Naval Yachts reached an all time high in productivity this week and it is an all time high that I’m not sure even they can top.  On Wednesday Dincer, one of our builder brothers and founder of Naval Yachts texted us with the news that he and his wife Nesli had just welcomed their twins into the world!  Wow!! 

Two very healthy boys, Yiğit, which means brave and Mert which means honest, arrived a few weeks sooner than expected but both they and Mom are doing very well.  Dad seems to be a bit tired though?

Both boys measure 42cm tall with Yiğit weighing in at 2.4kg and Mert at 2.2.  Congratulations Nesli and Dincer and welcome to this awemazing world Yiğit and Mert!  We can’t wait to meet and snuggle you soon!  As per this week’s title, if you think we have our hands full, you ought to see our hearts!

Amidst all the celebrations the rest of Team Möbius continued their great productivity with lots of progress being made this past week welding the stanchion sockets into the Rub Rails, tacking up the SkyBridge roof frame and the fore and aft railings, and installing the first wire trays so let’s go check all that out now.

Picking up where we left off last week, Uğur and Nihat continued to tack together the frame for the roof over the SkyBridge.
This is the aft end of the roof and each of those eight openings have been sized to have a full size solar panel sealed in place on top to form a fully watertight roof assembly.
This front area provides an overhang around three front windows and there will be vent grills in the underside of the front overhang to channel air over the bottom of the solar panels to keep them cool and efficiently cranking the electrons to keep our big battery banks fully topped up every day.

Here is the fully tacked and cleaned up roof frame ready for final welding. 

The V shaped on edge flat bars you see atop the plating fore and aft here are just temporary braces to hold the panels flush and will be removed once those joints are fully welded.

In last week’s update I included this rendering to show how the aft end of the dark green roof frame is attached at the aft ends to the hinged upper arch assembly such that they can both be folded down into “Canal Mode” shown in mauve here.
This Starboard side view shows what the SkyBridge roof will look like in regular passage making or anchor mode.

With the SkyBridge roof frame completed Uğur moves up to deck level and seems intent on something?

Oh No!  Why would he be cutting big holes in those eXtremely strong and beautiful Rub Rails he so meticulously welded in place last week?

Hmmmmm, these short lengths of 60mm thick walled pipe seem to fit in just right.
Carefully measured and leveled to be perfectly vertical….

…. then welded in place top ……
…. and bottom.
Ohhhh!!  Duh!  Now I remember drawing these up!  He is installing the sockets that will hold the aluminium stanchions and railings in place very solidly.

3 Dyneema lifelines running through these 1m/40” tall lengths of 40mm thick walled aluminium pipe will help keep us safely on deck.  Barney the Yorkshire Terror is another story but you will note that the bottom lifeline is at a particularly low Barney height.
This same type of nylon lined pipe socket will also be used to attach the 40mm pipe railings you can see in Cyan colour in the rendering above where they create very solid hand holds at the side boarding gates and around the bow and stern.  You will be seeing more of these stanchions and railings as they get installed in the coming weeks.

Moving inside the boat there seems to be a meeting of the minds in the forward Main Cabin staring Dincer the new father of twins Yiğit and Mert. 

Dincer is talking with Yusuf our head electrician as we work out the details of installing all the wiring and electrical systems on XPM78-01 Möbius.
Packages of these aluminium wire trays of various widths have been piling up on deck during the week ….

…. and new pieces of flat bar have been showing up between stringers on the upper hull sides.

Each flat bar and each opening slot in the frames are carefully lined with thick rubber glued in place to protect the wires and pipes from any abrasion and keep the trays fully isolated from the hull.
Here in the Workshop we will run some of the cables up and across the ceiling to the Starboard side.
Like this. 

Another set of trays will go below this first route of trays and you can see what those slots and holes in the frames are for. 
Wires will be routed to keep the high amperage AC and DC cables well separated from each other and we will run data cables on the opposite side.  All this to help eliminate magnetic induction and noise interference.
And that’s it for this week so we’ll turn out the lights and let Möbius rest for the long weekend bathed in the greenish night lights of the shipyard.

New Years is a particularly big holiday over here so Monday and Tuesday are holidays here and Naval Yachts and Team Möbius will start up again on Wednesday morning.

I’ve put together a short video or this week’s progress and you will find that below.

HOLIDAY BONUS!

We were all working today, Saturday and so wtih Christine’s help we spent time onboard and shot a bunch of video and I’ve used this to put together an end of the year guided tour of Möbius for all of you who have been asking for another and I will create a separate blog post for that with all the drawings and model shots in it so you can refer to these as you wish. 

And for a Holiday treat, seeing as you have all been such good little boys and girls throughout 2018, I’ve turned this into a fully annotated video guided tour with drawings and models overlaid throughout to help you visualise the various compartments and layouts.  At 23.5 minutes it is much longer than previous videos but I have put in markers throughout for each of the different cabins and areas on the boat so you should be able to fast forward to find what you are most interested in.  I have put this new annotated video walkthrough into it’s own post you can find here and I have put a copy of each drawing and render from the video at the bottom of that blog post so you can refer to these “stills” anytime you wish.

As with most things I do I’m a complete novice at this kind of video editing and using all new software tools so please bear with me as I learn and try out new things  My apologies in advance for the poor sound in many places.  I am upgrading to a lavaliere microphone I can wear in the future and will work on the lighting changes with the camera.  Otherwise I would very much appreciate any and all feedback from you as to what you like, what you don’t, what you would like more of, less of and any suggestions that will help me learn and improve to make these videos, or the blog postings, more enjoyable and informative.

Christine and I hope you enjoy the year end tour of Möbius and your celebrations with family and friends as 2018 draws to a close and we welcome in the new year.  2018 was certainly a densely packed year of milestones and memories for Christine and me and 2019 looks to be even more so as our awemazing adventures continue.  Lucky us!!

Wayne & Christine