AL pipe welded into the exiting Sea Chest and out to sea.

Next over to the Right is the White hose that delivers the fresh cold seawater up to the inlet pipe on that SS mixing elbow.

And then the large 127mm/5” ID Black hose transports the now cool and quiet exhaust gases from the Combi down and over to the AL pipe welded into the Stbd ER wall where it then connects to another short length of the same rubber exhaust hose and out the similarly welded in place AL exhaust exit pipe in the hull just above the WL.

DIVINE DINETTE TABLE & PEDESTAL SYSTEM:

Last I have time to cover in this week’s Show & Tell is yet another bit of boat jewellery and Rosewood; our Dinette Table!

It was love at first sight for me about 2 years ago when I first spotted this Triton Deluxe 2-stage table pedestal at the Zwaardvis booth at the big METS Marine Trade conference every year (except this one of course) in Amsterdam.

This is the fully lowered position which lowers the surface of the table to be flush with the surrounding seats where it can then become an additional Queen bed on those rare occasions when we have more quests, or more likely more Grandkids aboard than can be accommodated in the 2 beds in the Guest Cabin.
Simply rotate those 2 SS handles and the air assist gas cylinder inside pushes the pedestal up to proper eating/working table height.
But WAIT! There’s MORE!

Check out that Kissin’ Cousin from Zwaardvis sitting to the side of the Triton pedestal!

This is the Triton T-System X-Move slider which allows you to slide the table top 200mm / 8” in the X or Y, Fore/Aft or Left/Right direction
by simply pulling this lever which mounts under the table. In the normal “fixed” position that little rectangular rubber pad on the Right is pressed up against the underside of the table and locks the table in whatever position you want. Pulling the hand pulls the rubber down allowing you to push/pull the table wherever you want and then release the lever to lock in that position. Brilliant!
Over in the Cabinetry shop Ramadan #2, our newest Cabinetmaker has been busy building the Dinette Table top I designed. Very simple and sturdy, it has 50mm/2” thick solid Ro$ewood edges surrounding a Rosewood laminated plywood table top.
Ramadan cut this hardboard template so we could try it in place in the Dinette on the Triton pedestal and slider and check out the clearances with the table in all its different X, Y and Z positions.
Once we had it just right, he was able to laminate both sides of some 20mm/ 3/4” marine plywood …..
……. with Rosewood veneer in the lovely heated laminating press they have here at Naval.
Mitre all the corners of the solid edging.
Cut the biscuit joints and the glue and clamp it all ….
to create a single solid table top.

All ready to have the large radii shaped into all these solid edges, sanding, filling and varnishing and I will soon be able to show you this next bit of beautiful art work aboard the good ship Möbius.
Well as usual I have much more to show you but I’m pooped, swollen and hungry as it is now after 21:00 here in Antalya on Sunday night so I’m going to call it quits for tonight and be back with much more next week.

Thanks SO much for taking time to get this far and join us on this grand adventure. As always we REALLY appreciate you adding any and all comments and questions in the “Join the Discussion” box below so don’t be bashful now! Your feedback is invaluable and VERY much appreciated.

Hope to see you here again next week.

– Wayne

Fire, Feet & Fans – XPM78-01 Möbius Progress Update Oct 26-31, 2020

by Wayne | Nov 1, 2020 | Boat building, Cabinetry, Electrical, Electrical Systems, Interior, Interior, Plumbing, Propulsion, Systems | 6 comments

This week’s Progress Update is like they used to say on Sesame Street “Brought to you by the letter F” as Team Möbius worked on installing the FIRE Suppression System, FANS for extracting air out of the boat and getting Mr. Gee and his new literal Mate the Nogva CPP Servo Gearbox all mounted on their six FEET as well as aligned with the CPP Prop Shaft. Even though there was 1.5 days holiday in the middle of this week for the big Turkish Republic Day on Wednesday and Thursday, our Team was very productive and got lots done so grab a favorite beverage and chair and join me for this week’s Show & Tell of all this Fun work that got done.

FIRE SUPPRESSION SYSTEM:

If you were with us last week you will recall seeing Cihan and Hilmi installing and wiring up the Sea-Fire Automated Fire Suppression System components. This week Hilmi picked up with installing all the wires, making all the connections and testing the automated system out. This is the “brains” of the Sea-Fire system with all the relays for the various shut downs and “firing” the fire extinguisher.

Inside all other parts of the boat we simply have very good manual fire extinguishers which are these cool new type from Maus.

