Another week and another month fly by in a flash it seems but we are making good progress and cutting the dock lines from here in beautiful sunny Finike Marina is getting closer with each passing day. This week also felt like summer is definately on its way with day time temp yesterday getting up to a new high of 29C/84F so we tropical birds are loving this change.
Nothing too visually exciting for this week’s Show & Tell update unfortunately but I’ll do my best to get you caught up on what all we did get done this past week of April 25-30, 2022.
Decks are Done!
One of the larger jobs that we are very thankful to have finished is that the team from Naval finished redoing all the TreadMaster on all our decks.
Despite being very high quality, the West Systems epoxy that was used to affix all the sheets of TreadMaster to the AL decks had not adhered to the AL very well so it has become both an eyesore and a tripping danger. They carefully removed each panel of TM, sanded the AL down, applied Bostik Primer and then Bostik adhesive and glued them all back down with rollers.
Apologies for not having any photos of the completed decks but you get the idea.
Charging Issues
When my friend John was here two weeks ago we finished setting up and configuring the two WakeSpeed 500 regulators which control the two Electrodyne 250 Amp @ 24V alternators.
This upper Electrodyne is powered off of Mr. Gee’s crankshaft with a toothed “timing” belt.
The six large red cables carry the AC current from each alternator over to the Electrodyne Rectifiers which are mounted outside of the ER. Difficult to photograph this drive system I designed so this rendering of my CAD models will show it much better. Crankshaft pulley is at the bottom, sea water pump on the left and Electrodyne in the upper right. Works out eXtremely well as there is zero chance of any slippage of these toothed belts and I put in a spring loaded idler pulley (not shown in this render) which keeps the tension just right all the time. Also difficult to photograph now all the floors are in the Engine Room, the lower Electrodyne is powered directly off of the PTO or Power Take Off that is on the lower left side of Mr. Gee. An eXtremely robust and almost maintenance free setup as well. This older photo when Mr. Gee was up in the air shows how this PTO drive works. I went with these massively large and strong Electrodyne alternators in large part because they use an external Rectifier which is what you see here. The diodes in the rectifier are where the majority of the heat comes from in an alternator and heat is the enemy of electrical efficiency so keeping them out of the alternator and out of the ER really helps to increase the lifespan and efficiency of the whole charging system. Each Rectifier is then connected to one of the WakeSpeed 500 Smart Regulators and each WS500 is interconnected with the white Ethernet cable you see here.
Connecting these two WS500’s is a big part of what makes them deservedly called “smart” because they then automatically figure out how to perfectly balance the charging from each alternator which can otherwise be quite difficult and prone to errors. However, the biggest reason these WS500’s are the first truly ‘Smart’ regulators is because they use both Voltage AND Amperage do monitor the batteries and adjust the alternators to produce the just right amount of charging. With everything all wired up we started up Mr. Gee and after the initial ramp up time we were soon seeing about 220 Amps going into the 1800 Ah House Battery which was a joy to see.
Having two of these Electrodyne 250Ah alternators give us the potential for up to 12kW of electrical charging so in a way we actually do have a “generator” onboard. Unfortunately we soon noticed that some of the 24V circuit breakers were tripping when these alternators were running and I’ve spent the past few weeks trying to figure out what was causing that. Thanks to exemplary help from both Dale at Electrodyne and Neil at WakeSpeed, both of whom have been fabulous to work with from the very beginning, I was eventually able to track down the problem to an incorrectly installed aluminium bar that was used to fasten the two halves of the Electrodyne Rectifiers. One end of this AL flat bar was touching one of the AL L-brackets that hold the studs and diode in the Rectifier. Once found the fix was pretty quick and easy.
However somewhere along the way one of the WS500’s stopped working so I am now working with Neil to sort that out. In the meantime we have up to 250Ah charging capacity from the one working Electrodyne/WS500 combo and with all the solar power we have coming out of our 14 solar panels, we have no need for any of it most of the time.
Exhausting work on Tender Mobli
Most of my time this week was spent finishing off the installation of the Yanmar 4JH4 HTE 110HP engine and Castoldi 224DD jet drive in our Tender that we have named “Mobli”.
Similar to Mr. Gee and most marine engines, the Yanmar uses a wet exhaust where sea water is injected into the exhaust gas after it exits the turbocharger. This water dramatically drops the temperature of the exhaust gasses so you can use rubber and fiberglass exhaust hoses to carry the gases and water out of the boat. You can see the primary components I’m using to build the exhaust system in the photo below; water injection elbow on the Yanmar on the far Left with the Black rubber exhaust hose with the yellow stripe to carry the exhaust gas and water down to the cylindrical water muffler in the upper left. I will use the two white RFP 90 degree elbows to carry the water/gas up and out of the boat through the 76mm/3” AL pipe on the right. Like this. I am waiting for more of the SS hose clamps to arrive but this is what the finished setup will look like. Will need to fabricate and install a bracket to hold the muffler in place as well and that will complete the exhaust system.
Hard to see (click to expand any photo) but I was also able to install the black rubber hose that you see running parallel to the left of the exhaust hose and muffler. This carries the cooling sea water from the housing of the Castoldi Jet drive up to the intake on the sea water pump on the left side of the Yanmar.
