Well, finally finding the time to put together this quick update we have ALL been waiting for and <spoiler alert> let me just start with what you really want to know; yes, the brand new Mr. Gee version 2.0 is now fully installed and Möbius is back up and running! This update will focus on the installation of the new Mr. Gee and then I’ll do a second one in a few days with outline of where Mr. Gee has powered Möbius to since we left Kalymnos last week on Oct. 30th.
Let me just say that since finally departing our four month home port in Kalymnos, we have now put about 600 nautical smiles under our keel and I am writing this to you from Marina di Ragusa down on the SE corner of Sicily. We are waiting for the next weather window to continue our travels West and out of the Med across the North coast of Africa, and hope to leave tomorrow (Monday 7 Oct) or Tuesday so it may take me a few days to get that second travel update written and get some internet to be able to post it but do stay tuned for that. Now, back to as quick a summary as I can do about the installation of the all new Mr. Gee.
It took almost two months for the original Mr. Gee to get from Kalymnos to the Gardner works in Canterbury England but fortunately the return trip was MUCH faster and “only” took about two weeks for this sight for sore eyes turned up on the dock beside us. All still fully sealed up and just as it had been when it left Gardner Marine Diesel GMD the day after I flew back from being there for the full dynamometer testing that I outlined in a previous post. Even Barney was wondering when this abyss in the Engine Room was going to be filled up again and he was on hand to supervise the whole installation. James and Michael at GMD had kindly included the remaining epoxy paint and put that in the box on the pallet. Manufactured September 2022 so can’t get too much newer than that! After SO much time and effort, it was sure a great feeling to unwrap this all new version of Mr. Gee and get busy preparing him for the installation. If you look closely at the brass plate on the fuel injection system you can see that it is currently set up for Continuous 100% use with 150 BHP @ 1650 RPM, and as some Gardner fans say these are “Draught Horses”! I spent a few hours reinstalling a few things such as the big Electrodyne alternator that is powered by the PTO (Power Take Off) as it was easier to do while sitting out on the dock. Then I protected the polished valve covers up top with some foam and set up the two chain blocks front and rear for adjusting the angle of the engine as we lowered it in place. The crane truck arrived right on time which was also a nice change as the first time for taking the engine out, it took over a week to arrange. Didn’t take long to lift the 1200kg engine off the dock ……… …… and onto Möbius. Kind compliments of brothers Michael and John Psarompas who own Argo Oil & Tug Boat, two of the crew from the Argo Tug Boat behind us kindly came over to lend some extra hands to help lower the engine into the Engine Room and set the motor mounts onto the anxiously awaiting engine beds. As many of you know this wasn’t my first rodeo wrestling Mr. Gee into place and with these four extra hands it all went quite quickly. And the all new Mr. Gee was finally settled into his new home and mated up with the Nogva CPP Controllable Pitch Propeller gear box. It took me about two days to remount all the systems such as exhaust,the second Electrodyne alternator (top left), fuel lines, engine guard bars and then do the engine/prop shaft alignment and torquing down the engine mounts to lock it all in place.
Apologies for this quick and dirty video of the first starting of the all new Mr. Gee v2.0 but hope it adds a bit to how this all went. I gave a bit of an overview before starting up the engine and then did a bit of a walk around of the engine to show things such as the oil pressure, exhaust water flow, etc. Hope you enjoy!
Out of both curiosity and safety I decided to pump the diesel Day Tank empty and open up the bottom inspection port to see how things had faired in the almost two years since the first fill during the build. Very happy to find what you see here, aka NOTHING. The sump you see in the lower Left had been doing its job of collecting some of the bits from construction and I had been able to drain these out previously as per the design. Silver cylinder in the top Left is the Maretron pressure sensor for measuring tank level and the pickup outlet is over on the Right.
Bolted the inspection cover back on (lower left) and refilled this 660 Liter Day Tank with fresh clean diesel out of the main tanks. New engine called for new filters so installed these and bled them to get rid of any air. Also took the time to put coloured zip ties on each of the valve handles on the three fuel manifolds to help me double check that I have the right ones open or closed for different operations such as transferring fuel between the main tanks, polishing the fuel (aka cleaning), filling the Day Tank and of course the supply and return for feeding Mr. Gee when he is running. Once I had Mr. Gee and the rest of the systems on Möbius back up and running there was quite a bit of bureaucratic steps we needed to go through before we were allowed to leave. The boat had been officially “detained” by the Greek Coast Guard and they required that we hire this engineer to prove that the engine and the boat was back up and running again. All of the various officials, offices and agencies all needed to collect their “pound of flesh” and ample Euros which took longer than the actual installation of the new engine! Last but not least, we completed a quick sea trial by doing a big loop outside the harbour with the engineer aboard and we finally had the green light from him and then went through another round of approvals and payments to all the agencies in town but by end of day on 29th of October, 2022, almost four months after we first arrived, we were cleared to depart Kalymnos! We treated ourselves to one last “date night” on this lovely island of Kalymnos that had come to feel like home and reminded ourselves of just how fortunate we had been to have had the opportunity to get to know this small Greek island and so many of her wonderful inhabitants who had become so familiar and were all so kind and generous to us.
Thanks for the memories and Bye Bye Kalymnos! We feel SO privileged to have had this extended time to get to know you.
Not as much progress as we would have wanted to report this week as many of Team Möbius were MIA working on other boats at Naval Yachts and also prepping one of the boats beside us for its Owner’s visit tomorrow.
However, that didn’t stop the rest of us from making good progress and we achieved several big milestones that we are very eXcited to share with you now. So get a good beverage and comfy chair of your choice and come along for this week’s Möbius.World Show & Tell.
The Captain & Mr. Gee Get Cranky!
Several years ago, when I was answering some of Christine’s typically probing questions about why Mr. Gee our Gardner 6LXB was the Goldilocks Just Right, Just for us Choice for the main (and only) engine in XPM78-01 Möbius, Christine likes to say “You had me at Hand Cranked”.
This is in reference to me mentioning that one of the Gardner’s many eXtremely appealing features is that they could be fitted with this Chain Hand Crank option.
As you can see, this kind of “crankiness” makes my Captain eXtremely happy which makes me eXXtremely happy!
