Starting with the biggest news first; Christine and I took a much needed “mental health day” by renting a car and driving up the coast for an overnight getaway in a lovely little area we’ve been to before that is only an hour’s drive from our apartment in Antalya.  We’ve been working non-stop seven days a week for the past six months and thought it would be smart to take a brief break from boat building. 

We are very fortunate that the Antalya Free Zone and our apartment are at the very far West end of the city of Antalya that stretches over 30km along the long crescent shaped coastline of the Gulf of Antalya you see here.  The mountains rise up around us less than 1km from the beach and we only drive about 2km SW to put us on a fabulous coastal road along the tree lined rocky coast.

Christine found a fabulous little cabin for our getaway in a little village which in the 60’s and 70’s was the center of an area filed with “hippies” from around the world who built a lot of treehouses which have now evolved into little resorts with 2-10 small cabins on the property.  So I left the shipyard very early Friday afternoon at 15:30 and we packed up the pups and some snacks and were on the coastal road by four. 
We checked into our little cabin and then spent a few hours walking through the small village along the river front which filled with lots of arts and crafts shops, cafes and restaurants which led us down to the pebbly beach where our boat dogs Ruby & Barney enjoyed  being back to salt water beaches after almost three years of being dirt dwellers with us. 

As you can see in the photo above, the beaches are as usual jam packed with other people.

The little “resort” we were at was run by a lovely Turkish family who cooked up a fabulous dinner that evening in an open air patio where we were almost the only guests to enjoy the owners excellent selection of jazz music during our long and leisurely dinner. 
Our host family again delighted us with a classic Turkish breakfast the next morning and we spent the rest of the day driving along the coast and up into the mountains to explore everything from Lycian tombs (click photo on left to enlarge) to mountaintop Roman ruins complete with amphitheatre and acropolis. We treated ourselves to dinner at our local marina which is only a few blocks from our apartment and the whole experience felt like much more than just an overnight getaway that really helped recharge our batteries for the final push to finish Möbius and Launch!

Back at Naval Yachts, it was another week of disappointedly limited progress on XPM78-01 Möbius herself as their other boat projects seem to take precedence.  The bright spot though was that our dynamic duo of Uğur and Nihat make a LOT of progress on the Davit Arch as they finished welding the Davit Arch onto the Aft Deck and it is now ready for rigging. 

In the Master Cabin, Serkan continued his single handed work installing the last of our favorite SS latches and he and Sinan completed installing the leather covered panels on the upper cabinet doors and the Bureau of Drawers.  Out on the Aft Deck, with Uğur welding the Davit bases to the deck, Nihat turned his attention to installing the EPDM foam insulation in the overhead roof and the big ER Deck Hatch. 

So grab a comfy chair and a favorite beverage and join me for this week’s Show & Tell Progress Update aboard XPM78-01 Möbius.

DAVIT ARCH:

Might as well start with the star of this week’s Show & Tell; the Davit Arch! 

Retrieving any dinghy in rough weather can often be eXtremely dangerous so we have been working since the early design stages with Dennis over three years ago now, to design a Davit system that is as safe and as fast as possible. 

Christine and I hope that our fellow cruisers who have launched and retrieved their share of dinghy’s and tenders will weigh in with your thoughts on this system by adding your comments and questions in the “Join the Discussion” box at the end of the blog. 

First a couple of quick renders to show how we’ve designed this somewhat unique launch/retrieval system for the jet drive Tender to Möbius which you’ve seen being built in the previous weeks. 

We had a very good hinged Davit system I had designed for the aft end of our previous sailboat that worked extremely well to launch and retrieve our 4m/13’ aluminium bottom RIB in under a minute so we took all the lessons learned there and used them to help guide us in the much more greater challenge of having a similarly safe and fast Davit system for our now 5m / 16/5’ 1100Kg/2400lb aluminium inboard diesel jet drive Tender. 
Right now Möbius is sitting too close to the boat next to it inside the shipyard to be able to do a dry run lifting the Tender On/Off the boat so we will have to wait until we launch to find out in real world terms how well this design is going to work.  However, between the two of us, Christine and I have cruised for many decades now and have launched and retrieved dinghy’s thousands of times spanning the full spectrum of different sizes and types of dinghy’s and tenders using an equally wide range of davits and we think this Davit Arch system will prove to be the safest and easiest to use Davit system we have ever used.  Stay tuned for that real world testing report in the next few months.