Last major job to complete the installation of the Yanmar/Castoldi propulsion system is the mounting of the battery and its cables to both the jet drive and the engine and I hope to get that done this coming week. That’s how I spent my last week of April 2022 and hope yours was equally productive.
Thanks for taking the time to follow along, always encouraging to know you are all out there and along for the ride with Christine and me. Thanks in advance for typing any and all comments and questions in the “Join the Discussion” box below and hope you will join us again next week as we get May off to a good start.
As has been the norm for most updates and perhaps life in general I guess, this will be a mix of good news and bad for all you faithful followers (thanks to you all!) In the good news column this week’s update will be mercifully short compared to some of the novel length ones I have been writing of late but the related not so good news is that this update will be disappoint all of you who have been anxiously awaiting to see and hear Mr. Gee roar back to his third new lease on life.
The finiteness of time is always the challenge it seems, and especially so on a boat it seems where there are so many things on the To Do list and so little time to get all of them done. I’m pretty sure most of you have your own version of this dilemma, which is actually a good thing in itself in that who would ever want to have NOTHING left on their To Do list?!?!? Not me at least.
So this past week has been filled with a litany of To Do list items which too precedent over those in Mr. Gee’s Engine Room (ER) though I certainly did not ignore him completely.
Getting Mr. Gee Ready for Life #3
If you have been following along, here is what things looked like in the ER when I left you in the last Update. Mr. Gee was back “in bed” with his four “feet” now resting firmly on the wide 25mm thick AL Engine Beds that run down each side of the Engine Bay. Now came all the “little things” that have to be reconnected, adjusted and tested before he is ready to start.
As many of you can relate to, the “little things” in life can often take most of the time and are of the highest importance and that is very much the case here. For example, before I can fasten the Mr. Gee’s four feet to the Engine Beds, I need to precisely align these two flanges. The bright Red one on the Right is attached to the end of the Nogva Prop Shaft and the darker Burgundy on it mates to is the Output flange coming out of the Nogva servo gear box on the far Left. These two flanges must be perfectly aligned axially, meaning both side to side and top to bottom with no more than 5/100th or 0.05mm/0.002” which for reference is about the thickness of a human hair. To do this, I need to remove the eight hardened bolts which hold the two flanges together, keep the two flanges up against each other and then measure the gap all around where the flanges meet to make sure there is ideally no gap or at least no more than 0.05mm. This is done using a feeler gauge you see in my hand here which is a thin piece of steel that is of an exact thickness. It was close but a bit too big on the Right side (3 O’clock) so I then go up to the front of Mr. Gee and pry his feet over to the Right just a wee bit and go recheck the size of the gap. If there is a gap top to bottom then you have to use the nuts on the motor mounts to tilt the engine/gearbox assembly to remove the gap. As you might imagine, it takes quite a few trips back and forth to get the two flanges completely flush with each other and once done I could replace the 8 hardened bolts and tighten them down in stages to their final toque of 160 NM/120 FtLbs, which is VERY tight. With Mr. Gee & Miss Nogva now perfectly in position, I could install the two hardened bolts in each of his four “feet” and torque these down to the very grunt worthy 225 NM/166 FtLbs.
Note, this is a photo from last year before I had drilled the holes in the Engine Beds so this time I just needed to reinsert the bolts into the existing holes. Here is an overview shot from my Fusion 360 screen which is what I used to design all the mounts. Each side has two feet/mounts for Mr. Gee and one for the Nogva. With Mr. Gee now in his final resting spot I could reattach the wet exhaust system. Wet refers to the fact that sea water is injected into the exhaust gas which removes both noise and heat from the exhaust and allows the use of much easier to handle rubber exhaust hose to take the exhaust gasses out of the boat.
The Blue/Red is special silicone hose where the stainless Mixing Elbow bends downward and mixes the sea water with the exhaust. The smaller SS pipe you can see pointing up here, is where the hose bringing the sea water attaches. Here is a peek inside the mixing elbow where you can see all the holes around the outer SS circumference where the water sprays evenly into the exhaust gasses. Now I could hoist the whole exhaust pipe assembly into place sliding the Blue silicone hose overtop of the angled input pipe on the large cylindrical Silencer/Separator in the top Separator of the ER.
Once in place I could also reattach the four SS supports which connect the exhaust system to the front and rear roll bars around Mr. Gee. This has worked out eXtremely well by keeping the exhaust system very tightly in place with no transfer of noise of vibration into the hull it never touches.
3” SS pipe attaches to the exhaust manifold on the Aft Starboard/Right end of Mr. Gee and then carries the hot exhaust gasses up and over to the SS mixing elbow and into the Silencer/Separator. The Black rubber exhaust hose curving down from the Silencer on the Right carries the now cooled and quiet gasses out of the ER and across to the AL exhaust pipe in the hull.
The sea water drains out of the bottom of the White separator and into the vertical Sea Chest where it exits out of the boat back into the ocean.
It has proven to be an eXcellent exhaust system; simple, efficient and quiet. I’ve used a Silencer/Separator combo unit rather than a more traditional “Lift Muffler” as this design has almost no power robbing back pressure and no “sploosh sploosh” as water from lift mufflers create when exhaust and water both exit out the side of the boat.