Very KISSS Keep It Simple Smart Safe as you can see with a rod running along the top of of the engine with handles at both ends with an Upper Chainwheel that transfers the crank’s rotation via a Chain down to a Lower Chainwheel keyed onto the engines crankshaft. Michael and his team at Gardner Marine Diesel or GMD in Canterbury England were able to salvage all these parts off one of the many 6LXB’s they have in their inventory and sent them to me many months ago and I’ve been working on fitting them to Mr. Gee ever since.
You would think it would be a relatively quick and simple process to just clean and paint all these parts and install them on Mr. Gee …………………… but you’d be wrong! One problem was that Mr. Gee is one of the later models of 6LXB and it had this quite different Hand Crank with just one handle on the front of the engine and a different crankshaft and Chainwheel setup down on the new style crankshaft. Secondly, as you can see in this shot of the front support and Upper Chainwheel I’ve mounted onto Mr. Gee, there is no room up front for the Hand Crank handle, let alone enough room for me to get in there to crank it. So I needed to come up with a “Hybrid” Hand Crank setup that would allow me to marry the Old style with the Hand Crank Handle at the rear, to the new crankshaft end up front.
And just to put a particularly sharp point on this challenge, I also needed to drive the Jabsco Sea Water pump and one of our monster 250 Amp @24V Electrodyne alternators off the front of the crankshaft as well.
Hmmmmm
Let’s just say that the front of Mr. Gee became a very busy and challenging spot for me to sort out.
When I am doing this kind of problem solving and exploration of new design ideas I have evolved to using pieces of stiff cardboard I cut up from shipping boxes to capture the critical dimensions and sketch out my rough ideas. It is a surprisingly efficient system as I get to reuse the many cardboard boxes all our hundreds of shipments come in and the stiffness of the cardboard makes is very easy to sketch on when I’m laying under or over an engine for example with my digital Vernier calipers or tape measure in hand and recording all the critical dimensions. I then use Microsoft Office Lens utility on my Pixel4XL phone to digitize these sketches so I have a more permanent digital copy to keep and one I can print out if needed.
I don’t expect these to make much sense to anyone else but they work eXtremely well for me to record all these details and dimensions as I work my way through the different ways I come up with to solve a particular problem, create 3D models of them and ultimately machine or fabricate the parts I need and finally get them installed. After much head scratching and sketching, eventually this layout emerged as a way that I could fit both the RED Chain based Hand Crank system and the GREEN cogged timing belt system for driving the Electrodyne “Big Red #1” in the upper Right here and the Jabsco sea water pump on the far Left.
I will show you the Green cogged timing belt drive system next week and show you the Red chain based Hand Crank system now. With all the dimensions and my ideas roughed out on cardboard I then move over to Autodesk Fusion 360 to create a 3D model of all these parts where I can put my ideas to the test and see if they will actually work out. This is a quick screen grab of the model I came up with from the sketches you saw above. I won’t bore you with all the details but for orientation Mr. Gee is mostly off the screen on the far Right and the Red disk is the Lower Chainwheel on Mr. Gee’s Crankshaft running horizontally across the bottom of the screen. On the front side of this is the cogged pulley driving the rubber timing belt that goes up to the cogged wheel on the Jabsco sea water pump.
* Note: I didn’t bother to model the actual chain and sprocket teeth so you will have to imagine that being wrapped around the Red Chainwheel.
The Green and Blue disks on either side of the Red Chainwheel are two of several flanged parts I needed to machine for my Hybrid Old/New Gardner Hand Crank system.
Oh, and did I mention that the Old Gardner Hand Crank system used a different pitch of chain than the New style?
So I had GMD send me the Upper and Lower Chainwheels from the New style that would fit nicely on the New style of Crankshaft that Mr. Gee has but the third Idler Chainwheel (part #37 in the Gardner illustration up above) had to the the Old style Chain as it is part of the cast aluminium bracket that supports the Old style cranking shaft. FYI: Eventually I will design and machine a whole new Idler Chainwheel with the New style Chain pitch but for now I just mounted the Old Idler in my drill press and hand milled the teeth to get the New Chain to fit as you see here.
This is that Blue coloured Flange I pointed out AL in the rendering of the 3D Fusion 360 model above, which was quit easy to machine on a lathe out of solid aluminium round stock and then broach the keyway through the inner hole so it will be locked into the 3/8 x 3/8” key on the front end of the Crankshaft.
Now you can see how this newly machined AL Flange slides into the New style Lower Chainwheel which is now all sand blasted clean and painted Black.
All well and good but I’m sure that most of you are now asking “How the heck does this work to turn Mr. Gee’s Crankshaft Wayne?
That’s the job of the eXtra part you see here that rotates on a pin sticking out of the Chainwheel. This little part is the key to making the Hand Crank work and is called a “Ratcheting Pawl” part #3 in the Gardner Illustration above. I don’t have a milling machine (yet!), but to badly reuse The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, (for those of you old enough to remember) “We don’t need no stinkin’ milling machine” right?
Nothing that a bit of ingenuity and my handy dandy 45 year old drill press and shiny new vice can’t handle. I machined a short shaft to just fit inside the hole of AL bushing and tightened that in the vice jaws. This allowed me to slowly rotate the AL bushing into the 4 flute spiral milling cutter in my drill press so I could mill away the four recesses for the Pawl to fit into and ended up looking like this. So to Hand Crank Mr. Gee you simply reach down and rotate the Pawl counter clockwise so it engages in one of the four recesses like this.
Now when Christine turns that Hand Crank Handle on the Aft end of Mr. Gee as you see her doing in the opening photo, the Upper Chainwheel rotates the Chain CCW, which transfers that force down to the Lower Chainwheel which the Pawl has now locked to the Crankshaft and around goes Mr. Gee! This takes a good bit of muscle but with the compression relief levers keeping the intake valves open it isn’t too difficult to bring Mr. Gee’s massive flywheel up to speed and then you flip the compression levers back off and Mr. Gee chugs to life and begins to purrrrrr. Doesn’t get too much more KISSS or reliable than that!
Oh, and for those of you following all this, as Mr. Gee starts up you no longer need to turn the Hand Crank Handle and so the Pawl “ratchets” out of the recess back to this disengaged position such that the Chainwheel is now stationary while the AL Flange and Crankshaft spin together. To finish putting this all together, I machined a groove into the AL bushing for this spring steel circlip to fit into which keeps the Chainwheel aligned and spinning on the AL bushing. With the Lower Chainwheel assembled onto its new AL Flange, into the Engine Room I go and with a bit of TefGel 45 to help it slides just perfectly onto the keyed portion of the front end of the Crankshaft.
