It is Christine’s Birthday today, Happy Birthday my Beautiful Young Bride! So I snuck away early Friday afternoon and we drove East from Antalya along the coat to the beautiful old town of Alanya and have a fabulous room up at the top of a hill in an old castle with a view out over the original Red Tower and the inner harbour. Here is a quick panorama shot to give you and idea of this fabulous old city or Alanya.
But not to worry, I’ll do my best to make sure this week’s Möbius progress update posting WILL happen before the weekend is out and right now there is a HUGE downpour that has already dropped more than 80mm/3” of rain in less than 2 hours so we are enjoying the view from our room across the the harbour to the mountains on the far side. Christine is busy working on her daily Turkish lesson so she doesn’t loose the “streak” she is on with them and I’m taking advantage of the time to get this blog post started. As you might have already noticed, this will be a much longer post than usual as there is much to explain and show you so settle into a comfy chair with a good beverage and let’s get started.
This week was particularly exciting as work started on building the new hatches for Möbius which we have been designing and deliberating on for many months. Having Xtremely great hatches is super important to us because they bring in most of the fresh air and all the natural light into both our Master Cabin and the aft Guest Cabin. We have lived aboard boats with hatches for decades but never with ones we would rate as great. Sometimes they are just not well sized, sometimes they open the wrong way for the breezes, or they let any nearby raindrop in. Worst of all though is that pretty much all of them start to leak at some point, especially ones up on the foredeck when on passages in big waves that often bring volumes of sea water crashing onto the decks and penetrating even otherwise good seals no matter how well you try to “dog” them down tight. So we were determined that we would find a way to have truly GREAT hatches on Möbius. Hatches that are Goldilocks by being just the right size in just the right place and oriented just right to catch the least bit of fresh breezes coming over the bow when we are anchored. And MOST importantly of all, hatches that would NEVER leak under any conditions.
Then I added in two more and perhaps two of the most challenging must have characteristics; one, the hatch frames had to be raw aluminium that was shaped and thick enough to be welded directly into the decks and underlying framework, and second the hatches had to be significantly above the requirements for them to be certified for a full self righting situation.
This is a tall order and set us out on a very long and winding search for many years now dating back to well before we decided to move over from sail to power and to design and build our own boat as we had already been on the hunt for new hatches for our last sailboat Learnativity for a long time. We’ve been to most of the big boat shows on several continents to talk with the various hatch vendors. We’ve tapped into all the online forums, magazines and trade journals we could find. We’ve talked to MANY fellow liveaboard cruisers, most of whom share our pain and spent time exploring every detail of their hatches. All of which helped us figure out what works and what doesn’t when it comes to hatches so we had a very clear sense of the key traits of a great hatch and we know what we were looking for.
It may sound like an episode from Mission Impossible or an obsession to some of you but I believe it is possible to design and build a boat that stays dry inside in ALL conditions and does not EVER leak. One key to this is that one of my primary rules is that there will be NO penetrations of the deck or hull which could ever leak. None, zero, nada. No bolts, screws or rivets which penetrate the hull. No parts mounted through holes cut in the deck and then sealed with caulking or the like. One of the places where even good hatches often end up leaking is through their mounting of the frame to the deck where water finds its way, often under very severe pressure from so called Green Water in high seas, through fasteners or through seals and sealants that fail over time. Hence my hatches had to be welded into the hull and leave a single challenge to being leak free; the gasket that seals between the hinged lid and the outer frame. Even this is a challenge, but a solvable one which lets me put all my focus on making these lid seals as leak proof as possible.
I’m sure many of you are shaking your heads at this point with a wry smile on your lips and a wish for good luck but we are accustomed to being on the hunt for parts and equipment for Möbius with equally as daunting lists of Must Haves and other requirements and eventually we were able to find a few companies who make truly great hatches. But, and you knew that was coming didn’t you, none of these companies carried their great hatches in our sizes or at all and so they would need to be custom built and this was going to take both too much time and cost too much so the choice was simple and a bit like Möbius herself, we would need to design and build our own.