Time at last to install the new oil filter and fill it up with clean new oil. The rest of Mr. Gee’s 28 Liters/ 7.4 USG of engine oil I add by pouring into the two cylinder heads to thoroughly douse all the valves in clean new oil which then drains down to fill up the oil sump/pan. Lots more “little jobs’ such as reconnecting the six large Red cables to each of the two 500 amp Electrodyne alternators you can see on the top and bottom Left side here.
The list of connections is much longer of course and valve clearances need to be set, fuel pump and injectors primed, etc. but each one takes Mr. Gee one step closer to first start up. Unfortunately I ran out of time this week at this point so I will need to leave you hanging here and pick up again next week.
Engine Control Box
I do my best to “discipline” myself when doing boat jobs to always try to improve on whatever system I’m working on such that it is better than before I started. Such was the case in completing this latest rebuild of Mr. Gee where I wanted to build and install a much better and safer Engine Control Box.
Here is what I came up with. Quite simple but a bit time consuming to build. I started with a standard IP65 (waterproof) Grey plastic junction box and cut openings for an Engine Hour meter (top), Red STOP button, power “ignition” switch Left, Green START button Right and digital Tachometer on bottom. The junction box provided a cool, dry protected spot to make all the connections for these controls so I used these handy junction blocks to make secure connections between all the wires. Then I mounted the whole box up high just outside the ER door.
I’ve done my best to reserve the Engine Room to have ONLY the engine inside it; no other equipment, no batteries, no fuel tanks, etc. An ER is a great place for the engine but the hotter temperatures and vibration is not so kind to things like batteries, equipment, etc.
Here is a better shot of the Control Box in the upper center as you look forward down the Port/Left side of the Workshop to the WT door at the far end which separates the Workshop & ER from the interior of the boat.
By mounting this control box outside the ER followed the same thinking and added a safety element in that I could quickly shut down the engine in the unlikely event of seeing a fire inside and not needing to open the ER door. For orientation on how the ER and the new Control Box is mounted, here is the opposite view looking Aft from that WT Door toward the WT door leading out onto the Swim Platform at the far Left end. The whole Control Box setup and other wiring is still very much a work in progress as you can see with this perspective from inside the ER looking out through the door on the Left. In the upper center of this photo you can see how the wires from the Control Box have been led through a hole in the White AlucoBond walls lining the ER.
Off to the right I’ve mounted a new BlueSea junction box which provides me with 12 individually fused connections for each circuit. Next week I will be working on making all the connections for circuits such as the Start/Stop solenoids, Sea Water flow alarm, hot water circulation pump from engine to calorifier, engine sensors for pressures and temperatures and connections for the field wires from the alternators to the WakeSpeed 500 remote rectifiers and regulators.
I’ve had great success using these BS junction boxes on previous boats and they do a great job of making secure, neat easily accessed connections and fuses. There were a LOT of other To Do list items commandeering my time this past week but I’ll spare you from all those gory details and leave off here to be continued next week for those of you brave enough to return for more!
My sincere thanks to those who made it to the end of yet another “brief” update from your cub reporter aboard the Good Ship Möbius. I value all the comments and questions you leave in the “Join the Discussion” box below eXtremely highly so thanks in advance for all those contributions and I hope you will join me here again for continuing adventures as Christine and I work at getting Möbius and ourselves fully sea worthy and ready to throw off the dock lines and head back out to eXplore the world by sea.
Thanks to the many of you who responded to the “mystery novel” that I turned last week’s update into and for putting up with my amateurish mystery writing skills. I was quite taken aback but most appreciative of how many of you enjoyed along with what I hope to be the final chapter in the great Serial Oil Pressure Killer series here on Möbius.World.
This last week most of my time has been spent putting Humpty Dumpty aka Mr. Gee all back together again with his new crankshaft, bearings and now FLAT oil pipework fittings installed and you can read all about that below. He is now back to ‘’bed” resting on his anti vibration mounts and I’m working my way through the rest of the assembly and adjustments so I can bring him back to life purring away in his Engine Room. If all goes well I should be able to share the first start up in next week’s update so do stay tuned for that.
Picking Up Where We Left Off
In my focus on telling the long and winding tale about tracking down the real oil pressure killer I skipped over most of the process of reinstalling the new crankshaft, oil pump, oil cooler tube and all the many other parts that I had disassembled so I will catch you up with al that now.
One of the only things we are not so fond of about our years here in Turkey is how much time, money and energy it takes to get things shipped into or out of the country. Not completely sure why this is and we do sometimes have things all go very well, but most often it is quite a PITA. Such was the case with getting the previous crankshaft sent back to Gardner Marine in England to be reground and then getting the new crank, oil pump, cooler tube and O-rings sent back to us here in Finike marina.