That modified Idler Chainwheel is in the upper Right here and it adjusts sideways in the slot you can see to the right of the Chain which you tighten down to keep the Chain Just Right Tight. Not much space in here so a bit difficult to photograph but hopefully you can now see how the whole Chain driven Hand Crank system works. And to come full circle, you now understand what put that great grin on my Beautiful Bride and Captain.
INTERIOR UPDATES:
While we were cranking away on Mr. Gee, Hilmi and Ramazan were cranking away up in the SuperSalon so let’s go see what they have been up to this past week.
Ramazan has finished installing all the Ado LVT vinyl plank flooring and you may recall that Uğur, Nihat and I installed these two SS locking lift handles in the large hatch to access the Basement that is under the whole of the SuperSalon floor. Most of Ramazan’s masterfully laid down flooring is covered in protective cardboard but you can see how nicely he has fit the edges around the hatch so they are barely visible.
But what’s that I see over on the far Left here? Aha! Our 50” Samsung 4K SmarTV has arrived and will soon be mounted on a fully adjustable mounting system that fits into the recess in the now opened hinged and slotted Rosewood door.
But who’s that hiding behind that door? Of course! Hilmi and Christine are busy finishing up all the wiring for AC, DC, Ethernet and N2K that runs inside the large space behind the TV. This is also where our Boat Computer #1 will reside and Christine is anxious to start connecting it up and getting all our display screens up and running next week. While she waits for Hilmi to finish the wiring behind the 50” TV, Christine fired up Boat Computer #2 and started setting things up in the SkyBridge Helm Station. In the midst of all this, Sinan was back this week to start sewing up the Sunbrella covers like this one for that Upper Helm Station. He is also making a similar cover for the Upper Helm Chair and I will show you that next week.
Boot Stripe:
Not a lot of progress on the Bottom Paint this week but they did get started on the 100mm / 4” Black Boot Stripe that makes the transition between the bare aluminium hull sides and the InterSleek 1100SR silicone Foul Release bottom paint which I have marked off for the painters here. The International Epoxy primer has now been on longer than the maximum recoat time so they needed to do a light sanding so that the International Perfection Polyurethane paint will adhere well. The laser level makes is SO must faster and easier to mark out perfectly straight and level lines for the masking tape to follow.
Next week the paint crew will hopefully be on site to spray on the Black Boot Stripe and then once it is dry they can mask it off and start applying the InterSleek Foul Release Bottom Paint. Hope to be able to show you all that next week as well.
All Donations Gratefully Received!
Hmmmm……………..
Why is THAT truck parking beside Möbius?? Yup! I’ve saved two of our bigger milestones for the end of this week’s Show & Tell. That’s a diesel fuel truck and Cihan is about to bring the very first drops of diesel fuel into our six integral fuel tanks! It took a lot of time but I think we came up with an eXtremely effective design for both the Fuel Fills and Vents on Möbius. With the fully sealed lid removed you have ready access to these three Fill Pipes on the Starboard/Right side and a matching set on the Port/Left side. These each connect to one of the six integral fuel tanks at the bottom of the hull with 40mm / 1 5/8” ID rubber fuel hose. Just forward of the Fuel Fills, these inverted 40mm U pipes are similarly connected by that same size rubber fuel hose to the vents on each fuel tank. Together these both worked just perfect on this first fueling test with no foaming or “spit back”. But mistakes can and will happen so we designed these Fuel Fill stations to have a large capacity spill tanks below the Fill Pipes so that any diesel that does overflow will simply run into this spill tank and drain back into the fuel tank. No mess, no fuss, no bother. When the Fuel Fill cover is in place it completely seals off all the Fill Tubes from the outside air and from any sea water on decks. The Fuel Vent pipes have this slotted cover so they stay well vented and there is a drain pipe inside to remove any seawater that might make its way through the slots. For this first load of diesel, we only took on enough fuel to do all the commissioning of diesel based equipment such as the Kabola KB45 boiler, all the fuel transfer pumps, Alfa Laval fuel centrifuge, fuel polishing system and Mr. Gee of course and then enough for the first set of sea trials. Hence, we only took on a “measly” 2150 Liters / 567 USG out of the 14,600 Liters / 3860 USG that we will take on prior to our first passage. However, as per the intro, all donations are still very much welcomed!
X marks the Spot!
OK, are you ready for the final milestone that Christine and I just completed yesterday?
Does this help you guess what we are up to? Helpful hint: It took place UP here. That’s right! Time to apply these CNC cut vinyl letters and numbers to put the XPM78-01 markings big and bold on Möbius’ Bow. All pretty simple to do. First mark off the top edge of the lettering with a straight edge and pencil. Give the area a good cleaning with 3M Scotch Brite pads and water, rinse well and then sponge on a coat of clean water with lots of liquid dish soap in it so you can slide the lettering as needed to get it perfectly aligned. Peel off the inside layer of the peel & stick lettering and press it onto the soapy wet hull and use your fingers and a plastic spreader to squeeze out all the water and get all the letters and numbers perfectly aligned and adhered to the hull. Then carefully peel off the outer layer and go over each letter with lots of pressure on soapy fingers and plastic scrapers taking special care to ensure that all edges are tightly bonded to the hull and there are no bubbles or wrinkles. Bring in some cheap labour if you must. Take your time to go over each letter and number several times. Then stand back to check out the proportions and placement.
Goldilocks!! And yes, we would be delighted to be mistaken for a military/coastguard ship in the unlikely event that anyone is considering approaching us with mal intent! Now THAT is a Bow to be proud of! And that’s a wrap for the week that was February 01-06, 2021.
Thank you all SO much for taking the time to join us here and we hope you will be back again next week. In the interim please be sure to put your questions and comments in the “Join the Discussion” box below.
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!
The focus this week was on building the aluminium Console for the Upper Helm Station in the SkyBridge (the GO part of this week’s title), getting Mr. Gee his fuel supply, continuing to check off more electrical and interior jobs and prepare our anchor chain for anchoring (the Stop part of this week’s title).
We were delighted to welcome back more members of Team Möbius as they return from the other boats they’ve been working on so let’s jump right into this week’s Show & Tell so you can see it all for yourself.
SkyBridge Helm Station
Here is the design we came up with for the aluminium console that will hold all our navigation equipment for the Upper Helm Station in the SkyBridge. Click to enlarge this (or any image) to see some of the items that will be installed in this console and I’ll put a list of all of these below.