This is not as difficult as it sounds as it is more a case of assembling all the various features which are on our Must Have list and putting them together into a single design of a hatch. None of these features are new in and of themselves so we are not so much designing a new hatch as we are creating our own combination of features and ideas from many different sources. This holds true for the design of the whole boat IMHO as there are very very few features truly new and never seen before features in any boat. What sets any given boat apart from others is the combination of features they select to use and how they put them all together.
I find Autodesk’s Fusion 360 to be a fantastic tool for doing this kind of evolutionary design work and I used it to try out my initial ideas for the Goldilocks just right hatch I’ve outlined above and ended up with the design you’ll see below. I have not had time to create any proper renderings of these so I will just grab some screen captures from within Fusion 360. I have coloured the two basic aluminium parts for clarity with the outer Frame in RED and the inner Lid in BLUE. I’ve made the 15mm/5/8” thick glass that is glued to the Lid and the partial deck surface around the outside of each hatch to be transparent so it is a bit easier to see what’s inside and added a bit of wood appearance to the inner wood liner which is all that will be seen from the inside of the boat.
* Red Outer Frame made from 3 pieces of 8mm/ 5/16” thick AL plate
* Blue Lid made from a 8mm thick outer flat bar frame welded to a top which is CNC cut as a single piece from 10mm/ 716” aluminium plate which then has a 15mm/5/8” thick clear tempered glass plate which sits flush with the other edges of the Lid frame and the top Deck surface.
* 20mm/ 3/4” thick wood inner liner which extends through the interior upholstered head liners.
I have omitted the handles and latch details for clarity but you can see where they attach to the two round bosses on the underside of the blue Lid.
Two SS gas compression lift cylinders are also not shown and will mount to the aft corner of the Gutter inside the red Frame and the side of the blue Lid to assist with opening when the latch handles are turned.
In the interest of time and what will likely already be a long post, the basic key design requirements I ended up with include the following:
- KISS (Keep It Simple & Safe) the design for both functional use as well as the fabrication of these hatches by using the least number of individual parts and keeping each one as simple as possible using stock aluminium.
- KISS the fabrication process as straightforward as possible requiring as few special tools, jigs and machines as possible so that it can all be done in house with our current capabilities.
- Design the hatches so as to eliminate any high pressure sea water forces from bearing directly on the seals so that readily available good quality seals will be able to easily keep all water out for many years of daily use and then be easily replaceable when they do eventually wear out.
- Ensure that the entire hatch is well above and beyond engineering and certification standards to stay intact and fully sealed in the case of a full roll over or self righting recovery.
- KISS the latching or locking mechanisms by having no external access for opening, all latches operate from inside only.
- KISS the latching system and have an ability for a varying degree of locking or “dogging” down the hatches over time as the seals may take some set.
- Present the least possible interference and disruption of the clean deck surfaces for both equipment and humans. eg. no toe stubbers or line catchers
- Maintain the lowest possible maintenance factor as with all other aspects of the design of these XPS boats.
Along the way to the final design I ended up designing these hatches to be completely flush with the deck surfaces they are welded into. I wrestled with this decision of flush versus having the hatch frame extend up above the deck surface by 50-100mm/2-4” or so which is typical of most hatches and which was how I had initially thought they would sit. I came up with several such above deck designs which would have worked very well but in the end flush mounted hatches won out through my version of “the process of elimination”. What is the most sure fire way to deal with those high pressure sea water forces being able to reach the seals? Eliminate them. What is the best way to keep the deck surfaces free and clear? Eliminate any part of the hatches being above or below the deck surface. By making the top glass surface flush with the deck any big seas that end up on deck will simply pass right over these hatches and leave the seals to just deal with any standing water that collects in the Gutter area you will see below that runs like a moat around the outside perimeter of the Red Frame inner and outer frames before it drains out the two holes in the bottom of the Gutter.