As you can see we have used the same type of “ladder” construction for the Davit Arch as on the Main Arch as this style has proven to be a Goldilocks combination of strength to weight and we also really like the overall visual esthetic of this matching pair of arches and how well it fits in wtih the overall eXpedition look of XPM78-01 Möbius.
I updated the design just before we ordered the aluminium to make the arch a three piece assembly that bolts together very simply using two doubler plates (light blue in the model) at the transition between the vertical legs and the horizontal beam. 
This allows us to dismantle the arch and take it down completely either in what we refer to as “Hunkered Down” mode in preparation for an impending cyclone (ask us how we know!) or for “Canal Mode” when we want to eXplore inland canal systems found throughout the world that have bridges with height restrictions lower than our air draft with the Main Arch and Skybridge roof and Davit Arch up.
Raising/lowering the Tender will be a very simple two stage operation and I will explain this all in much more detail wtih photos in a future Weekly Update when we start doing the two sets of rigging. 

1.   One set of rigging will move the angle of the Davit Arch itself from the near vertical Cyan coloured position you see in the first render above that puts the Tender fully up on deck and then lets the Davit Arch move sideways  towards the Port/Left side until it reaches the Purple coloured position where the Tender is now clear of the Deck. 

This rigging will be an all Dyneema setup starting with two attachment points at the Forward/Aft end of the overhead beam connecting to a a single line extending over and down through a turning block straight across the Deck on the Starboard/Right side Rub Rail and then lead to the big EST 65 Lewmar electric winch in the middle of the Aft Deck. 

2.   The second rigging will be a double set of vertical hanging lines to raise/lower the Tender in the Davit.  When the Tender is up on Deck these will raise/lower the Tender from its chocks and when over the side it will raise/lower the Tender from the water.  This will also use Dyneema line attached to a bridal clipped to four attachment points inside the hull of the Tender leading up to a block and tackle handing down from the Front and Aft ends of the overhead beam and leading back down to two EST40 Lewmar manual winches mounted inside of each vertical Arch leg.

With all that in mind let’s go see how Uğur & Nihat, aided by their student intern Omer, made this all come together this past week.  I will use the same technique as many seemed to like in covering the build of the Tender; a rapid fire set of photos with just a little bit or text along the way.  Here goes………………….

If you would like to review the building of the various components of the Davit Arch system you can look through the past 3 weeks of posts which covered their construction.  This week Uğur began by machining the two large cylindrical Hinges; one at the base of each vertical leg of the Arch.

He had welded the two Base Plates out of 20mm/ 3/4” AL plate a few weeks ago so now he was ready to machine the 100mm / 4” OD aluminium cylinders that fit between the two triangular sides on the Base Plates and the two SS Hinge Pins that slide through to create the Hinge.
KISS, Keep It Simple & Safe design for the whole hinge with these two SS Hinge Pins that have an end cap bolted on to keep them in place and snug up against the sides of those triangular support arms on the Hinge Plates.
While the Hinge Pins were being machined, Uğur and Nihat mounted the AL cylinders into the holes in the 25mm / 1” thick plates at the base of each vertical leg.  Some scrap pieces of AL were tacked on to hold the cylinder in perfect alignment and then welded them fully in place with multiple passes on each side.
All three parts now complete and ready to be bolted together to form the completed Davit Arch.
Aligning the holes in the two doubler plates.
And securing them with six 16mm / 5/8” bolts.
Torquing down all the bolts, Hinge Base Plates ready to be attached with their SS Hinge Pins.
Like this.
et Voila!  The Davit Arch is upright for the first time and ready to be moved up onto the Aft Deck of Möbius.

But how do we do that when the forklift can’t lift the Arch up high enough???
Simple!  Uğur quickly fabricates this Forklift Crane eXtension (patent pending) using some scrap lengths of 8” square steel tubing with a chain hoist and block hung from the top and the base jammed into one of the forks of the forklift.