As shown in this layout drawing, the equipment that will be mounted in this console include:
2 Side by Side 24″ LiteMax NavPixel Daylight Readable Touch Monitors
Furuno 711C Autopilot Control Head
Vetus Bow Thruster Joystick Model BPAJ
Maxwell VWC 4000 Windlass Up/Down Control
Kobelt Engine Throttle and CPP Pitch Controls
Kobelt Pitch Gauge
Standard Horizon GX6000 Fixed-Mount VHF Radio
Kobelt Control Switches & Remote Walkabout plug-in socket
SH SCU-30 Wireless Access Point
Exterior Lights switch panel
Engine Stop/Start buttons
Horn button
Although the SkyBridge area is quite well protected by the solid roof above created by the aluminium frame for the 8 320W solar panels mounted on top, and the removable plexiglass windows which wrap 360 degrees around the whole SkyBridge, it will still be exposed to wind and rain at times so we needed to build a waterproof console to protect all these critical and eXpen$ive electronics. We had been working on the design of this console for a long time and were very pleased to be able to enlist the help of Burak who had been our 3D modeler when we first started working with Naval 3 years ago, to work out the details and finalise this design. One additional design element we needed to accomplish was that this whole console needed to be removable for two reasons. First being that it needs to be removed when we convert the boat to “hunkered down/Canal mode” and lower the articulated roof. And secondly Christine and I want to try out having this Upper Helm Station in different locations in the SkyBridge as we use the boat for the first year or so. We think that its current location at the Aft end of the SkyBridge will work out best but we won’t know for sure till we can live with it in different scenarios and different positions.
Burak sent over all the 2D construction drawings last week and so Uğur jumped right in on Monday morning and spent most of this past week taking this console from start to finish by Friday. Let’s follow along as he works. It would have taken another week or more to send out all the AL plate to be CNC cut and I think Uğur enjoyed the chance to go back to some “old school” ways so he quickly laid out all the parts directly on the AL plate and cut out the pieces with the in-house bandsaw and a cutting disk on his angle grinder. As we have tried to do throughout the design and build of XPM78-01 Möbius, we KISS’ed (Keep It Simple & Safe) the design of this console so there are only 8 pieces in total and they are all made out of 5mm / 3/16” flat AL plate which are easily tacked in place. To provide ready access for installing and maintaining all the electrical connections and components inside this console we made the whole back side a removable plate that will be bolted in place with a watertight gasket. With a quick check that all the dimensions and angles were all correct, Uğur got to work doing all the finish welding.
BTW, for those who might wonder why all the photos of welding have these lines in them it is due to the MIG welders being the newer Pulse type and the camera freeze-frames these pulses. With the welds cleaned up a bit Uğur laid out the various cut-outs for each item to be installed on the dashboard and then cut these out with a hole saw or cutting wheel. We are still waiting for a few switches to arrive but we have all the primary components so Uğur and I did a quick check to make sure they all fit properly before continuing. Next it was time to finalise the location of the console on top of the foundation built into the SkyBridge (and for Cihan our Master Plumber to get in this quick cameo!) The two cushions on the Port/Left side allow someone to comfortably join the person on watch as well as a great spot to lie down for a nap up here. After trying a few different spots we settled on this positioning with the same amount of overhang around the three sides. This is our Llebroc Helm Chair which will soon …….. reside here, in the center of the space behind the dashboard.
This penetration on the inside provides a watertight pass through for all the cables. Once all the cables have been installed and all systems checked that they are fully functional, this and all other penetrations throughout the boat are filled with certified “goo” to create a fully watertight seal. Here is how the Upper Helm Station it looks from the back side. Holding the camera at about eye height here to check the sight lines which are great as you can easily see the whole forward end of the bow anchor area. Whenever we prefer to have an even better close up view of around the boat, we have one of these Kobelt 7176 “Walk-About” remote controllers at both Helms.
With 10m / 33ft of cable, I’m not willing to trust wireless for this critical control, we can stand almost anywhere on the boat from the Swim Platform to the Bow, either side deck and from anywhere in either the Main or SkyBridge Helm areas and have all the controls literally at our fingertips when docking or take this remote controller to wherever we are sitting.
The two side levers control Throttle and Pitch and up on top are controls for Rudder, Bow Thruster, CPP Clutch and Horn. Can’t wait to try all these out on our upcoming sea trials once we launch.
And Yes, Launch Date is still “Thursday”, just don’t ask which one!
Plumbing Progress:
We finally have Cihan back full time again (we hope!) and he was his usual busy productive self all over Möbius. Cihan and I started by working on the two heat exchangers ….. …….. that needed to be mounted in the very aft end of the Engine Room. We built in this removable section of the flooring to provide full access to this important area where the prop shaft enters the boat. The composite grid flooring lifts out and then this aluminium floor plate can be unbolted and removed as well. Access is particularly important whenever I need to service the “dripless” Tides Marine SureSeal Drip Free Self-Aligning Shaft Seal that keeps all the water out of the joint where the prop shaft exits the log tube. I will cover more details when we are installing this SureSeal but here is a quick overview of how it works. Today though we wanted to access the very aft ends of the two Engine Beds on either side where we wanted to mount these two Bowman heat exchangers. The red one on the far Port/Left side is for cooling the hydraulic oil in the Nogva CPP Gearbox and the Silver one on the far Stbd/Right side is for cooling the Gardner’s water/antifreeze engine coolant. Both of these heat exchangers have cool seawater being pumped through their outer shells while the oil is pumped through a round “stack” of CuNi (Copper/Nickle) tubes that you can see here in this cutaway illustration. Fun Fact: Bowman is another one of the world leading industrial companies we have found here in Turkey and so it was fun to find that our Nogva Norwegian CPP system came with that Red Bowman Heat Exchanger.
