Everyone at Naval Yachts had a well deserved break to celebrate the big four day Kurban Bayramı holiday as families gathered to enjoy time with each other and friends and LOTS of great food.  So a short blog update for this two day work week.  As the title is meant to suggest most of the work the past two days has been on installing the wood grids on the walls in the Master and Guest cabins.  These grids anchor all the walls and some cabinetry to the aluminium bulkheads, floors and ceiling frames and provide space for acoustic insulation and any  wiring and plumbing which needs to travel through these walls.  Let’s go check it out onboard XPM78-01 Möbius.

For orientation here is a quick render of the Shower and Head are in the Master Cabin.
As we saw last week all the cabinetry along the Starboard/Right side of the Master Cabin and the forwardmost wall and door into the Head/Bathroom have all been fitted.  This week the wall and door which sit alongside the Vanity sink cabinet you see here have been taken back to the Cabinetry workshop for final sanding and the new addition is this short laminated wood section of the shower wall that joins the glass wall to the hull sides.

Now Omur and Selim move on to putting in the grid on the other end of the Master Cabin where the WT Bulkhead between the Master Cabin and the Basement forms the aft wall.
The white acoustic insulation is cut away and small 40mm/1.5” solid wood blocks are adhered to the underlying aluminium plate and then the lattice grids are attached to those blocks.

The grid is made light and strong using lightweight marine plywood and this tongue and groove construction with these triangular gussets in each corner.  These grids create the foundation layer for attaching the finished panels using FastMount snap in connectors and a similar type grid will go on the ceiling as well.  Where needed the spaces in this grid can be used to run wiring for wall switches as well as plumbing in a few places, but almost all wiring and plumbing is routed along the hull sides in dedicated trays.

For those that didn’t see it last week, the grids are fastened to the underlying aluminium plate with solid wood blocks that are adhered to the aluminium with industrial adhesive (Sikaflex) which protrude through cut outs in 3 layer acoustic insulation you see under my thumb here.
Moving aft to the Guest Cabin & Christine’s Office we can see the whole process of installing the wall grids.  Omer has built the lattice grids in the Cabinetry shop and brought the first one aboard that goes on this short section of wall at the end of the Guest Cabin Head.
He starts by laying out the grid pattern for all the attachment blocks.
Soon has all the blocks glued in place…..
— checked to be sure they are all on the same plane using the laser level and they are now ready to be sealed with epoxy paint.
Aluminium and Cabinetry teams meet as Uğur (right) and Nihat (partially hidden) arrive to weld in the aluminium step framing that will help support the cabinetry, marble countertops, stove and oven at the aft end of the Galley.
This intersection between the Galley on the upper SuperSalon level and the Guest Cabin below takes awhile to visualise and this GA plan view will help.  If you compare the layout of the Galley in the upper view of the SuperSalon with the Guest Cabin below you will see how they overlap where the aft countertop with the induction cooktop and Speed Oven extends a bit into the upper space of the Guest Cabin.
Here’s a reminder render of the Galley looking aft and the Guest Cabin is below those big aft windows.
If you study the upper left area in this render of the Guest Cabin you will see how this intersection works with the Oven and cabinetry from the Galley forming the step down from the ceiling with the bookcase underneath.
With those visual gymnastics you can hopefully now see how this all works with the aluminium step bracing now in place here.
Once the aluminium step frames were tacked in place Omer cut the slots in the upper edge of the grid and slid it in place for a test fit.
Looks good, Nihat and Uğur double check their aluminium framing and Omer checks the grid and everyone is happy.
Omer soon has all the grids attached along this wall and puts on another coat of white epoxy to seal the wood completely.
Here is what it looks like from the upper Galley area looking aft and down into the Guest Cabin.  The Galley cabinets will be built into this area with the aft countertop setting atop the uppermost aluminium step here.  How if you look back at the renderings above of the Galley and Guest Cabin you will see how this busy complex intersection all comes together.
That is where things are at when we finished up yesterday (Friday Aug. 16, 2019) and we’ll pick up from here in next week’s progress update.

I will be reporting on all that from afar mind you as Christine and I are taking time to go celebrate our anniversary with a few days in beautiful Napoli Italy and then an overnight ferry ride over to Cagliari on the island of Sardinia to get in some long awaited time with very dear friends and family on their 50’ catamaran “Wicked”. 

So I’m with my Beautiful Bride and typing this from the comfort of the very nice Turkish Airlines lounge in the brand new IST airport.  A very nicely done airport and while this lounge doesn’t have all the multi levels of the famous TA Lounge in the old IST airport it has even more individual cooking and food stations, over 20 and I lost count each one custom cooking and preparing pretty much anything you can imagine.  One of my new favorite airports for layovers to be sure.

Not to worry though, Yiğit will be keeping us updated with lots of photos and daily calls, texts and Emails so I will be able to post a regular weekly update next weekend as everyone on Team Möbius continues to apply their skills and experience to this awemazing build process creating our Goldilocks just right, just for us, XPM boat.

See you next week!