With the help of our ever resourceful “Turkish Fixer” Alaaddin, the latest crate finally arrived about two weeks ago. The crankshaft alone weighs about 100kg/220lbs but Christine and I were able to get it out of the van and down the ramp onto the swim platform on Möbius without it going overboard. and then slowly get him down the steps into the Workshop. There are a number of parts that attach to the front end of the crankshaft such as a large disk vibration damper, triple row timing chain cog, roller bearings, etc. and these all need to be pressed or bolted onto the crankshaft. So I propped it up against the center workbench to do all this work. This tag confirms the sizes of the Main Bearing and Connecting Rod or “Big End” bearing journals after they have been freshly reground and then the bearings are oversized by this same amount to match.
Protective corrugated cardboard is wrapped around each journal to protect the finely ground surfaces during shipping and installation. To prevent the crankshaft from moving fore and aft there are two pairs of Thrust Bearings that need to allow no more than 0.006 – 0.009” of end play so you need to fit these to a newly ground crankshaft to get the exact fit. My good ole drill press often doubles as a vertical milling machine so I was able to use it again here to mill down each Thrust Bearing to just the right thickness. I could do a dry fit of this and check the gap with feeler gauges while the crank was out of the engine and then once it was in place I could double check with a dial gauge as you see here. I forcefully tap the crank fully forward to zero the gauge and then fully aft to read the total endwise travel. Reading was about 0.0065” or “six and a half thou” which is just right. Once I had the damper, roller bearings and chainwheel cog fully mounted I could start to carefully pull the whole assembly into the Engine Room. A bit like an inch worm’s progress, I just took it a step at a time. It was probably now approaching 140kg/300lbs but I could lift one end by hand and so I put in some plywood ramps to help me slide the crank slide into the ER ……… …… then inch it over under the anxiously awaiting Mr. Gee who was “hanging in there”. I rigged up a set of 6:1 blocks at the front and rear of the engine using Dyneema that I could wrap around the ends of the crankshaft and allow me to gradually pull it up into place. To make sure the large hardened steel studs that clamp the main bearings in place don’t touch and damage the ground surfaces, I wrapped the threads with lots of duct tape and then carefully peeled off the corrugated cardboard covers. Over on the workbench, I cleaned and prepped the main bearing shells in their big cast AL bearing caps. Each of the AL bearing caps are press fit into the solid AL crankcase so I used a hydraulic jack to push them into place and then the cast iron Bridges slide over the two studs and the nuts are torqued down.
FYI, the small oval surface you see machined on each Bridge is where the infamously “bowed” fittings with the O-rings bolt in place. Once I had the crankshaft bolted in place I could very carefully lower each Connecting Rod down onto their journals and bolt their bearing caps in place with the four bolts on each one.
Torqueing all these nuts down has to be done in a specific pattern as you progress through four different stages of increasing torque so that they are fully tightened and clamp the crank bearings precisely round. Crankshaft is now fully in place with all cylinders attached and turning easily so I now turned my attention to installing the very critical timing chain and the hand crank chainwheel and water pump/alternator cogged belt pulleys on the front end. Small and Light are never found in the same sentence with Gardner so I used the same inch work technique to get the massive solid cast AL oil pan/sump moved into the ER and in place under Mr. Gee.
I was able to reuse the 6:1 blocks and some webbing at the front and rear of the sump to pull it up into place and get it all aligned to slide onto the oil pump tube and the studs that attach the sump to the crankcase.
The flywheel is the most massive of all, not sure of its exact weight but I can tell you that it takes four burly guys to pick it up and it is all I can do to tip it upright when it is on the ground Fortunately the 6:1 blocks help me work smarter not harder and so once I got Mr. Gee pulled into the right position I was able to easily lift this beast up and into precise position to slide over the 6 end studs on the crankshaft. With the flywheel torqued down I could now mount the aft half of its housing and then bolt on the large mounting brackets I had designed for the anti vibration “feet” or mounts to attach to on either side. After carefully repositioning the overhead steel beams spanning the ER hatch up above, I was able to now lower Mr. Gee’s feet onto the Engine Beds for what he and I both fervently hope is the LAST time for a LONG time! And now the wrestling match begins as I coax all of Mr. Gee aft to engage the big rubber cogs on the CentaMax torsion coupling on the Nogva input shaft to the matching AL housing on the Flywheel.
The blocks help me take off some of the weight and then lots of elbow grease and pry bars allow me to slide Mr. Gee aft little by little. Here I now have it all lined up with the cogs just engaged. You can see the 3cm gap that I still have to slide Mr. Gee aft to fit tight against the Brown Nogva case. Done! Mr. Gee and Miss Nogva are now bolted back together and remarried for their new life together. Next up is this new bit of engineering art and science from Gardner that was in the crate with the crankshaft. This is the copper engine oil cooler pipe where the oil is pumped through on its own circuit with its own oil pump. The “dimpled” pipe creates more surface area for the cooling sea water to flow around and extract out the heat from the oil as it flows through the tube. Too bad this copper beauty has to be hidden away when I slide it into this cast Bronze housing but I’ve done my best to polish up the housing and give it a clear epoxy coating to keep it looking great for years to come. Who says you can’t have a bit of “bling” on a Gardner?! Here is the engine oil cooler all reassembled. The cast Bronze housing on the closest end is where the oil enters and then runs through that dimpled tube inside and comes out the far end where it then drains back into the pan all nice and cool.
