The focus this week was on building the aluminium Console for the Upper Helm Station in the SkyBridge (the GO part of this week’s title), getting Mr. Gee his fuel supply, continuing to check off more electrical and interior jobs and prepare our anchor chain for anchoring (the Stop part of this week’s title). 

We were delighted to welcome back more members of Team Möbius as they return from the other boats they’ve been working on so let’s jump right into this week’s Show & Tell so you can see it all for yourself.

SkyBridge Helm Station

Here is the design we came up with for the aluminium console that will hold all our navigation equipment for the Upper Helm Station in the SkyBridge.  Click to enlarge this (or any image) to see some of the items that will be installed in this console and I’ll put a list of all of these below.

As shown in this layout drawing, the equipment that will be mounted in this console include:

• 2 Side by Side 24″ LiteMax NavPixel Daylight Readable Touch Monitors
• Furuno 711C Autopilot Control Head
• Vetus Bow Thruster Joystick Model BPAJ
• Maxwell VWC 4000 Windlass Up/Down Control
• Kobelt Engine Throttle and CPP Pitch Controls
• Kobelt Pitch Gauge
• Standard Horizon GX6000 Fixed-Mount VHF Radio
• Kobelt Control Switches & Remote Walkabout plug-in socket
• SH SCU-30 Wireless Access Point
• Exterior Lights switch panel
• Engine Stop/Start buttons
• Horn button

Although the SkyBridge area is quite well protected by the solid roof above created by the aluminium frame for the 8 320W solar panels mounted on top, and the removable plexiglass windows which wrap 360 degrees around the whole SkyBridge, it will still be exposed to wind and rain at times so we needed to build a waterproof console to protect all these critical and eXpen$ive electronics.
We had been working on the design of this console for a long time and were very pleased to be able to enlist the help of Burak who had been our 3D modeler when we first started working with Naval 3 years ago, to work out the details and finalise this design.  One additional design element we needed to accomplish was that this whole console needed to be removable for two reasons.  First being that it needs to be removed when we convert the boat to “hunkered down/Canal mode” and lower the articulated roof.  And secondly Christine and I want to try out having this Upper Helm Station in different locations in the SkyBridge as we use the boat for the first year or so.  We think that its current location at the Aft end of the SkyBridge will work out best but we won’t know for sure till we can live with it in different scenarios and different positions.

Burak sent over all the 2D construction drawings last week and so Uğur jumped right in on Monday morning and spent most of this past week taking this console from start to finish by Friday.  Let’s follow along as he works.
It would have taken another week or more to send out all the AL plate to be CNC cut and I think Uğur enjoyed the chance to go back to some “old school” ways so he quickly laid out all the parts directly on the AL plate and cut out the pieces with the in-house bandsaw and a cutting disk on his angle grinder. 
As we have tried to do throughout the design and build of XPM78-01 Möbius, we KISS’ed (Keep It Simple & Safe) the design of this console so there are only 8 pieces in total and they are all made out of 5mm / 3/16” flat AL plate which are easily tacked in place.
To provide ready access for installing and maintaining all the electrical connections and components inside this console we made the whole back side a removable plate that will be bolted in place with a watertight gasket.
With a quick check that all the dimensions and angles were all correct, Uğur got to work doing all the finish welding.

BTW, for those who might wonder why all the photos of welding have these lines in them it is due to the MIG welders being the newer Pulse type and the camera freeze-frames these pulses.
With the welds cleaned up a bit Uğur laid out the various cut-outs for each item to be installed on the dashboard and then cut these out with a hole saw or cutting wheel.
We are still waiting for a few switches to arrive but we have all the primary components so Uğur and I did a quick check to make sure they all fit properly before continuing.
Next it was time to finalise the location of the console on top of the foundation built into the SkyBridge (and for Cihan our Master Plumber to get in this quick cameo!)  The two cushions on the Port/Left side allow someone to comfortably join the person on watch as well as a great spot to lie down for a nap up here.
After trying a few different spots we settled on this positioning with the same amount of overhang around the three sides.
This is our Llebroc Helm Chair which will soon
…….. reside here, in the center of the space behind the dashboard.

This penetration on the inside provides a watertight pass through for all the cables.  Once all the cables have been installed and all systems checked that they are fully functional, this and all other penetrations throughout the boat are filled with certified “goo” to create a fully watertight seal.
Here is how the Upper Helm Station it looks from the back side. 
Holding the camera at about eye height here to check the sight lines which are great as you can easily see the whole forward end of the bow anchor area.
Whenever we prefer to have an even better close up view of around the boat, we have one of these Kobelt 7176 “Walk-About” remote controllers at both Helms. 

With 10m / 33ft of cable, I’m not willing to trust wireless for this critical control, we can stand almost anywhere on the boat from the Swim Platform to the Bow, either side deck and from anywhere in either the Main or SkyBridge Helm areas and have all the controls literally at our fingertips when docking or take this remote controller to wherever we are sitting.