My apologies for getting too busy to get too many photos of this installation of these two heat exchangers but the basic flow of the seawater is that it first enters the Left end of the Silver Heat Exchanger at the top of this photo, exits out the rear and then flows through the Gray (protective wrap) hose on the far Right here where it will enter the aft end of the Red Heat Exchanger at the bottom. Inside the Engine Room, the seawater exits the front end of the Red Bowman Heat Exchanger through another rubber hose that goes up to the Halyard SS mixing elbow on the Gardner’s wet exhaust system and then exits the boat through the large Exit Sea Chest in the ER. Much more to come on all that once we start installing the exhaust system in the next few weeks. Another new plumbing addition that Cihan installed this past week is the small little circulation pump with the White faceplate you can see at the bottom middle of this photo of the underside of the Stbd/Right side Workbench in the Workshop. These Jabsco/Xylem 24V “vario” pumps are very cool and very eXpen$ive but boy do they work well. These are a relatively new pump generation that are super quite with minimal energy consumption, shaftless spherical motor and permanent magnet technology. On Möbius we are using this D5 Vario 38/700B pump to keep hot water circulating through our DHW (Domestic Hot Water) loop that ensures that there is always hot water immediately available to every hot water tap and shower on the boat. No more wasting time and water while you wait for hot water to come out of the sink faucet or shower nozzle!
Speaking of hot water, the Captain aka Christine, is eXtremely eXcited about Cihan installing two of these SS towel warmers; one in each cabin’s Head/Bathroom!
Christine has been wanting to have one of these for years and after a very long and winding road to find these Goldilocks just right versions, she will finally have one in our Master Cabin as will all our guests in their Bathroom. Yet another example of the Turkish manufacturers making eXtremely high quality products, Christine fell in lust for these “Laris” model SS towel warmers from Hamman Radiator. The towel warmers attach to the walls with these very clever SS tubes which Cihan first attaches to the walls using an expanding bolt on the inside of each tube.
And then there are four round SS pegs on the back of the towel warmers which slide into these tubes and are locked in place with the little set screw you can see on the bottom here.
The two SS square fittings the bottom are the water valves to control the flow of hot water through the towel warmer.
Here is what the finished mounting looks like.
Many won’t understand, but to my eye, all of this hardware and the towel racks themselves are just beautiful works of art and engineering that are part of our “boat jewelry” collection on Möbius.
Interior Progress:
Looking around our Master Head/Shower/Bathroom do your sharp eyes might spot a few other new additions?
One job Serkan just completed is the mounting of those two SS latches now installed on those bottom two cabinet doors underneath where the sink will mount. And if you look very closely you will see that the White Corian countertop has arrived. There will be a clear glass partition that extends up that slot between the shower seat and the ceiling and will be sealed to that vertical surface at the end of this countertop. And what is this new addition that just showed up this week beside the VacuFlush toilet? Aha! That’s the wireless remote control panel for the BioBidet BB-1000 Supreme bidet seat. It clips into a holder mounted on the cabinet so the curious can remove it and discover all the MANY functions available. The same BioBidet is installed in the Guest Cabin as well BTW.
Surely you didn’t think I put the eXplorer in XPM for no reason did you?
More examples of how XPM78-01 Möbius is a true world eXplore can be seen in another new addition this week as Hilmi starts installing all our Vimar “Arké Metal” switches and plug ins. We have designed Möbius to be a true “World Boat” and so she has both 120V 60Hz and 230V 50Hz AC plugs like these throughout the boat. We also have wired CAT7 ethernet plugs spread throughout the boat for maximum internet speeds. This one is tucked away below the “floating” shelf on Christine’s side of our King size bed. And these are what the matching Vimar light switches look like. Of course these will all look MUCH better once we remove all the protective plastic coverings and do a good cleanup prior to launch, but until then we are very glad to have all the interior surfaces covered up while construction continues. And here is Hilmi installing a set of four of those Vimar switches for the LED lights around the stairwell leading down into the Master Cabin. Serkan has also been busy in the Master cabin adding finishing touches such as these solid Ro$ewood handholds on the “Swiss” (as in Swiss Army Knife) door that is the door for both the entrance into the Master Cabin and the full length hanging locker as it is here. He needed to radius both ends of these so that they cleared the door jambs when closed on the Entryway. The upper panel will soon be covered with the same Green/Gray leather you see throughout the Master Cabin walls.
Aluminum Finishing:
Nihat also had a very productive week as he took on the eXtremely big job of finishing all the exterior aluminium surfaces. We’ve settled on the “brushed” look that these 3M abrasive discs create when used with a random orbital sander such as this pneumatic one in the photo here.
Let us know what do you think of this look but we are very pleased with it.
Feeding Mr. Gee!
I managed to make more time for Mr. Gee again this week and focused on installing his “feeding” system to deliver the Goldilocks just right amount of scrupulously clean diesel fuel.
This is one of his six fuel injectors that have been refurbished to factory new condition by Michael and his crew at Gardner Marine Diesel at the Gardner “factory” in Kent England. Injectors just don’t get much better or simpler than this. NO electronics just a simple supply connection under the Red seal on the Right and a matching return connection on the Left. Each injector slides into the tubular hole you can see underneath the tip of the injector here. Then one of these lever arms is tightened down using the castellated nut just to the Left of the Red cap here. This lever presses the angled end of the injector body into its matching seat inside the tubular hole in the cylinder head and forms a perfect seal to keep all those literally eXplosive forces inside the cylinder where they belong and where they then supply all the mighty “draft horsepower” and torque that Mr. Gee delivers to our propeller. Now each of those injectors need an equally robust set of piping to deliver the diesel fuel to/from them so my next job was to clean up all these steel fuel lines and give them a couple of coats of shiny black epoxy.
Can’t have any bare steel on Mr. Gee that would just rust now can we?! Here is what those shiny Black steel fuel lines look like when they are connected to the bottom outlets on the Fuel Injection Pump and then go up to the injectors in the cylinder heads through the AL valve covers I have set in place here.
Again my apologies for being too busy installing all these fuel components to take more photos but I will take more this coming week and put them into next week’s Progress Update for you.
For now I hope this quick shot of where I left of yesterday (Sat. Oct. 10th) will do.
Yachts Play Games Bula Bula Right?!
Christine and I spent Saturday morning doing a job that believe it or not, we have long been looking forward to; painting the length marking strips on our 13mm / 1/2” galvanized HT anchor chain.
The joy in this job is that it reminds us that in the not too distant future (we hope!) we will be using these marks to tell us how much anchor chain we have let out in the latest anchorage we have just arrived at.
We started by dragging all 300 meters / 328 feet of chain off the factory pallet onto the shop floor and arranging it in 10 meter long loops with paper underneath both ends where we would be spray painting the chain. There are a LOT of different ways to mark an anchor chain and even more opinions about which is best but we have both anchored thousands of time in our marine lives and find that painting different colours onto the chain and then adding some matching coloured nylon zip ties is the Goldilocks just right method for us. We paint a different colour combination each 10 meters / 33’ and to help us remember the distance of each colour we came up with the acronym YPGBR based on the colours of paint we have used this time. As you might figure out from this photo, YPGBR stands for Yellow-Pink-Green-Blue-Red which is the order of the colours we painted onto the chain every 10 meters.