Sea water is pumped into the flanged fitting you see lying open in the near end here and then it flows inside the square cast Bronze housing and out the large diameter copper pipe elbow you can see on the far end. Looking into that hole in the flange you see above, you can see the copper dimpled tube inside. Sorry for the poor photo but if you look closely you can see the Bronze oil cooler now installed along the side of Mr. Gee on the left side of this photo.
I then connected all the white water hoses you see on the Right side here to various parts of Mr. Gee. Some of these carry fresh water to the heat exchanger which is like the radiator in a car or truck but uses sea water to cool rather than air. Other hoses cary salt water in/out of the engine oil cooler and the heat exchangers and the water pump. You can see through the clear lid on one of the sea water strainer in the mid Right side. Big Black 5” Exhaust hose now reconnected to the large White water separator/silencer in the top Left corner and then down and out the ER where it connects to the AL exhaust pipe welded into the hull above the WL. And that’s where we are at as of now (Jan 30th 2022) and where I will pick up with you again next week. Lots more parts and systems to reconnect and install but if all goes well I hope to be able to bring you a short video of Mr. Gee starting up first crank as he usually does and let you all hear the sweet sounds of a Gardner 6LXB purring away.
Thanks for joining and for your comments and questions typed into the “join the Discussion” box below.
In last week’s “Toasty Tootsies” post I went over the way our In Floor Heating system works and concluded my explanation with what I thought was a rhetorical question;
“Brilliantly simple don’t you think??!!
Well, based on the number of comments and Emails I received, while our In Floor Heating system might indeed be “Brilliantly Simple” my explanation was NOT! Therefore, let me try and mend this by revisiting our In Floor Heating and do my best to improve my explanation of how this Open Direct type of system works. If I’m successful I think that most of you will come to agree with my assessment that this Open Direct system is indeed “Brilliantly Simple”!
But you will be the judge of that and so Please do add your comments as to how well this second attempt helps you to understand how our In Floor and Domestic Hot Water systems work and don’t hesitate to add your additional questions and things that still don’t make sense to you.
OK, here is my second attempt to show how this all works;
Deeper Dive into our Open Direct System;
One of the Emails I received, (thanks Benjamin), asked the following set of questions that included many of the points of confusion others sent me so I thought I’d use this to frame this expanded explanation of the Open Direct system I used to design our In Floor Heating or IFH and Domestic Hot Water or DHW System.
Benjamin wrote:
If I understood your installation diagram correctly, you run the drinking water through the same pipes as the water for the underfloor heating. Drinking water and “heating water” are identical, or not installed separately. First of all, this is economical because you one water circuit less. But I have a question about summer operation: drinking water and heating are usually installed separately, because in summer mode
you want to avoid hot water flowing through the heating system, and
the water should not stand still in parts of the circuit for a longer period of time to prevent the formation of legionella.
You can probably avoid point a. with valves that separate the entire heating circuit from the drinking water circuit in summer. But if the heating circuit is not flushed for several months during summer operation, legionella can form and then be flushed into the drinking water circuit when the heating system is put into operation. How do you avoid this? Is the underfloor heating completely drained during summer operation modus?
Thank you very much for further information!
First, let me try to resolve some common sources of misunderstanding that Benjamin and many of you mentioned;
I should have emphasized more how the various parts of our overall water systems are separated from each other. In last week’s post I mostly left out the Cold or “drinking” water system so it needs to be understood that this has its own set of plumbing and ALL the water we drink and cook with comes directly from the water tanks to the cold water taps/showers onboard. All the water in our water tanks comes directly from the onboard watermaker so it is as clean and close to pure H2O as is possible.
One of the things that seems to confuse many people at first is to understand that there are only TWO conditions that causes water to FLOW in a plumbing system:
The regular water pressure in the system causes water to flow IF and ONLY IF water is being REMOVED from the system.
There is a continuous circulation loop with its own PUMP that causes water to flow round and round through the CIRCULATION loop.
When neither 1 or 2 is true, there is NO FLOW of water through the plumbing.
The Hot/Warm systems are the ones based on the Open/Direct system on Möbius and this has TWO different but interconnected systems:
The In Floor Heating Mode which provides WARM water to heat floors when wanted.
The DHW Domestic Hot Water Mode which provides HOT water to all the sinks and showers at all times.
I have modified the following illustrations from last week’s post to show a clearer picture of how these two systems work.
When no Hot water tap is open there is NO Cold water entering the system. However, when one of the In Floor thermostats turns on a Zone Circulation Pump, warm water then flows out of the Calorifier, through the in floor PEX tubing and back into the Calorifier. This is a continuous loop so warm water is flowing through the floor tubing anytime the circulation pump is running.
The DHW system always takes priority so whenever a Hot water tap is opened, the system works like this in DHW Mode. When any HOT water outlet at a sink or shower is opened, the regular pressure in the Cold water system which runs about 60 PSI, causes Cold water to enter and flow through the PEX tubing in the floors to refill the hot water that has been removed from the Calorifier. When the Hot water tap is closed the system automatically reverts back to In Floor Heating Mode and the Circulation Pump causes Warm water to circulate though the floor and keep it toasty warm. To answer another question I received and as should now make sense, we do not actually “drink” water going through the DHW or In Floor Heating, though there would be no problems if we did.