For clarity I have turned off the deck plate that sits flush with the red tops of the outer frames and made the Hinge Boxes that are welded to the red outer Frame to appear transparent so you can see the blue hinge arms inside. The 8mm Hinge Pins are in white.
The Blue Hinge Arms will initially be milled out of a single meter long piece of square aluminium stock to form the profile for the Hinge Arms you can make out in this and the rendering below and then cut and machined to 50mm/2” long lengths for each Hinge Arm which is TIG welded to the outer frame of the Lid.
For those interested in more details this section side view might help to see how the Deck (orange), Outer Frame (light blue) and Lid (yellow) all work together. I’ve turned off the seals that fill the gap on the top of the inner most vertical light blue Frame and the inside surface of the Lid.
The gap between the outer edges of the yellow Lid and the light blue Frame is about 5mm and there will be two 20mm diameter drain pipes for the water to quickly flow out through the bottom of the light blue horizontal Gutter frame where the Lid sits. The Latches and Handles are omitted here for clarity and will attach to the round yellow boss seen on the right side here.
Whew! Hope that long explanation and renders help give you a good sense of what these hatches will look like and how they work, now let’s get back to reality and see how this design is being transformed into real aluminium.
As you can see here and noticed in the renderings above most of the parts of this hatch design are made from single lengths of 8mm plate, basically simple flat bars.
The 10mm top plate parts are out being cut by a waterjet CNC machine as we want to have a fully finished edge out of the CNC machine to be flush with the edges of the 15mm glass plate.
I also spent a lot of time working out how these parts would be formed, assembled and welded to keep the build time and costs as low as possible.
Here is that first Frame with all four corners of the inner frame bent and being checked for fit. Using large clamps, the inner frame is then pulled tight against the inside of the Gutter bottom and then the overlapping ends you see up at the top of the photo are cut to the exact length and the inner frame is tacked together.
The fully assembled and tacked Frame is then cleaned up and ready for final welding.
The upside down Frame in the back is one of the 450mm / 18” hatches and the one in the foreground is the 600mm / 24” hatch Frame.
I don’t think you need to know much about welding to agree that this is not only strong but beautiful work and it is a shame that it will never be seen once these are welded into the Deck, but we will all know its there and helps account for the huge grins we will all have on our faces when we launch.
I realise that these hatches are Xtremely Xtreme, over the top some will surely say. But will NEVER leak, and as the guy who has to live with these, sleep under them, maintain them and fix anything that goes wrong, I think they are well worth the extra effort and I could not be happier with the way these have turned out and look forward to showing you the next phase of building the lids and then fitting and installing the finished hatches into the boat.
That is him hanging from the end of the extending boom of one of the many “Preying Mantis” cranes in the yard while Mother Möbius looks on over on the far right making sure her energy source is being treated well.
The pano shot above is looking the opposite way from the previous one above, this one looking West along the coast towards our place in Antalya. Worth clicking on these shots to see some of the details of the castle and fortified walls of this town that dates back to the 12th century.
Before you go, while it is very short here is a time lapse video of some of the work this week and I hope you’ll enjoy seeing a hatch built in about 30 seconds!
Thanks for joining us and please do add your comments, questions and suggestions in the Join the Discussion box below.
See you next week,
– Wayne
Happy Birthday Christine!!!
Does the political in Turkey affect you guys?
John
Hi John. I would liken the situation here to being similar to yours in that there is lots of disturbing things in the news but almost no signs of it in day to day life for most people and places. We continue to find Turkey to be amongst THE most safe, tolerant and respectful places we have ever been on the planet and we’ve been to well over 100 countries so far. Just coming back from a truly awemazing weekend in the ancient coastal town of Alanya for Christine’s Birthday we are more in awe of the people, places, food, culture, history and beauty than ever and have to pinch ourselves from time to time as to how well our choice to build our Goldilocks boat in this Goldilocks of locations as worked out for us. We can and do recommend that everyone consider spending some time here to experience it for themselves and form their own opinions and reactions, so do think about it as you look ahead to future travels and experiences.
