This past week has been a roller coaster ride of emotions for both Christine and myself and the whole thing is difficult to articulate and yet not something that can be captured by cameras either but I’ll do my best to use my standard Show & Tell technique to bring you up to date on the latest leg of the journey of Project Goldilocks aka the design and building of XPM78-01 Möbius.
I’ll start with the ending which is that Möbius is now ALL OURS and we are back on the hard, aka land, having hauled Möbius out to complete some of the jobs remaining to make her fully sea worthy.
It may only be a few hundred meters in reality but it is worlds apart for us.
NOTE: Back in February, when we were last here in Setur Marina for the first launching of Möbius, we met Emily & Matt who have their catamaran “Sea Odyssey” out on the hard just behind that big silver sailboat on the far Right in the photo above, so we already know some of our new neighbors.
If you’d like to learn more about Emily & Matt and Sea Odyssey, be sure to check out their YouTube channel HERE and their blog “sv Sea Odyssey; Catch our Drift”
But wait!! I’m getting ahead of myself, so let’s go back to the beginning of this latest leg in the adventures of mv Möbius.
FREE’d at LAST!
We are always so gobsmacked, as our British friends might say, at how many of you have been following us from near the beginning of this building of XPM78-01 Möbius at Naval Yachts here in Antalya Turkey that began back with the first aluminium hull work on April 6th, 2018 which as the counter at the bottom of this blog notes was 1144 days ago! Over THREE years ago? Yikes!
The actual beginning of Project Goldilocks as we originally called this whole adventure once the crazy idea of switching from sail to power and designing and building our own boat to do it with, took hold back in 2016 and we spent the first two years working closely every day with our awemazing designer Dennis Harjamaa at Artnautica Yacht Design in Auckland New Zealand which was where we delivered our last boat Learnativity to her new owners in Whangarei NZ. Rob Westermann runs Artnautica Europe where you can check out his notes on Möbius HERE. Rob and Dennis are also now busy designing an all new LRC65 that Rob and his wife will use as their next magic floating carpet ride.
Once we had the design of XPM78-01 Möbius pretty much set in 3D models and 2D drawings, we began searching the world quite literally for the Goldilocks just right location and builder and ended up partnering with Naval Yachts who are locating within the Free Zone here in Antalya Turkey and we now have them to thank for working quite literally cheek to jowl with us to build this first iteration and our new home, Möbius.
As most of you from following these weekly updates, Möbius first “splashed” on February 20th here at Setur Marina when the Free Zone had no launching capabilities for several months during their massive rebuild of their harbour and all their launching equipment. Since then we have been working through the process of commissioning every system where you get them all up and running, adjusted and dialed in. I’ve described these past few months as being a version of Zeno’s Paradox of the Tortoise and Achilles, where you make forward progress in steps that are each one half the remaining distance. The reason this is a paradox is that as odd as it might seem, it takes an infinite number of those half steps and you never arrive at your goal because there is always one more half step to go!
The other dimension to all this is that when building a new boat, while the Owners are technically just that and they “own” the boat, they don’t take possession of the boat until it has been fully finished by the Builders and the Owners make all the final payments and accept the boat. The feelings surrounding this gradual transfer from Builders to Owners are part of what I referenced in the beginning of this post that are so difficult to articulate. We’ve been living aboard since we splashed in February and it felt great and almost unbelievable to have our visions from years previous be transformed into this very solid reality. And yet, as the commissioning process extended into more and more days, then weeks and then months, the Free Zone felt a bit like living inside the line in the Eagle’s class Hotel California “Such a lovely place. You can check out any time you like. But you can never leave!”
The Free Zone was a lovely place, Möbius is an incredible boat, but she still wasn’t ours and we couldn’t help wondering if we would indeed ever leave so we could start finally restart our new lives in our new home and get back to our old habits of traveling the world’s seas.
And then, mid afternoon on Tuesday, May 18th, we received a text from our Builders that said “Prepare to leave, you are fully cleared for export and need to leave the Free Zone this afternoon!
What ensued next was like a scene out of the Keystone Cops and perhaps video will help capture this best so Christine has quickly pulled together this video montage of being “Freed from the Free Zone” on Tuesday afternoon.
That was all 5 days ago now and It still has not quite sunk in for me that this has all happened and is real. But that is an eXcellent problem to have and I’m working on it!
Moving Möbius into her New Home
KISS at its finest; Keep It Smart & Simple.
Very Slick Bottom you have there Miss Möbius!
One of the good things about hauling out again is that we got the chance to check out how well the new Foul Release paint was doing its job.
* For those of you interested in this Foul Release as opposed to Anti-Foul bottom paint, I wrote about this in more detail HERE in this Weekly Progress Update from Feb 8-13, 2021
It is still early in its life of course, which we expect to be 5-10 years before needing to be recoated, but based on this initial experience I am just blown away by how well this silicone based bottom paint works and can not say enough good things about it at this point. Stay tuned for “Bottoms Up (dates)” over the next few years.
Open Sesame Mr. Gee!