It can initially be a bit confusing because when Hot water is consumed (taken out of the Calorifier by turning on the hot water at a sink or shower) and the system is in DHW mode as per above, it is necessary to replace the water that has been removed from the Calorifier so Cold “drinking water” does enter the DHW system. This is exactly the same as in ANY home or other setup with a Water Heater or Calorifier; when Hot water is taken out, it must be replaced with water from the Cold water supply.
In operation this works extremely well and does so automatically by design. Anytime Hot water is wanted, the Open Direct system ensures that this takes priority and Hot water flows from the Calorifier to the tap or shower as long as it is open. As soon as you close that tap and are no longer needing Hot water, the system reverts to In Floor Heating Mode.
Summer vs Winter:
The difference between Summer and Winter is that in Summer/hot weather when the In Floor Heating is turned off, the IFH Circulation pumps never turn on so no water is flowing through the floor UNTIL a Hot Water tap is opened. Said another way, the ONLY time water is flowing through the floor PEX is when the system is in DHW Mode because a Hot water tap has been turned on. The rest of the time, there is NO water flowing through the floor tubes.
This turns out to be part of the “brilliance” of this type of system in my opinion because the design ensures that the In Floor Heating automatically adapts to whatever the weather is. HOT water ONLY flows through the floors when it is needed and the circulation pumps turn on in colder weather. NO hot water flows through the floors in warmer weather because the circulation pumps never turn on.
This sets up the ideal system as it ensures that the water in the PEX tubing is always being refreshed and is never standing still for any length of time.
Better yet, in hot weather, when you are using DHW and there is water flowing through the floor tubes, it is absorbing some of the heat in the room or from sun shining on the floors and so that by the time the water gets to the Calorifier, it is now a bit warmer so you save energy in the Calorifier because the replacement water has already been warmed up and does not take as much energy to heat up to whatever temperature you have sent the Calorifier to maintain.
Once this all makes sense I think you too will see just how “brilliantly simple” this Open Direct system is. It is completely automatic, no valves or switches to change, no need to drain the system or do anything else other than keep using everything on the boat/house as you always have.
Trust me, it does take a while to figure this type of system out. It is one of those things where it is very simple but ONLY after you understand it! To begin with, it can be VERY confusing! My suggestion, and what I used to do a lot of, is to draw out a schematic for yourself and trace the flow of water in the different scenarios from summer to winter and from In Floor Heat Mode to DHW mode and I think you will quickly see how it works.
Hope this helps and if it still doesn’t make sense just send me additional questions in the “Join the Discussion” box below to let me know what’s confusing or not making sense and I will do my best to answer them all as quickly as possible or in next week’s post.
Thanks for your patience with this not always so clear ex teacher!
As Launch Date looms larger and sooner the theme of checking off all the “little Big” jobs on the punch list continues although we still have a few “Big” jobs such as painting the bottom with foul release paint which continued as well this past week so without any further ado let’s jump right in to see all those jobs both little and BIG that Team Möbius looked after this week of January 25-30, 2021.
We’re Shafted!
One of the “little Big” jobs that we completed this past week is getting the propeller shaft fully aligned with the output flange on the Nogva Gearbox and hence this week’s title.
In this photo the dark Burgundy is the Aft Output end of the Nogva Gearbox and the bright Red is the flange on the propeller shaft which continues through the Tides Marine shaft seal system and out of the boat through the large AL prop shaft tube which is hidden here by the Blue Tides Marine silicone bellows hose. This dimensioned drawing of the complete Nogva CPP or controlled Pitch Propeller, shaft, seal and flange will help orient things a bit.
Here I have gone below the boat rotate the CPP prop back and forth while pushing it hard forward so that the two flanges meet. A few months back we had spent quite a bit of time getting this alignment close as we installed the anti-vibration mounts on the Gardner and the Nogva and you read about that HERE, so now it was time for the fine and final adjustment to get these two flanges perfectly aligned. As you may recall from previous posts the two flanges need to be eXtremely closely aligned both concentrically as per the illustration on the Left and also laterally as shown on the Right. Maximum deviation we are allowed is up to 0.005mm / 0.002in (human hair is about 0.05mm diameter) and ideally we are going for zero. Needing such perfection I called on my Perfect Partner, aka Captain Christine to assist and although she is prone to laying down on the job (sorry, couldn’t resist) she was a huge help and made this task go much faster. We check the alignment by inserting a thin feeler gauge, which is the silver strip you see here, that is a tight sliding fit into the space between the faces of these two flanges and see what the gap is at 12, 3, 6 and 9 o’clock. Any difference in size of the gap at these locations tells us how far it is out either horizontally at 3 & 6 o’clock or vertically at 12 and 6. Adding to the challenge the prop shaft needs to be supported in its perfectly centered position which my red hydraulic bottle jack is looking after. Mr. Gee, our Gardner 6LXB is solidly bolted up to the Nogva Gearbox so they are essentially an eXtremely solid single unit that is supported by six anti-vibration mounts such as the Silver one you can see on the Stbd. side of the Nogva Gearbox on the far Right in this photo. You can see the large vertical threaded part of these mounts with the large supporting hex nut on the bottom and smaller locking nut on the top. To align the flanges vertically I need to turn the large nuts at the very front of Mr. Gee or these back two on the Nogva, Up/Down to move the Nogva flange until the gap is zero all the way around.