However in the Engine room we and the various ABYC/ISO/CE standards require a fully automated Fire Suppression SYSTEM.

In addition to looking after the automatic triggering of the release of the 3M Novec 1230 extinguishing agent this system must also shut down the engine, close all the vent dampers, turn off the venting fans and sound the alarm. This can also all be triggered manually with a Morse pull cable.
Hilmi and Uğur worked closely together as they needed to coordinate between Hilmi laying out the locations on the Port side wall of the Workshop where he wanted to mount the Sea-Fire control box and where he wanted Uğur to cut the slots in the Alucobond panels. The other Bronze box is one of the Kobelt engine control boxes and Hilmi now has the cables pulled through the wall panel slots below where he will be mounting the Sea-Fire control box.
He will install the Sea-Fire controller inside this waterproof plastic junction box to keep everything all tucked away and well protected but first he needed to drill all these holes for the cable glands.
Here is that junction box with the Sea-Fire box inside now mounted to the wall.
Now that the Alucobond wall panels were in place Uğur could install the mounting screws through them into the aluminium frames behind.

The row of Black and Violet boxes up above are part of the Maretron monitoring system and Uğur will later install the L shaped AlucoBond corners to protect them.
With the cables all pulled thorough their WT glands and the labels attached, Hilmi could strip the cable cover off to release the individual wires and start making all the connections to the control box for the different shut down relays and other controls.
The standards also require that there be a control and indicator lights at the Main Helm which is where this round version is headed. For testing purposes we just used that short ethernet RJ45 cable.

This remote confirms that the Fire Suppression system is On and working properly before it will allow you to start the engine and also allows you to set off the whole system from here as well as silence the alarm.
That round remote control head will soon be installed in the angled dashboard up at the Main Helm amongst these other controls.

Once Hilmi and I had it all tested and all was working fine, the Grey ethernet cable you can see plugged in here, goes up to the Main Helm dashboard where the round controller will be mounted a bit later.
And that’s it! Everything all buttoned up and ready for more testing.

LIGHTS!

More lights went in this week including these beautiful beasts which are Hella LED flood lights.

This one will be mounted to the front “mast'” or arch at the Bow to light up the waters directly in front of us and others will be mounted to light up the water along both sides and off the rear of the boat.
These Hella Work Lights are a thing of pure beauty and joy to my heart and mind not only for their incredible candlepower but their Black bodies are ribbed cast aluminium and that bracket is all 316 stainless. What’s not to love?!!
We also have several of these Italian made Osculati Faro LED spot lights for when we want a more narrow beam to go greater distances.
Similar to the Hella lights these ribbed bodies are also all cast aluminium with SS mounting hardware and epoxy sealed wiring to help them survive and thrive in the harsh marine environments and weather we will be subjecting everything to.
More “Hella a light” was the arrival of these two LED lights on flexible stalks that will be mounted at each helm for when we need to read something up close. These have both a bright white LED as well as a dimmer Red light to help retain our night vision when on passages.
As exciting as all those other lights are to me, THESE are the ones that really make my day as these are my working lights inside my Workshop, Forepeak and Engine Room.

For me and I think most others, there is nothing that beats having GREAT lighting when you are working and these babies are truly amazing in how much bright white light they blast out into all the spaces where I work aboard. All those lumens are augmented all the more as they bounces off all those White Alucobond surfaces on all the walls and ceilings such that the whole space is eXtremely well lit. Just wait till we peel off all that protective plastic film and these surfaces are pure White Light!

For those interested, here is a shot of the back of one of these LED work lights. They would have thousands of great applications and are highly recommended by this worker.

TOWERS of SHOWERS!

Cihan was his usual Productive Plumber self again this week and he has now has these gleaming Stainless Steel “shower towers” all plumbed and working.

