Picking up where we left off last week I will use this same theme of “Go and Whoa” as we work on both systems that help us get going such as our Upper Helm Station for navigation while simultaneously working on our anchoring system to when we want to say “Whoa” and know Möbius will stay put.  Apologies in advance as I need to make this week’s update a bit of a rush job as we have some dear friends visiting us who have just flown in from Switzerland and Australia, which is quite a feat these days, and so Christine and I are taking a few days off to do some travels with them.  So without any further ado, let’s jump right into this week’s Show & Tell aboard Möbius and see what Team Möbius have been up with this past week.

Meet Rocky!

If you were with us last week you’ll recall seeing Christine and I paint our 13mm / 1/2” galvanized anchor chain with different colours at 10 meter / 33ft intervals as our way of counting how many meters of chain we are letting out for the depth of water we are anchoring in.  We then flaked the 110m/350ft of chain back onto its wood pallet and used the forklift to put it up on the foredeck ready to be fed down into the chain bin up front.  We will hold off doing so until we get the anchor itself properly mounted on the Port/Left side of the Bow so we’ll just leave the chain here for now.
Meet Rocky! 

I had installed a 70kg/155lb anchor on our previous 52ft/16m sailboat and we we eXtremely happy with how well it worked and we never dragged once so we decided to go with Rocna again on Möbius. 
Our anchoring or “Ground Tackle” system is one of the most critical of all for us as we anchor almost every night of the year and depend on our anchoring system to keep us solidly anchored to the bottom in ALL conditions.  I am not a fan of having multiple anchors at the bow as I want our “main” anchor to be the one that goes down every time. 

As usual for us and the XPM Series we upsized our anchor a wee bit and had this 110Kg/242lb Rocna shipped over to us from Canada where they are made, at the end of last year.  Since then, Rocky has been hibernating underneath Möbius all wrapped in his shipping bubble wrap so it was fun to finally do the unveiling this week and welcome him aboard Möbius.
While Rocky is the only anchor we have at the Bow we do carry several other anchors for different purposes one of which is this all aluminium Fortress X125 31kg/70lb anchor at the Stern. 

We will typically put this out as a Stern anchor to keep us in a fixed orientation under some conditions and perhaps used as a kedging anchor when (never if) we go aground and need to help pull us off.

As per this photo, Fortress anchors have many advantages being so light, easy to store when disassembled and works particularly well in soft muddy bottoms. 
Next step was to do some fine tuning up at the Bow to create the bespoke Anchor Rollers which Rocky will nestle into whenever he is off anchor duty on the sea floor below us.  This quick & dirty render hopefully shows how this rather unique Anchor Roller design we have come up works.

If you look closely, you can see one of the key features we built into this design which is that the flared ends of the two side cheeks of the Anchor Roller brackets, made of 15mm/5/8” AL plate integrally welded in as part of the Bow framing, will match the angle of the flukes of the Rocna.  This way we can cinch Rocky’s flukes up tight against these cheeks when we head out on passages and he essentially becomes part of the hull.  No movement, no noise even when the Bow is bashing through large waves.

During the build we had left these two cheeks a bit oversize to do this fine tuning so I needed to be able to pull Rocky in the just right “cheeks to flukes” position so Uğur, Nihat and I rigged up this length of square steel tubing and lashed it to the Bow Pulpit rails and hung the chain block off the end to pull Rocky aboard.
This setup was as my Dad might have said “The Bees Knees” as it allowed us to easily move Rocky up/down and push/pull him in/out as I tried out different positions with this rather tricky geometry to get the axis of the SS pins that will have two nylon rollers on them in just the right spot.
Here for example you can see that the angle of Rocky’s flukes are not quite matching up with the AL cheeks.
So the rollers need to be repositioned slightly so the shank end of the anchor seen here, goes down to close that gap.
I also wanted to make sure that the forward most end of Rocky was a bit aft of the forwardmost part of Möbius which is at the Rub Rail of the Bow, so we marked off a line parallel with the flukes and Uğur trimmed about 15mm off the ends of the AL cheeks which allowed the anchor to move a bit aft.
Welcome to your new home Rocky!

I then mocked up some wooden rollers and pins and was able to move these around to find the just right Goldilocks position such that they would bring Rocky into this home position when cinched up tight up on deck.  I may add some hard rubber strips to the end surfaces of those cheeks to make sure everything stays completely silent and there  is no movement here even when we put this under eXtreme stress in big seas.

More to come as we machine and install these Anchor Rollers in the coming weeks.