The two side levers control Throttle and Pitch and up on top are controls for Rudder, Bow Thruster, CPP Clutch and Horn.  Can’t wait to try all these out on our upcoming sea trials once we launch.

And Yes, Launch Date is still “Thursday”, just don’t ask which one!

Plumbing Progress:

We finally have Cihan back full time again (we hope!) and he was his usual busy productive self all over Möbius.  Cihan and I started by working on the two heat exchangers …..
…….. that needed to be mounted in the very aft end of the Engine Room.
We built in this removable section of the flooring to provide full access to this important area where the prop shaft enters the boat.  The composite grid flooring lifts out and then this aluminium floor plate can be unbolted and removed as well.
Access is particularly important whenever I need to service the “dripless” Tides Marine SureSeal Drip Free Self-Aligning Shaft Seal that keeps all the water out of the joint where the prop shaft exits the log tube.
I will cover more details when we are installing this SureSeal but here is a quick overview of how it works.
Today though we wanted to access the very aft ends of the two Engine Beds on either side where we wanted to mount these two Bowman heat exchangers.  The red one on the far Port/Left side is for cooling the hydraulic oil in the Nogva CPP Gearbox and the Silver one on the far Stbd/Right side is for cooling the Gardner’s water/antifreeze engine coolant. 
Both of these heat exchangers have cool seawater being pumped through their outer shells while the oil is pumped through a round “stack” of CuNi (Copper/Nickle) tubes that you can see here in this cutaway illustration. 
Fun Fact:  Bowman is another one of the world leading industrial companies we have found here in Turkey and so it was fun to find that our Nogva Norwegian CPP system came with that Red Bowman Heat Exchanger.

My apologies for getting too busy to get too many photos of this installation of these two heat exchangers but the basic flow of the seawater is that it first enters the Left end of the Silver Heat Exchanger at the top of this photo, exits out the rear and then flows through the Gray (protective wrap) hose on the far Right here where it will enter the aft end of the Red Heat Exchanger at the bottom.  Inside the Engine Room, the seawater exits the front end of the Red Bowman Heat Exchanger through another rubber hose that goes up to the Halyard SS mixing elbow on the Gardner’s wet exhaust system and then exits the boat through the large Exit Sea Chest in the ER.  Much more to come on all that once we start installing the exhaust system in the next few weeks.
Another new plumbing addition that Cihan installed this past week is the small little circulation pump with the White faceplate you can see at the bottom middle of this photo of the underside of the Stbd/Right side Workbench in the Workshop.
These Jabsco/Xylem 24V “vario” pumps are very cool and very eXpen$ive but boy do they work well.  These are a relatively new pump generation that are super quite with minimal energy consumption, shaftless spherical motor and permanent magnet technology.
On Möbius we are using this D5 Vario 38/700B pump to keep hot water circulating through our DHW (Domestic Hot Water) loop that ensures that there is always hot water immediately available to every hot water tap and shower on the boat.  No more wasting time and water while you wait for hot water to come out of the sink faucet or shower nozzle!

Speaking of hot water, the Captain aka Christine, is eXtremely eXcited about Cihan installing two of these SS towel warmers; one in each cabin’s Head/Bathroom!

Christine has been wanting to have one of these for years and after a very long and winding road to find these Goldilocks just right versions, she will finally have one in our Master Cabin as will all our guests in their Bathroom.
Yet another example of the Turkish manufacturers making eXtremely high quality products, Christine fell in lust for these “Laris” model SS towel warmers from Hamman Radiator.
The towel warmers attach to the walls with these very clever SS tubes which Cihan first attaches to the walls using an expanding bolt on the inside of each tube. 

And then there are four round SS pegs on the back of the towel warmers which slide into these tubes and are locked in place with the little set screw you can see on the bottom here.

The two SS square fittings the bottom are the water valves to control the flow of hot water through the towel warmer. 

Here is what the finished mounting looks like.

Many won’t understand, but to my eye, all of this hardware and the towel racks themselves are just beautiful works of art and engineering that are part of our “boat jewelry” collection on Möbius.

Interior Progress:

Looking around our Master Head/Shower/Bathroom do your sharp eyes might spot a few other new additions?

One job Serkan just completed is the mounting of those two SS latches now installed on those bottom two cabinet doors underneath where the sink will mount.
And if you look very closely you will see that the White Corian countertop has arrived.  There will be a clear glass partition that extends up that slot between the shower seat and the ceiling and will be sealed to that vertical surface at the end of this countertop.
And what is this new addition that just showed up this week beside the VacuFlush toilet?
Aha!  That’s the wireless remote control panel for the BioBidet BB-1000 Supreme bidet seat.  It clips into a holder mounted on the cabinet so the curious can remove it and discover all the MANY functions available.   The same BioBidet is installed in the Guest Cabin as well BTW.

Surely you didn’t think I put the eXplorer in XPM for no reason did you?