These are the odd numbered 10 meter marks starting with Yellow at the first 10m mark at the top here, then:
Pink @ 30m,
Green @ 50m,
Blue @ 70m
Red @ 90m At the other end of the loops we use a combination of the colours to mark the even starting lengths of;
Yellow/Pink @ 20 meters
Pink/Green @ 40m
Green/Blue @ 60m
Blue/Red @ 80m
Confusing right?
Nope! Easy for us to remember when the YPGBR acronym stands for is:
Yachts
Play
Games
Bula Bula**
Right?!! For those who might wonder, Bula is the Fijian greeting, always said with great Gusto, which we learned so well from all our years cruising in Fiji
Once the paint dried we flaked the chain back onto the pallet and it is now ready to be pulled aboard into its Chain Bin inside the Forepeak but that will have to wait for next week’s Progress Update here on Möbius.World.
Thanks as always for joining us and be sure to add your thoughts and ideas in the “Join the Discussion” box below.
This week’s Progress Update will be short and sweet as we are still working very shorthanded on XPM78-01 Möbius and it has been another very full weekend of boat related work for Christine and me so it is already late Sunday here as I sit down to write up this week’s Progress Update for you. However, progress is being made and there are interesting new developments to show you so let’s jump right in for this week’s Show & Tell aboard the Good Ship Möbius.
INTERIOR OUTFITTING:
Serkan was onboard for two days this week as he continues to work on the last of the hardware related work in the Master Cabin. On Tuesday he was installing the last of these beautiful SS latches on the doors and drawers on the front Starboard/Right side wall of the Master Cabin. He is down to the last latch on the bottom drawer below the vanity sink that you can see in the bottom Left here. A bit different perspective on Thursday, looking straight down the centerline towards the bow of the boat you can see that the bottom drawer has now been installed along with the two matching latches on the White bottom cupboard doors inside the Head/Bathroom on the far Left.
And Serkan has almost all the Green/Gray leather panels installed now, just the small strips around the Vanity cabinet at the far end. The door of that Vanity as well as the main Head door will soon have mirrors mounted on them to finish this area off. Upstairs in the SuperSalon an exciting new development is now visible. The window frames are now all filed with their plywood templates which will be sent out to the glass company next week so they can cut and prep all the 25mm/1” thick laminated window glass as well as the other glass for the flush Deck Hatches. And the “eyebrow” around the upper SkyBridge.
Still very much a “work in progress” but the whole SuperSalon is beginning to come into view now.
It will be a VERY big day when we finally get all the glass installed onboard and make Möbius fully weathertight for the first time.
ALUMINIUM WORK:
Our faithful Dynamic Duo of Uğur and Nihat had another full and productive week. If you were with us last week you’ll remember they were busy getting the ceiling over the Outside Galley on the Aft Deck all fully insulated wtih 50mm EPDM foam and the attachment points for the White AlucoBond laminated sheets that will form the ceiling itself. As with the other AlucoBond panels you’ve seen them mounting in the Engine Room and Workshop, they use these very nice covered screws to attach the AlucoBond to the aluminium L-bar supports. If you look closely at the screw in the upper Left here (click to enlarge any photo) you can just make out the brass threaded washer around the head of the countersunk screw and then the chrome dome cover thread onto that to completely hide the underlying screw head. Here is what the ceiling looks like viewed from down inside the SuperSalon looking up and out the Entryway WT Door onto the Aft Deck Galley.
For those wondering, the White, Black and Red lettering is just a protective film on all AlucoBond panels which will be removed just before we launch to reveal the White anodized aluminium outer surface of all these panels. And here is what it looks like from the other end out on the Aft Deck.
The Black wiring hanging down is for the six LED lights when we are cooking in this Outdoor Galley or dimmed down for safe lighting when entering or leaving the boat. This is the Port/Left Vent Box which served double duty as one of our Outdoor Galley countertops with this SS sink in it.
The rectangular openings are filled with the Mist Eliminator grills and damper system for the Entry Air going down to the bottom of the Engine Room. And this is the matching STBD/Right side Vent Box with the two rectangular openings for the extraction air from the Engine Room and Workshop.
The raised surface on the Left will be the main countertop in this Galley and the lower countertop will soon house the 220V electric Grill/BBQ.
All the countertops will be Turquoise Turkish marble to match that in the inside Galley.
For the observant ones who might wonder, the two small outlets on the Aft facing bottom of this Vent Box on the far Right are for the quick connect water fittings for our Deck Wash hoses; one for Fresh Water, one for Salt. However the most exciting new milestone Nihat and Uğur hit his past week was that they started on the final cleanup of all the bare exterior aluminium surfaces. Nihat spent most of the rest of the week working on the AL surfaces surrounding the SkyBridge.
This is a two part process, first grinding all the welds to be either flush or nicely radiused corners such as you can see Nihat has done here on the frame for the SkyBridge Console and the surrounding interior walls. Then he moved on to all the AL surfaces and welds on the surfaces outside of the SkyBridge itself. Such as the tops of these “horns” on either side of the Front hinged Solar Panel bank and the outer walkway that runs down the sides of the SkyBridge. Uğur took on the daunting task of grinding down all the welds on the outside surfaces of all the Hull plates. There are three longitudinal runs of welds down each side where the different thicknesses of hull plates butt together. The top one he is working on here is the only “hard chine” or corner on the hull which is a bit trickier as the weld needs to be ground down flush to each plate and then have a nice radius for the turn of the corner. It is difficult to capture in photos, especially at this early stage but this will give you an idea.
The surface on the far Right here is part of our experimenting with different kinds of final swirl patterns for the final finish to see which one we like the best. This shot will help you see how the process of finishing this corner seam goes. The corner on the far Left is close to what the finished chine or corner will look like and as you move to the Right towards Uğur you can see the progression “backwards” through the process with the raw untouched weld on the far Right. This longer view will help you understand the “daunting” part of Ugur’s job! 24 meters / 78 feet down each side suddenly becomes a VERY real and very big number when you are taking it on one centimeter or inch at a time and then three of those lengths (one for each weld seam, on each side. I’ll let you do the math! The maximum sheet size for aluminium plates is 6m/19ft so there is also a vertical seam where each end of the plates butt together that also needs to be ground flush. And up at the Bow there are a lot of transitions where the different hull plate thicknesses, 10, 12, 15, 20 and 25mm thick all come together where they meet up wtih the 25mm thick Keel Bar and that nice round transition up at the top where it wraps around our big solid AL “nose” cone for the snubber line when at anchor. By quitting time on Friday though Uğur and Nihat has already done their first passes of their welds on the Stbd/Right side so that was a LOT of progress in just a few days. Lots more to come next week so stay tuned as I show you the continued evolution of finishing the hull.