Hope Spring is well on its way to you over there John, it certainly is here.
Thanks for the birthday wishes John. Like Wayne said, our lives here in Turkey are not impacted much at all by the political situation. Right now there is a municipal election, and we see lots of campaign posters and vans driving around with speakers blaring political promises, but mostly we chuckle as lots of local projects are getting done right and left: trees planted, parks renovated, new roads built, etc. We are not able to read the newspapers or watch the news on TV, so it makes for a very stress-free life from that perspective.
Happy Saint Paddy Day Birthday Christine just wished my friend Barbara the same.
Thanks for the birthday wishes Camille!
Hi Guys,
well call me stupid but what I haven´t gotten into my head is how do you empty the drains and gutters around the hatches?
Hi Michael. No such thing as stupid questions, unless they come from me! 🙂
I’ve got 2 different options for “draining the drains” and haven’t made the final decision yet. The two drain tubes coming out of the bottom of the hatch “gutters” on each side will interconnect with a T fitting and then that single pipe/hose will make its way to one of two spots:
A. Run straight over to one side of the hull where we’d weld in a 20mm ID aluminium pipe that exits just below the bottom of the Rub Rails and the water simply drains out there, runs down the side of the hull and into the ocean.
B. Hose runs down to the nearest exiting sea chest and out that way.
I’m leaning towards Option A right now as it is simpler and much shorter length for these drains.
Make sense? Your thoughts?
Happy Birthday Christine, you spent it in a beautiful location. I like your hatches but you didn’t give any specs on the glass you are using and if you had any trouble source it? I am currently looking for 3/8″ to replace the ones I have now. On a side note. I gave up watching tv because I did understand it, when a tv anchor for a national broadcasting network said in an add, “We are here to interpret the news so you don’t have to”. I felt if they would just deliver the raw news, without their “interpretation”, I was perfectly capable of interpreting it myself.
Hi Orville, glad you’re liking the way the hatches have evolved. For the glass I’m currently going for would be 2 sheets of tempered glass laminated together for a total thickness of about 15mm. Turkey has a huge glass industry so we are working with several companies on the glass for these hatches as well as for the big panels surrounding the Pilot House/SuperSalon. For the hatches, if this laminated glass isn’t going to be possible then I’ll likely revert to Lexan or acrylic. These would work fine but I’d much prefer glass for the clarity and longevity. Will keep you posted as this gets resolved.
I didn’t grow up with much TV being a “military brat” who moved so often and spent lots of time overseas and so never really developed the habit and still haven’t. Christine is similar and so I’m not sure either of could recall the last time we watched any “broadcast TV”. However we really enjoy our “dinner and a movie” most nights though we watch far more of documentaries and whatever shows like “Chef’s Table” would be called and what we probably watch the most of are some of the many YouTube channels or “Vlogs” we follow that are quite amazing. Some of these of course are boat related with other couples of all ages who are sailing around the world as you might expect but more are things like people building things in general, boats included but for me also things like 3D printing, CNC machining, Overland vehicle building and we also watch a lot of “how to” videos on YouTube as we try to learn new things, again mostly to do with the boat and getting us into voyaging under power, but lot of other topics. We still find it quite mindboggling the vast amount of “learning objects” that are out there, largely on YT, on pretty much ANY topic or question you might have. Recent example for you, the other day I typed “how to create Möbius strip in Fusion 360?” as I’ve got an idea of using this for a handle design I’ve got in mind for the hatches. Sure enough, a whole list popped up and I had it done in less than 5 minutes total. Maybe it is just me but I’m about as geeky as they get, been around this stuff most of my life and I still think this is Awemazing!