The process then is for me to go around the four Front/Rear mounts and turn those big nuts Up/Down while Christine moved the feeler gauges around the circumference of the flanges and called out the differences in the gap to me.
With Christine laying down in the space behind the Aft end of the ER Enclosure overtop of the Tides Marine seal at the bottom, there wasn’t enough room to take a photo but this previous shot shows what she was doing as she reached in with the feeler gauges to check the gap and call out the differences to me. Doing this all by myself was very time consuming so now you see what I called in the Big Boss to help out!
It still took us almost 2 hours but in the end we got the gap down to zero such that both flanges were touching all the way around. With these two flanges now fully aligned we could insert the 8 hardened Grade 8 bolts through both flanges and torque them down to 120NM and the alignment was done!
White grease is TefGel 45 to prevent any corrosion and ensure that these nuts are just as easy to undo after many years on the job when we need to remove the prop shaft or the Nogva/Gardner for some reason in the distant future. Many of these “little Big” jobs are like dominos in that as getting one done lets you do the next. So with the flanges aligned and mounts all torqued down I could now finish installing the Tides Marine SureSeal system. This is an eXtremely critical bit of kit as this is responsible for keeping the prop shaft cutlass bearing lubricated with a flow of fresh sea water AND keeping that sea water OUT of the boat! Here is what the real deal looks like now fully installed. The Blue silicone “Articulating hose” in the illustration above, is double clamped onto the Stern or Prop Shaft Tube at the bottom and onto the Black SureSeal housing at the top.
The way this works is that inside the SureSeal are two stationary rubber lip seals with the 65mm OD Prop Shaft rotating inside them that keeps the water sea water inside the Prop Shaft Tube from being able to get past and into the boat.
We keep a VERY close eye on that Blue silicone hose over the years as if it were to ever rupture we would have an eXtremely large volume of water flooding into the boat!
FYI, The Black ring at the top is the very handy holder for a second set of replacement lip seals which you can change out with the boat still in the water as you don’t have to remove the Prop Shaft to replace them; just pry the old ones forward, cut them off and slide the new ones into place.
Last part of installing the SureSeal system is to provide a pressurized flow of fresh sea water into the Prop Shaft Tube which travels down the tube and lubricates the Cutlass bearing which supports the Prop Shaft as it exits the boat.
One of the reasons I chose to locate the Silver Heat Exchanger you see in the Upper Right was to be able to tap into its drain plug on the salt water side and use this as the source of pressurized salt water for the SureSeal. Nice short hose run and Cihan had that all hooked up in no time. The second Red hose on the Left goes up along the Aft wall of the ER with a ball valve on the end of it so that I can check the salt water flow rate when we first start up and from time to time afterwards and ensure that there is at least 4L/min / 1USG/min when the engine is idling. Both those little Big jobs checked off the list and this is what the finished result looks like when peering down into the space Christine has now vacated on the outside of the Aft wall of the ER. Silver Gardner Coolant Heat Exchanger bottom right, Tides Marine SureSeal middle Left and Red Prop Flange middle Right and the Red Nogva Gearbox Oil Heat Exchanger at the top.
To keep the ER air tight a 6mm AL plate is bolted with a gasket over top and covered wtih the same composite grid floor plates as the rest of the Workshop and ER. Cihan checked off another Big little job by plumbing the Sea Water and Engine Coolant water lines up at the forward Starboard/Right corner of Mr. Gee and the ER. It is pretty busy up there so I’ve labelled some of this plumbing to help you make sense of it. Can be a bit confusing as there are three fluids running around here; Sea Water that comes in via the Sea Chest just visible on the far middle Right here and through the Strainer and Manifold on its way to the Jabsco Impeller Pump and then out of that Pump and into the Engine Oil Heat Exchanger where it runs Aft exiting out and into that Silver Sea Water Heat Exchanger you saw up above in the SureSeal installation sequence.
Hope you got all that because YES children that WILL be on the Test on Friday!
Driving Big Red #2
Over on the opposite Port/Left side of Mr. Gee I finally have the drive system for our second Electrodyne 250Ah @ 24V alternator all designed and the adapters all machined so time to get them all installed. You may recall this photo from THIS previous blog post about installing what I call Big Red #2 and how I intended to drive it from the PTO or Power Take Off on the Gardner using a Jack Shaft I had from a previous job. This is a quick screen shot from my Fusion 360 design for the adapters at either end of the Red JackShaft. Green cylinder on the far Left is the Output shaft from the Gardner PTO, Purple is the AL adaptor to couple the Jackshaft to the PTO and at the far Right in Gold is the steel multi V-belt drive pulley that came with the Electrodyne which I will machine with four threaded holes to bolt the other end of the Red Jackshaft to.
Note: Jackshaft simplified here to just a rod with flanges at either end.