ELECTRICAL DETAILS:
The newest member of our growing family of Victron equipment finally arrived and got installed this week. It is the newest Victron Blue box that you can see in the bottom Right corner of this AL panel in the Forward Port corner of the Basement.
If you click and zoom in on this or the photo below, you can see that this tiny Cerbo GX box provides us with communication ports for USB, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and a MicroSD slot as well as the Victron VE.Can nd VE.bus connections.
We have had Victron equipment on our previous boats for many years with great success but one area that has been lacking is their integration in communicating with each other and the whole GX line is helping to resolve that. The Cerbo GX is also the newest bit of kit from Victron and makes a huge leap forward in getting all our Victron equipment onto our N2K network as well as bringing all our Victron into a much more integrated system. Just around that front Port corner is our “Solar City” wall where all 14 of our Victron SmartSolar 100/20 MPPT controllers which connect to each of our 14 320Wp Light Tech solar panels. The Gray box is the junction box for all the wiring and the 14 circuit breakers for the DC outputs of each MPPT controller.
PLUBMING:
Diagonally opposite on the Stbd Aft corner, we managed to steal our Plumbing Wizard Cihan back for one day and he finished installing the last 2 Whale Gray Water Tank pumps. This pump extracts Gray water out of the integral AL tank below and pushes it out the Sea Chest that you can just barely see on the far Left here.
Given that we are rarely in marinas and on anchor, the vast majority of the time our Gray Water (sinks & showers) goes directly to an exiting Sea Chest but when that’s not allowed, the Grey Water is stored in one of our three Gray Water tanks and hence the need for this Whale pump to empty those tanks when we are out at sea.
The big Clear/White tank on the Right is our Potable Water tank which ensures that we always have at least 150 litres of pure water to use even if we should somehow loose all access to the 7100L/1875USG of fresh water in our six integral AL tanks in the bottom of the hull.
Some of that fresh water goes into this HazMat Locker on the Port side of the Swim Platform for our Aft Shower. As you can see here we have hidden the shower mixing valve and head inside this locker to keep it out of the way and protected from daily UV and salt water. Cihan has mounted a holder for the shower spray head inside here as well so it is easy to just open the locker and grab the shower head to rinse off after a snorkel exploration or for a nightly shower. There will be another showerhead mount up on the Aft railing so you can have a hands free shower as well for shampooing your hair or whatever. Inside on the front Stbd/Right side of the Workshop by the Day Tank, Cihan was also able to install these two Black hockey puck shaped Maretron FFM100 Fuel Flow Meters. The upper Left Fuel Flow Meter is on the Fuel Supply line going into the dual FleetGuard 2-stage fuel filters and the one on the lower Right.is on the Return Fuel line from Mr. Gee our Gardner 6LXB engine. Having these high precision flow meters allows us to know the exact amount of fuel being consumed at any time and helps us run Mr. Gee at his maximum efficiency at all times. And if you were to bend down and take a peek underneath the Day Tank you would see this latest addition Cihan has made out the bottom of the Sump on the Day Tank. The Black threaded nipple you see here is where the WIF or Water In Fuel sensor will be installed. Being heavier than Diesel fuel, water always sinks to the bottom so if we ever get any water in our fuel is will quickly find its way down to the bottom most point and send us a WIF signal and sound an alarm.
If you go back and look two photos above at the FleetGuard Fuel Filters you will see that each of the Fs19596 Fuel Filter/Separators has their own WIF sensor in the bottom so we are sure to know if water ever shows up in the fuel at any time and we can promptly get rid of it before it has any chance to get near Mr. Gee.
Mr. Gee
Speaking of Mr. Gee, I was able to spend more time working on him this past week focusing on timing and plumbing so let’s head over to the Engine Room to take a look.
This was an exciting new milestone for Mr. Gee and me as I finally got to mount this Fuel Injection Pump and Cam Box assembly taking up most of the Port/Left side of Mr. Gee. If you look at the far front end you can see the PTO (Power Take Off) shaft coming out of Mr. Gee which turns the fuel injection camshaft that in turn created the high pressure that goes up to each injector sprayer at just the right time. At the aft or flywheel end of the Gardner it is Grand Central Station for all these Copper & Brass lubrication oil pipework’s. They all come together here where the cast iron Oil Filter acts as the traffic cop for all the oil coming and going to the rest of the engine. Many hours of “pipe wrangling” later, this is how the pipework’s look when all connected to the Oil Filter on the top Right here and then going heading on to their connections on the other end to the crankcase, oil cooler which has its own dedicated oil pump which is the Burgundy painted unit extending out of the AL Cam Box in the rear Left here. I won’t bore you with all the details, but Gardner engines have multiple “timing” settings that are critical to get absolutely spot on for the engine to run properly. The timing of when each intake and exhaust valve needs to open and close is one example that I tackled this week. The requirement is that the Intake Valve opens at 16.25 degrees Before Top Dead Center and the Exhaust closes at 11.75 degrees Aft TDC. But how do you measure and set to such accuracy? The method I came up with was to put a piece of masking tape on the outer circumference of the flywheel covering the distance between the two precise lines punched on at the Gardner Factory to mark TDC and 25.8 degrees BTDC which is for timing the fuel injectors. Then I peeled off the masking tape and laid it out on a flat AL surface where I could accurately measure the distance between “zero” at TDC and the 25.8 degree line with my digital Vernier calipers which gave me the numbers I needed to figure out how many mm one degree of rotation is. Pretty simple math that even I could figure out. It was 127.7mm from the TDC line to 25.8 degrees so 127.8 / 25.8 = 4.872mm = 1 degree. Easy to then mark off the distances for the 16.25 degree and 11.75 degree marks. Now all I had to do was put put the masking tape strip back on with the TDC mark on the tape matched up with the TDC mark on the flywheel and then mark the flywheel at the 16.25 BTDC and 11.75 ATDC lines and then put a center punch mark at each one and scribe a line through them. Lining these marks up with the reference line you can see scribed into the top and bottom of this opening in the flywheel housing and I can turn the flywheel to align these marks and precisely adjust the valve timing at each point.