ENGINE ROOM SYSTEMS:

Alongside our Anchoring System at the very top of our critical systems list is the automated fire suppression system in the Engine Room.  Christine worked directly with Justin at Sea-Fire International in the UK and they designed the system you see here.
While we have extensive smoke/heat/fire/CO detection systems and manual Maus fire extinguishers located throughout every area of Möbius, the Engine Room requires a fully automated Fire Suppression System.  This both automatically activates the 3M Novec 1230TM extinguishing agent used in all Sea-Fire systems as well as shutting down Mr. Gee and all the fire dampers to completely seal off the ER so the Novec 1230 ** , which is stored as a liquid and discharged as a gas, can quickly and fully extinguish the fire. 
**  For those, like me, interested in such details, according to the 3M site “Novec 1230 fluid extinguishes a fire before it starts by rapidly removing heat. In a typical total flooding system, the fluid is stored as a liquid in cylinders pressurized with nitrogen. Automatic detection sensors trigger release when the fire is at the incipient stage, extinguishing it in mere seconds.  Novec 1230 fluid evaporates 50 times faster than water. In fact, you could soak a paperback book in a bath of Novec 1230 fluid and within a minute, pick it up and read where you left off.”

This Novec 1230 is a relatively recent development to replace previous types of gas based fire extinguishers which depleted the oxygen in the space and used other chemicals which were harmful and deadly for any humans who were in the space at the time.

The net result we care about with selecting this system is that any fire would be put out within seconds AND because it is a waterless fire suppression solution, it leaves no residue and is electrically non-conductive, the fire is extinguished without any harm to the engine, electrical devices and other equipment within the ER so that we should be able to fix up whatever problems led to this fire and then continue on our way.

Cihan was back with us on Thursday and mounted the Sea-Fire NF 550AM bottle solidly to the AL framework of the ER.

If you look closely (click to enlarge any photo) you can see he has also mounted the Red mandatory manual activation cable off to the far Left with its handle on the outside of the ER beside the door.
Cihan and Uğur also mounted the Kobelt Actuator to make sure it did not interfere with the Sea-Fire bottle and pull cable.  This Kobelt Actuator converts the electronic signals from the control levers at the Main and Upper Helm Stations into mechanical movement that moves two push/pull Morse cables; one that moves the throttle lever on Mr. Gee and the other moves the Pitch Control lever on the Nogva CPP Servo Gearbox.
In the unlikely event that both electronic control systems at the Upper and Lower Helm Stations should fail, you can manually control the throttle and pitch using the two SS handles you see here with the Black knobs on the end. 

Redundancy (2 independent Helm Controllers) and manual backups as always!

VICTRON COMMISSIONING:

After the different systems on boats the size of XPM78-01 Möbius have been fully installed, they need to be set up and tested to be working properly by the manufacturer.  This is process is referred to as  “commissioning” and it was another exciting milestone for us this week when one of our most primary and critical systems, our extensive Victron electrical system was commissioned by Victron.

Yusuf rejoined us and he, Hilmi and myself spent several hours down in the Basement which is where our “Victron City” is located, with my laptop connected into the Victron network via the White ethernet cable via the little Blue/Black Victron MK3 to USB gateway you see atop my laptop.
But where is the Victron person you may ask?  He is on the other end of the phone that Yusuf is talking with here while simultaneously be connected into my laptop via a remote desktop app so that he can take direct control of my laptop and then use the Victron Connect software to configure and test all our Victron equipment.  Ahhh, the wonders of modern technology.

Worked like a charm and was a very cool experience as the Victron expert updated all the firmware on each Victron device, set up all their parameters and configuration files and tested them.
The internet connection way down in the Basement where the signals need to go through multiple walls of aluminium wasn’t the best for uploading all the firmware and configuration files but that was no problem as I simply moved my laptop up to the Aft Deck and ran a longer ethernet cable from the Basement.

Now that all the devices are setup we can remotely connect to them using the Victron Remote Management portal or VRM as well as via Bluetooth, WiFi and USB.
I was very impressed with how well this Victron remote management allowed us to do the full commissioning virtually.  Hard to show this in photos but one of the smart things Victron does is let’s you cause the LED lights on any bit of kit to blink so you can unambiguously identify the specific device you are working on or sending files to.

Welcome to the 21st Century Möbius!

GLASS at LAST!

Well we don’t’ have the glass for all our windows and hatches just yet BUT the reason this scene was very exciting for us to see this week is that what Nihat and Osman are doing here is making the plywood templates for each piece of glass on the boat.  This is the one for the Port Deck Hatch on the Aft Deck.

SKYBRIDGE HELM STATION:

Last week Uğur finished welding up this all aluminium Help Station and got it bolted into the stand up in the SkyBridge.
This week Hilmi was able to install all the wiring
Which come up through this penetration between the Helm Station and the Base below.
This is most of the equipment prior to installation.
Now partially installed.
Now just waiting for the Engine Start/Stop switches to arrive.

We will hold off installing the two 24” touch screens until just before launching when things will be much cleaner onboard.
For now, they are all hermetically sealed away as there is still a lot of aluminium and other dust flying around.
And th-tha-tha- That’s ALL Folks!  for this week’s XPM78-01 Möbius Progress Report. 

Sorry this one is a bit rushed and I’ll be back with more again next week.

See you then,

Wayne