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

FIRE SUPPRESSION SYSTEM:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LIGHTS!

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

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

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

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

TOWERS of SHOWERS!

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

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

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

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

eXhausting!

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

eXtraction is eXhausting TOO!

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

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

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

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

See what I mean?  eXhausting right?!!

PROPULSION SYSTEM ALIGNMENT:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Wayne