More examples of how XPM78-01 Möbius is a true world eXplore can be seen in another new addition this week as Hilmi starts installing all our Vimar “Arké Metal” switches and plug ins.  We have designed Möbius to be a true “World Boat” and so she has both 120V 60Hz and 230V 50Hz AC plugs like these throughout the boat.
We also have wired CAT7 ethernet plugs spread throughout the boat for maximum internet speeds.  This one is tucked away below the “floating” shelf on Christine’s side of our King size bed.
And these are what the matching Vimar light switches look like.  Of course these will all look MUCH better once we remove all the protective plastic coverings and do a good cleanup prior to launch, but until then we are very glad to have all the interior surfaces covered up while construction continues.
And here is Hilmi installing a set of four of those Vimar switches for the LED lights around the stairwell leading down into the Master Cabin.
Serkan has also been busy in the Master cabin adding finishing touches such as these solid Ro$ewood handholds on the “Swiss” (as in Swiss Army Knife) door that is the door for both the entrance into the Master Cabin and the full length hanging locker as it is here.
He needed to radius both ends of these so that they cleared the door jambs when closed on the Entryway.  The upper panel will soon be covered with the same Green/Gray leather you see throughout the Master Cabin walls.

Aluminum Finishing:

Nihat also had a very productive week as he took on the eXtremely big job of finishing all the exterior aluminium surfaces.  We’ve settled on the “brushed” look that these 3M abrasive discs create when used with a random orbital sander such as this pneumatic one in the photo here.

Let us know what do you think of this look but we are very pleased with it.

Feeding Mr. Gee!

I managed to make more time for Mr. Gee again this week and focused on installing his “feeding” system to deliver the Goldilocks just right amount of scrupulously clean diesel fuel.

This is one of his six fuel injectors that have been refurbished to factory new condition by Michael and his crew at Gardner Marine Diesel at the Gardner “factory” in Kent England.  Injectors just don’t get much better or simpler than this.  NO electronics just a simple supply connection under the Red seal on the Right and a matching return connection on the Left.
Each injector slides into the tubular hole you can see underneath the tip of the injector here.
Then one of these lever arms is tightened down using the castellated nut just to the Left of the Red cap here.  This lever presses the angled end of the injector body into its matching seat inside the tubular hole in the cylinder head and forms a perfect seal to keep all those literally eXplosive forces inside the cylinder where they belong and where they then supply all the mighty “draft horsepower” and torque that Mr. Gee delivers to our propeller.
Now each of those injectors need an equally robust set of piping to deliver the diesel fuel to/from them so my next job was to clean up all these steel fuel lines and give them a couple of coats of shiny black epoxy. 

Can’t have any bare steel on Mr. Gee that would just rust now can we?!
Here is what those shiny Black steel fuel lines look like when they are connected to the bottom outlets on the Fuel Injection Pump and then go up to the injectors in the cylinder heads through the AL valve covers I have set in place here.

Again my apologies for being too busy installing all these fuel components to take more photos but I will take more this coming week and put them into next week’s Progress Update for you.

For now I hope this quick shot of where I left of yesterday (Sat. Oct. 10th) will do.

Yachts Play Games Bula Bula Right?!

Christine and I spent Saturday morning doing a job that believe it or not, we have long been looking forward to; painting the length marking strips on our 13mm / 1/2” galvanized HT anchor chain. 

The joy in this job is that it reminds us that in the not too distant future (we hope!) we will be using these marks to tell us how much anchor chain we have let out in the latest anchorage we have just arrived at.

We started by dragging all 300 meters / 328 feet of chain off the factory pallet onto the shop floor and arranging it in 10 meter long loops with paper underneath both ends where we would be spray painting the chain.
There are a LOT of different ways to mark an anchor chain and even more opinions about which is best but we have both anchored thousands of time in our marine lives and find that painting different colours onto the chain and then adding some matching coloured nylon zip ties is the Goldilocks just right method for us.
We paint a different colour combination each 10 meters / 33’ and to help us remember the distance of each colour we came up with the acronym YPGBR based on the colours of paint we have used this time.  As you might figure out from this photo, YPGBR  stands for Yellow-Pink-Green-Blue-Red which is the order of the colours we painted onto the chain every 10 meters. 

These are the odd numbered 10 meter marks starting with Yellow at the first 10m mark at the top here, then:

• Pink @ 30m,
• Green @ 50m,
• Blue @ 70m
• Red @ 90m
  At the other end of the loops we use a combination of the colours to mark the even starting lengths of;
• Yellow/Pink @ 20 meters
• Pink/Green @ 40m
• Green/Blue @ 60m
• Blue/Red @ 80m

Confusing right? 

Nope!  Easy for us to remember when the YPGBR acronym stands for is:

• Yachts
• Play
• Games
• Bula Bula**
• Right?!!
  For those who might wonder, Bula is the Fijian greeting, always said with great Gusto, which we learned so well from all our years cruising in Fiji
  

Once the paint dried we flaked the chain back onto the pallet and it is now ready to be pulled aboard into its Chain Bin inside the Forepeak but that will have to wait for next week’s Progress Update here on Möbius.World.

Thanks as always for joining us and be sure to add your thoughts and ideas in the “Join the Discussion” box below.

– Wayne & Christine