Oh, and a couple of strong men to help steady the Arch in place.
Up Up Up goes the Arch ……..
……… as Uğur inches the forklift into the very tight space between Möbius and Twinity, the big composite catamaran hiding behind the scaffolding and plastic on the Right here.
The Forklift was till a wee bit too short for the Aft Hinge Base Plate to clear the deck but some pry bars and muscle helped to raise it the last few inches and the Davit Arch was no up and ready to be positioned precisely on the Aft Deck.
The laser level and a long tape measure allowed us to get each Hinged Base Plate in the same position that we had worked out on the 3D model.
And each plate was tacked in place so we could do some real world measurement and testing to make sure the somewhat complex geometry all worked out as in the 3D model for getting the Tender to clear the outer edge of the Port/Left Rub Rail and then get it fully on Deck to meet the requirement that no part of the Tender extends out past the vertical line of the outer Rub Rail.
A worms eye view from the Swim Platform looking up the Aft Vertical leg of the Davit Arch and a good vantage point to see how the Davit Arch hinges on the Base.
Our digital level was a big help in checking the angle of the vertical legs when they are in the fully upright position where the Tender will be Lowered/Raised on the Aft Deck.

We designed this to be just a bit less than vertical so there was always a bit of weight on the rigging when the Tender was hanging from the Davit Arch so the Arch would start to move as you loosened the line on the winch and belayed the line to move the Tender sideways and over the Port side where it can be lowered into the water.
Now I needed to see exactly where the Centerline of the keel of the Tender would be when lowered onto the Aft Deck so I scrounged around the yard and found two of these weights.  Not sure what they are or used to be but they worked just perfect to be Plumb Bobs that I could string from the top of both ends of the Davit Arch and mark the spot on the deck with my felt pen when the Plumb Bob string was exactly vertical.
With the forward and aft Plumb Bob points marked, a laser level and a 6 meter length of aluminium L-Bar provided enabled me to lay out the full centerline on the Aft Deck and then use this as our reference line to measure the position of the Davit Arch and Tender as they moved from fully onboard to fully off the Port side.
It took me several hours of laying out all the positions of the Tender and its clearances over the side as well as clearing the Port Vent Box you see off to the Left of the front Hinge Base.

We tried out about three different positions and tacked the bases in each one as you can see evidenced here with some of the previous tacks that were ground off so we could reposition and get that Goldilocks just right spot.
You can see some of the different locations and colours I marked out on the deck until I though it was just right.
and gave Uğur the go ahead to weld them fully in place.
Here is what the Forward Leg of the Davit Arch looks like now fully welded in place.
And here is the Aft leg of the Arch now fully welded in place just inside the stairwell down to the Swim Platform.
As mentioned up in the beginning, the Tender is lifted Up/Down in the Davit Arch via two of these EST40 Lewmar winches.  This is the Aft winch.
And this is the Front Winch.  These EST40 winches have two speeds and are self tailing which should make lifting the Tender up off its deck chocks and out of the water very easy to do.
Once the Tender has been lifted up high enough for its bottom to clear the side deck, moving the Tender sideways onto the Aft Deck is even easier using this much larger and electric EST65 Lewmar winch.  You can now visualize how this single line from the winch goes up to the two bridle lines that go over to the front and aft ends of the Davit Arch.  And you can now see one of several uses for those two 50mm/ 2” thick aluminium Fairleads extending up out of the Starboard side Rub Rail.
Once we have the Tender strapped down into its chocks on the Aft Deck all the weight comes off the Davit Arch and I wanted to make sure that it was well secured when we were on passages.  Uğur came up with this simple design of two plates welded to the sides of the roof that sandwich the front vertical leg and ……
…. is then captured when the Arch is fully raised and rests against the forward side of the Roof overtop of the Aft Deck Galley.  We will make up a pin to slide through the two sandwich plates so that the Arch could not come loose and I may make this with an eccentric cam so I can lock the Arch tube tight against the rubber bumper that will be glued to the Roof edge and make for a nice tight holder that won’t rattle or move.
It is difficult to photograph the overall Davit Arch so I climbed up on the racks that separate the far bay in the shipyard to get this photo looking down at the Aft Deck of Möbius and Twinity off to its side.