This is a slightly different model than ours but it will help you visualize what they look like in action. If I don’t come out of shower session with this then I must be doing something really wrong. To say nothing of how much fun our GrandKids will have with it as there is a matching unit in the Guest Cabin Shower.
Which looks like this.
The new fittings he needed arrived this week so Cihan was also able to finish mounting these beautiful SS towel wormers that are another work of art and engineering to me.
There are also two matching units of these towel warmers, one in the Guest Bathroom and one that will go on the far wall you see here in the Master Bathroom. The four smaller holes you see here (click to enlarge) are for the SS mounting tubes and then the larger ones on the bottom are the threaded SS fittings where the PEX hot water lines emerge.
These Turkish made beauties are just fabulous to work with and this square bodied tap to turn the hot water on/off is another good example of the “little things” that make all the difference with both their solid heft being solid SS as well as the squared off design which has them blend into the overall sculptured look and give no indication that they are also functioning taps.
One step back to show you the whole towel warmer.
And a few more steps back to show you the whole Shower and Bathroom space. The etched glass walls that will form the corner of the Shower where I am standing to take this picture are due to arrive next week and just wait till you see how this space looks with them all installed and lit up!
The Bio-Bidet 1000 on our VacuFlush toilets are now all installed along with their controls. This controller is wireless and clips into a small plastic hanger on the side of the cabinet.
Or you can run the basic functions with the SS control head you see on the aft left side of the seat and see that all is working well with the LED indicator lights on the Right.

I received a number of queries and comments about these bidet units so I will let the following pictures do all the talking to answer those.
Human contact required to avoid any “surprises” when curious onlookers are checking things out.
And you can study this better shot of the remote controller to figure out the rest.

Oh, and yes, there is a matching unit for all our guests in their cabin too.
Elsewhere in the Master Cabin, Serkan has the templates for the two mirrors on these cabinet drawers temporarily attached to check that they are the just right size before they get sent off to the glass and mirror shop.
And he is also making up similar templates for the other mirrors in our Master Cabin such as this one on the inside of the Cabin Entrance door.

eXhausting!

Cihan also received the 127mm / 5” ID exhaust hose this week so he got starting installing the first short length underneath the Day Tank on the Starboard / Right side of the Workshop.
This relatively short length hose, about 1.2m / 4 ft, connects to the AL pipe welded into the Engine Room wall on the far Left and carries the exhaust gasses over and out the same size AL pipe welded into the side of the hull. These special rubber hoses are able to safely carry the exhaust gasses because they have all been well cooled by the sea water injected into the hot exhaust gas up at the top of the Engine Room.

eXtraction is eXhausting TOO!

As you can see, it was all hands on deck quite literally as the boys got to installing all the extraction fans and dampeners inside the Vent Boxes on the Aft Deck. This is the Stbd/Right side Vent Box where the large rectangular ducts coming up out of the Workshop and the Engine Room exit and there is an extraction fan for each one.
This is the Vent Box on the Port/Left side where the opening on the upper Left goes all the way down to the floor of the Engine room and keeps Mr. Gee well fed with clean fresh air. The slotted square on the bottom Right is for the extraction of air out of the Guest Cabin.

The box on its side near the middle directly in front of the slotted opening is one of the demister or mist eliminator units which removes most of the salty humidity in the air before it heads down into the ER. More on that in a moment.

Here is a close shot of the upside down box in the lower Right foreground above and this is an example of how the various extraction fans are attached to their outer facing mounting plates which bolt to the Vent Boxes.
Like this.
This is an upside down Dampener that Uğur is attaching to its mounting plate which then bolts to the Vent Boxes similar to the extraction fans.

These Dampeners are installed on both the Intake Supply Air going into the Engine Room as well as the Extracted Air being pulled out and they are normally in the closed position so that no salty air is getting into the ER when we are not running Mr. Gee which dramatically reduces the consequences of salty air in the ER most of the time.
Here is what one of those Dampeners looks like when mounted into the Vent Box. The Orange box on the far Left of the Dampener is the motorized automated controller that Open/Closes the Dampener plate. And the White round cover you can just make out on the Left side of the Vent Box is to provide access to our hand if you ever need to manually Open/Close the Dampener.
Over on the opposite side Vent Box, the Dampener is mounted vertically inside the long rectangular duct mentioned above that takes the fresh air down to the bottom of the Engine Room. Dampener door is closed as you can see in this photo and as part of the start up procedure these dampeners are rotated open by their 24V electric motors and stay that way until just after we shut Mr. Gee down OR when the Sea-Fire system shuts everything down in the case of a fire.
I’ve received quite a few questions about these Mist Eliminators or Demisters which remove most of the salty humidity from the air before it goes inside the ER so here are a few close up shots so you can see how these work.
This is the rear view and basically the way these work is that these black plastic vanes inside force the air to flow through a convoluted path where the water droplets condense out of the air.
Hard to capture on camera but these Black plastic vanes are very complex somewhat wave like shapes inside with equally complex surfaces. These are all the result of years of research and testing apparently to perfect their ability to extract all that harmful salty water vapour which then runs out the little SS drain hole you can just make out in the bottom center of this photo. There is then a plastic tube that takes this extracted water down to the Sea Chest in the ER and back out to sea where it belongs.