Many of you have been asking for more details about Mr. Gee and his sudden loss of oil pressure on the last sea trial. Now that we are out of the Free Zone and very solidly setup, that is my #1 priority and so yesterday I started to dismantling Mr. Gee to track down the culprit and fully fix the problem.
At this point I am still hoping that it won’t be neccessary to completely remove Mr. Gee and the Nogva CPP but with the hatch removed it makes working in the ER very well lit and ventilated even in the mid 30C/95F weather we are already having here.
While I don’t know if I will need to remove the engine, I do need to remove the large cast AL oil pan and to do that I need to lift Mr. Gee about 1m/40” up from where he sits here.
That workbench will soon be filled with a lot more parts as I get to the bottom of the problem and fix it properly so stay tuned for more episodes of “As Mr. Gee Turns”
Thanks as always for taking the time to join Christine and I on this grand adventure and don’t forget to add your questions and comments in the “Join the Discussion” box below.
Hope to see you here again next week.
You have awesome abilities. I continue to enjoy your posts. All the best.
Thanks for your overly complimentary comment JZ. Great to know that you and others are out there and I’m not just talking to myself. 🙂 I’m a very fortunate fellow to have had such a varied work and hobby history and so I’ve ended up being fairly handy and love working with my hands to design, make and fix things. So I seem to have ended up being an example of that saying (often misquoted) “A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.”
Hope I can continue to keep you engaged and enjoying the content on the Mobius.World blog
-Wayne
Best of Luck!! 🙂
Thanks Elton, I’ll need it! 😉
when the Mr. Gee problem is fixed, is it time for sea trials?
Absolutely John and it is killing both Christine and I that we can’t get “out there” and do more and more sea trials. But we are on it and will be out there ASAP
She sure looks like a member of the familywhich encompasses the FPB 78-1 Cochise.
https://setsail.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/FPB78-1-dried-out-Maharangi-River100.jpg
Quite right John and we are very proud to now be a part of this growing family/genre of boats.
As you and I have discussed here several times, there is definately a “family” or genre that is yet to have a name stick to it, for these long, slender, usually all aluminium, ocean crossing explorer/expedition boats that are primarily built for a couple or very small crew to run and maintain, often as their full time home or near to it. While still a very small family compared to the likes of traditional “trawler” style boats, it is fun and rewarding to see the “family” of XPM like boats grow more and more over the past few years with more and more companies starting to build boats with similar lineage and use cases. I fully expect this trend to continue to grow and IMHO it is a good thing for both the marine world overall and for the equally growing niche of people these boats provide a “Goldilocks” solution.
-Wayne
You sure have thought of everything when it comes to maintainability. I’m also impressed with your eclectic skillset!
As one who has been watching from the beginning, I gotta say, I fully expect to be here for the next big splash.
Well done!!
Hi Alan, thanks for commenting here. Not sure if it is ever possible to “think of everything when it comes to maintainability” but like you there are lessons to be learned from every installation or repair we do and when you get the chance to design or redesign an installation those hard earned lessons come to mind and help to make each successive iteration better than those we’ve known in the past. Whenever I’m working on some piece of equipment be it to fix a problem or regular maintenance I always try to find at least one way to improve the system in some way rather than “just” fixing it.
Christine and I are both former teachers and one of our greatest loves in life is learning. Our last boat, a 52 ft Bruce Roberts design steel sailboat was called “Learnativity” and she definately lived up to that name with all that she taught us. So one of the deciding factors which helped convince Christine and I to take on this crazy idea of designing and building our own “Goldilocks” just right, just for us, boat, was the opportunity to start with a blank slate and incorporate all those hard earned lessons from our decades at sea on so many different boats. I’m pretty sure we would still always make changes were we ever crazy enough to do this all over again, but that’s the nature of continuous improvement and one of the keys to happiness methinks is to be able to enjoy that which you have and remind yourself how much of an improvement your current boat is over the ones that came before.
We are obviously still in the very early stages of living and learning with mv Möbius but so far she is also turning out to be a great teacher and we are eXtremely happy with how well our design ideas have been working out so far.
-Wayne
An exciting episode Wayne & Christine! All the best with remediating Mr. Gee. Will stand-by for the next episode. All the best from Cindy and I.
Thanks very much Mike & Cindy! We are still very much looking forward to hosting you aboard Möbius so you can test out the Guest Cabin so do keep us in mind as your travel plans evolve and we all get back to traveling again soon. Hopefully!
Wow Wayne. Quite a story. Can’t wait to see and ask “permission to come aboard.” We were just back in Marin. Had lunch with Kim Davis, a drink with Theo and called Richard Cuneo in Idaho. Now we’ve been in Kauai for most of May. Head back to to the mountains in June.
Ciao-Jim
Hey Jim! Thanks for commenting and I’m envious of the “blast from the past” you must have had meeting with all our fellow Autodesk’ers. Please do say hi to those that might remember as you enjoy Marin and hope to have you aboard when we get Möbius over in waters closer to you.
Commenting here to learn of the cause of the oil pressure drop; my neighbour has two 6LXs here in the shed, and one of them with excess of 25,000 hours on her and her oil pressure before she was removed from her old hull was perfect. Best of luck Wayne in tracking down this VERY interesting problem!