Hope this helps to also give you a better sense of size and scale to the Aft Deck, Swim Platform, etc..

AFT DECK INSULATION:

In between building the Davit Arch, Nihat got busy putting in the 50mm / 2” thick EPDM foam insulation on the underside of the AL roof that extends out overtop of the two Vent Boxes. 

These two Vent Boxes are primarily there to bring fresh air in and stale air out of the Engine Room and Workshop but we put them to double use as our Aft Outdoor Galley by making their tops out of the same Turkish Turquoise marble as in the main Galley and installing a nice SS sink on one side and our electric BBQ Grill on the other.
Up to now, the underside of this overhanging roof looked like this and so Nihat got busy filling in all those channels with 50mm thick EPDM foam insulation.
Like this.  Prior to putting in the EPDM foam, he welded in all the short lengths of aluminium L-bar you see here
…. that will be used to attach the White Alucobond ceiling panels which they started cutting out down on the shop floor beneath.
This is a view of that ceiling looking up from inside the SuperSalon through the main entrance door.
And while he was in an insulation mood, Nihat removed the large AL deck hatch overtop of the Engine Room and glued in all the 50mm thick EPDM onto its underside.  As with the rest of the walls and ceiling in the ER, this EPDM will next be surfaced with White Alucobond screwed to those AL L-Bars he has welded into the frame of the Hatch.

INTERIOR:

Last but not least for this week let’s go check out what’s been happening with the interior of Möbius.

The Captain is VERY happy to see these two SS towel warming racks finally show up at our apartment after months of searching to find them, putting through the order, getting them through Turkish Customs and finally getting them delivered.
They are both the same and one goes in our Master Head/Bathroom and one in the Guest Cabin Head.
Beautifully made, this is one of the brushed 316 SS valves that connects the towel rack to the SS Hot Water fittings mounted in the walls.  Can’t wait to show you what these look like when they’ve been installed so do stay tuned for that in a future episode here.
Serkan our Hardware guru, continued with his installation of those lovely SS latches I’ve been extolling ad nauseum the past few months.  He is now down to the last of these as he installs the final four on these lower cabinet doors on the Starboard side of the Master Cabin.  With so many to install and the need for each latch barrel to be in just the right spot, he has build this little jig to make it easier to drill the pilot hole for each latch.
Sinan had previously covered the panels for all the upper cupboard doors and the Bureau of Drawers with their beautiful Green/Blue leather and Serkan now has them all mounted and installed all their SS latches.
Looking forward along that same side with the Bed platform on the Bottom Left and the Shower/Bathroom Upper Left, you can see how the Master Cabin is starting to come together.
Bathroom door now hung and most of the Bathroom cabinets in place waiting for their Corian countertops and then the iridescent blue glass sink can be installed.
Same style glass Blue sink is in place in the Vanity at the very front end of our Master Cabin.  The upper part of the door will soon have the same Green/Blue leather panel installed
along with the door handle that will look like this.
Which is actually the handle installed on the “Swiss” double acting door for the Entrance to the Master Cabin and the tall Wardrobe on the Left.
I detest drafts, squeaks and rattles so all the interior doors have these silicone based seals inserted into thin slots cut into the corner of each door jamb.  As is so often the case it is the small details like this that make the difference between good and eXceptional and I smile every time I feel the soft squish as I close one of these doors and feel them seal tight as the door latches closed.

Anchor Shackle:

In the Absolutely Must Have category as well as the “Don’t ask me how long it took to get these here” category, it put an even bigger smile on our faces when these Crosby anchor shackles finally arrived.  Our anchor chain is 13mm / 1/2” but we were able to upsize the critical link between the chain and the anchor to this 16mm / 5/8” shackle.  One of the key bits of kit that truly help us Sleep Well At Night or SWAN as we often call it.
And THAT my family, friends and followers is a wrap for the week that was September 21 to 26, 2020.  Hope you enjoyed this week’s Progress Update and PLEASE let me know your thoughts, concerns and questions in the “Join the Discussion” box below.

Thanks for joining and I hope to see you here again next week.

-Wayne