That will be where I start tomorrow (Monday) morning so I’ll let you know how that works out in next week’s Progress Update.
So this is the parting shot of Mr. Gee when I left him last and where I will start tomorrow morning. And my first order of business will be to find the slob that dribbled that bit of Wellseal gasket sealer on the top of the cam box! Oh wait, never mind, I just caught my reflection in the monitor and I found him! Thanks for joining me here on this week’s Show & Tell for the week of September 27 to October 3rd, 2020. Really appreciate you taking the time to follow along and I sure hope you will add your comments, questions and concerns in the “Join the Discussion” box below.
Merhaba as we say here in Turkey, to all our faithful blog readers. Just for a change of pace, this is Christine here and I wanted to let you know that we have heard all your many requests asking for a video tour showing the current stage of construction of our new boat and home Möbius. So it is with great pleasure that we are finally able to honour your requests.
It had been a year since the last full video tour, and lots has changed for sure. Wayne just loves to talk and write – at great length – about his beloved Möbius, so one day he just took the camera and spent the next several hours walking through the boat and talking about it. That was a few weeks ago now on July 15, 2020
Wayne is far too busy working on Möbius right now to do the editing, so I took it upon myself to learn a new program (DaVinci Resolve, for those who are interested) and start my new career as the Möbius World video editor. I apologize for taking so long to get this done, but it had been a long time since I had done much video editing and the program is complex.
Also, there was A LOT of footage to take on for my first project; thanks Wayne! So I decided to divide it in half and create a two part series for you, Part I of the Exterior of Möbius and Part II of the Interior, both of which you will find below.
First, a few notes about what I’ve done to these videos so you know how best to navigate your way through these quite long videos to get at just what you want.
CHAPTERS:
For those who want to skip through and just look at the portions of the video that interest you, I’ve divided the video into chapters which you can access two ways.
When viewing these videos on YouTube if you look in the text area below the video window, you will find a list of the Chapters in this video. Click on any of the topics in that list to jump directly to that Chapter in the video.
When watching the video if you hover your cursor over the bottom of the video window the timeline will appear at the bottom of each video and you will see some dashes or marks along that timeline bar where each Chapter starts/ends. If you hover your cursor over any bar a pop up text will tell you the name of that Chapter and if you click it will jump directly to that point in the video.
Here is are the lists of the Chapters in each video to give you an idea of what you will find when you watch the videos by clicking on the two video windows below.
It took almost two months for the original Mr. Gee to get from Kalymnos to the Gardner works in Canterbury England but fortunately the return trip was MUCH faster and “only” took about two weeks for this sight for sore eyes turned up on the dock beside us. All still fully sealed up and just as it had been when it left Gardner Marine Diesel GMD the day after I flew back from being there for the full dynamometer testing that I outlined in a previous post.
Even Barney was wondering when this abyss in the Engine Room was going to be filled up again and he was on hand to supervise the whole installation.
James and Michael at GMD had kindly included the remaining epoxy paint and put that in the box on the pallet.
Manufactured September 2022 so can’t get too much newer than that!
After SO much time and effort, it was sure a great feeling to unwrap this all new version of Mr. Gee and get busy preparing him for the installation.
If you look closely at the brass plate on the fuel injection system you can see that it is currently set up for Continuous 100% use with 150 BHP @ 1650 RPM, and as some Gardner fans say these are “Draught Horses”!
I spent a few hours reinstalling a few things such as the big Electrodyne alternator that is powered by the PTO (Power Take Off) as it was easier to do while sitting out on the dock. Then I protected the polished valve covers up top with some foam and set up the two chain blocks front and rear for adjusting the angle of the engine as we lowered it in place.
The crane truck arrived right on time which was also a nice change as the first time for taking the engine out, it took over a week to arrange.
Didn’t take long to lift the 1200kg engine off the dock ………
…… and onto Möbius. Kind compliments of brothers Michael and John Psarompas who own Argo Oil & Tug Boat, two of the crew from the Argo Tug Boat behind us kindly came over to lend some extra hands to help lower the engine into the Engine Room and set the motor mounts onto the anxiously awaiting engine beds.
As many of you know this wasn’t my first rodeo wrestling Mr. Gee into place and with these four extra hands it all went quite quickly.
And the all new Mr. Gee was finally settled into his new home and mated up with the Nogva CPP Controllable Pitch Propeller gear box. 
It took me about two days to remount all the systems such as exhaust,the second Electrodyne alternator (top left), fuel lines, engine guard bars and then do the engine/prop shaft alignment and torquing down the engine mounts to lock it all in place.
Out of both curiosity and safety I decided to pump the diesel Day Tank empty and open up the bottom inspection port to see how things had faired in the almost two years since the first fill during the build. Very happy to find what you see here, aka NOTHING. 
Bolted the inspection cover back on (lower left) and refilled this 660 Liter Day Tank with fresh clean diesel out of the main tanks. 
New engine called for new filters so installed these and bled them to get rid of any air.
Also took the time to put coloured zip ties on each of the valve handles on the three fuel manifolds to help me double check that I have the right ones open or closed for different operations such as transferring fuel between the main tanks, polishing the fuel (aka cleaning), filling the Day Tank and of course the supply and return for feeding Mr. Gee when he is running. 
Once I had Mr. Gee and the rest of the systems on Möbius back up and running there was quite a bit of bureaucratic steps we needed to go through before we were allowed to leave. The boat had been officially “detained” by the Greek Coast Guard and they required that we hire this engineer to prove that the engine and the boat was back up and running again.
All of the various officials, offices and agencies all needed to collect their “pound of flesh” and ample Euros which took longer than the actual installation of the new engine!
Last but not least, we completed a quick sea trial by doing a big loop outside the harbour with the engineer aboard and we finally had the green light from him and then went through another round of approvals and payments to all the agencies in town but by end of day on 29th of October, 2022, almost four months after we first arrived, we were cleared to depart Kalymnos!
We treated ourselves to one last “date night” on this lovely island of Kalymnos that had come to feel like home and reminded ourselves of just how fortunate we had been to have had the opportunity to get to know this small Greek island and so many of her wonderful inhabitants who had become so familiar and were all so kind and generous to us. 
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