This is the PTO from the Gardner with that Purple aluminium adaptor in the rendering above now pushed onto the Green PTO Output shaft and secured with four round hex head through bolts.
The Red Flange on the front U-joint end of the JackShaft barely visible on the Right will bolt to that AL adaptor with four more M6 SS bolts. This is the Aft end of the JackShaft where this U-joint will be similarly bolted to that steel 8V pulley on Big Red #2. The day came to an end at this point yesterday so not quite finished but this shot will show you how the whole JackShaft will connect the power from the PTO back to Big Red #2. This monster Electrodyne alternator could absorb as much as 10HP at full 250 amps of output which the gear driven PTO can put out easily and this Cardan or Jack Shaft should be more than up to the task.
Stay tuned for more though folks on the final installation of Big Red #2 next week AND just wait till you see the sweet setup I’ve come up with to drive Big Red #1 using a cogged timing belt setup that is now almost done.
Well Sand My Bottom!
Also not quite done but work continued this past week on getting the bottom underwater portion of the hull all primed and filled in preparation for applying the silicone based Foul Release paint, International InterSleek 1100SR.
The Paint Crew finished applying all the epoxy filler to smooth out all the welds and create a sleek smooth surface for the InterSleek 1000SR Foul Release top coat to come.
You can see some of the filled welds around the Prop Tunnel above and ….. the filleted edges around the AL threaded mounting disk for the Zinc on the Rudder. The circle on the Right is the filled in through hole we put in the Rudder to make it possible to remove the Prop Shaft without having to drop the Rudder. Because we hope to not need to remove the Prop Shaft for many years this hole is filled in to provide a fully flush curved surface on the Rudder sides to maximize a smooth laminar flow of water over the Rudder. Sanding the first coat of epoxy filler on the Keel and Prop Tunnel into smooth large radius coves. ….. and the Aft Depth Sounder transducer. …. and one of the 5 Sea Chests. By end of the week they had the last of the 5 coats of International epoxy primer rolled as you can see around the Bow Thruster Tunnel, another smaller Sea Chest intake and Zinc mounting disk up near the bow. Final coat of epoxy primer being rolled on Aft and we’ll see the application of the InterSleek 1100SR next week.
Grand Dame of Dyneema!
Lest you should think that The Captain only lays down on the job, this will prove that she sometimes sits! But Christine has become and expert Dyneema splicer after doing so many as she installs all the Lifelines around the Main Deck. This are the AL Stanchions with their Lifelines now in place on the Aft end of the Port/Left side. The Tender will come On/Off this side so these 3 LifeLines have Pelican Hooks that are easy to release so we can then pull up the Stanchions and roll up the whole setup and stow when the Tender is aboard. Closer view of how these Pelican Hooks and Thimbles work. You start to appreciate how Christine’s Dyneema splicing expertise has developed so quickly when you start to count up all the splices required for each LifeLine in the system we’ve come up with. On the far Right is an endless loop that wraps around the AL Stanchion through a small AL D-ring to keep it in place and a SS Thimble captured on the end. Last step of this will be to lash the loop around the SS Thimble closed so that when it is undone the Thimble can’t come out.
Looking down the LifeLines to the Left you can see another splice at the Left end of the Pelican Hook and then further Aft/Left two more around these Black anodized Donuts or Rings you can see further to the Left. Christine leaves a gap of about 80-100mm / 3-4” between these two rings and then wraps multiple lashings between them to tension the life lines. And of course each of these Rings require yet another splice!
INTERIOR UPDATES:
Hilmi and Ramazan continued their work inside Möbius this past week and we also find more of Captain Christine’s fingerprints up here at the Main Helm where she and Hilmi have been working to install and connect Boat Computer #1 you see here on the Port/Left side of the Main Helm Chair. Its ultimate home will be inside this space behind the 50” Monitor on the outside and this AC/Heating Air Handler inside. This space is normally covered by this hinged Rosewood back with a recess for the adjustable mounting system for the 50” monitor that doubles as both our movie watching entertainment screen when on anchor and then one of 4 screens for boat data and navigation when underway. Down in the Guest Cabin Ramazan is completing the last of the Ado LVT vinyl plank flooring. While the smallest by surface area it has ELEVEN removeable sections above the bolt on tank access hatches below so this area is taking the most time.
Pull out Bed in the Upper Left and Christine’s Office desk on the Right. Six of those removable floor sections all weighted down while the adhesive dries. Removable floor sections?
What removable floor sections? Ramzan then stepped up his game (sorry) by moving up to install the vinyl flooring on the steps leading up from the SuperSalon to the Aft Deck.
Another tricky and time consuming bit of detail as each step has one of these handrail posts he needs to go around. Which, as you can see, he had no trouble doing eXtremely well! And that’s a wrap for the week that was January 25-30, 2021. Yikes! The first month of 2021 gone already???
Well at least it puts us another week closer to LAUNCH so as with “being shafted” that is all a very good thing.
Thanks for joining us for yet another episode here at Möbius.World. REALLY appreciate and value you doing so and please feel encouraged to add your comments and questions in the “Join the Discussion” box below.
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 Al2O3 is 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.
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!
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