See what I mean? eXhausting right?!!

PROPULSION SYSTEM ALIGNMENT:

Lastly for this week let me show you a bit about the night shift I’ve been on this past week working with some expert motor and CPP propulsion system aligners from another shipyard next door. Meet Emre on the Left, Hussein standing on the Right and that arm in the lower Right is ………….

…….. Hayretttin who is busy choosing the right 0.05mm feeler gauge as we are about to alight the output flange of the Nogva Servo Gearbox with the matching flange on the CPP Propeller Shaft.

Of course you have all met Mr. Gee, our Gardner 6LXB many times by now so he needs no introduction.
I won’t go into too much detail on this whole alignment process as it is likely not of too much interest to most, but here is what we are working on. The Red flange on the Right side here is attached as you can see to the forward end of the big 65mm OD propeller shaft going aft to the 4 bladed CPP propeller, and the matching Maroon painted flange that it is now butted up against is the flange on the Output shaft of the Nogva CPP Servo Gearbox. The goal is to get the inner faces where these two flanges come together PERFECTLY lined up.
After several hours of wrangling the now solidly connected Mr. Gee and Nogva Servo Gearbox assembly into position such that the center of both of those flanges perfectly line up, we now need to use the threaded rods on the six different “feet”, or flexible mounts, four of which attach Mr. Gee to the 25mm thick Engine Beds and then two which similarly attach the Nogva Gearbox to those same Engine Beds.

We use very thin 0.05mm / .002 inch feeler gauges to check 360 degrees around where these two flanges meet as this is the maximum allowable difference allowed. Zero space between them is ideal which we pretty much achieved by nights end with ever smaller adjustments to these six mounting feet.
Prior to all this, I had done that centering I mentioned above to get the Push/Pull Pitch rod with the male threaded end poking out of the center of the Prop Shaft on the Right, exactly lined up with the female threaded piston extending out of the Output Flange on the Nogva Gearbox on the Left.
There is a hydraulic pump inside the Servo Gearbox, hence the name, which pushes that piston forward and aft as you move the Pitch control lever at both helms. This in turn moves that Pitch Control Push/Pull rod fore and aft which is what is translated into rotational movement inside the hub at the center of the CPP Propeller which thus rotates each of the four prop blades in synch with each other to vary the pitch of the prop from zero which would be like “neutral” no thrust to the boat fore or aft and then at our choosing either rotating the blades and thus increasing their pitch to push the boat either forward or reverse.

Using a dial gauge I was able to move Mr. Gee + Nogva assembly to put the center of that output piston spot on the center of that threaded push/pull rod inside the prop shaft and then rotate the Nogva output flange to thread the rod into it.

There is a precise measurement of how far to thread that rod in so that the pitch rod is centered in its travel which is what you see here, and then I could tighten this lock nut to hold it in that position.

Once this was all done I could mount the two halves of that Red prop shaft flange and do the alignment I described above.
Et voila! A perfectly aligned Engine, Servo Gearbox and CPP prop shaft!

Now we take it all apart again after carefully marking the position of the mounting bolt holes in each of the six flexible feet as we need to lift the whole assembly up in the air to give us enough room to drill all those holes in the Engine Bed for those bolts. Next week’s night shift will be doing this and then going through the whole alignment procedure one last time and then bolting the six feet down to their final positions.

I know this is riveting stuff so do stay tuned for all that excitement next week!

Hope this wasn’t all too boring and that you will consider joining us again next week.

-Wayne

« Older Entries

Mr. Gee is Cagey & Exhausting Progress Update XPM78-01 Möbius Jan 11-15, 2021

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OK, OK! Now back to our regular programming ………………..

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”T” is also for Tender:

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LITTLE JOBS = BIG DEAL:

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CHAING STOPPER:

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Cihan does EXHAUSTING WORK!

DIVINE DINETTE TABLE & PEDESTAL SYSTEM:

Fire, Feet & Fans – XPM78-01 Möbius Progress Update Oct 26-31, 2020

FIRE SUPPRESSION SYSTEM:

LIGHTS!

TOWERS of SHOWERS!

eXhausting!

eXtraction is eXhausting TOO!

PROPULSION SYSTEM ALIGNMENT:

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