Hard for us to believe but this week marked the beginning of Year Two as we passed the one year mark since Project Goldilocks began last April 6th and the productivity freight train that Team Möbius is, continues to pick up speed on the tracks to completion by the end of this year. We were all too busy with the ever increasing teams and types of work that has been happening to stop and celebrate this milestone and it is one of those things where you wonder simultaneously at how it could have been so long ago and yet how short a time it seems. As per the title and what you’ll see and read in this week’s progress update we now have teams working on finish welding in all our in-house designed and built deck hatches both glass and aluminium types, hand hold railings, electrical wiring, insulation, fuel hoses and manifolds, engine room door, wood and material selections for the interior design work which is picking up steam now too. So with that brief synopsis let me stop telling and start showing you this week’s progress.
If you’ve been following along the past few weeks you’ll know where you are and what these are. That’s right we are in the Basement and these are the two large fuel manifolds for selecting which fuel tank we are pulling from and which tank we are returning to when either polishing or transferring fuel. Most often this will be filling up the 500L Day Tank which is the supply source for the two diesel consumers, the Gardner engine and the Kabola water heater and then from time to time when we are polishing the fuel via the Alpha Laval MIB303 centrifuge or transferring fuel from one tank to another to keep all that weight well balanced and where we want it.
The manifold on the left manages all the return hoses and the one on the right the supply to each of the six fuel tanks below the Basement. You can see the large access hatch opening above into the SuperSalon and we’ve located all these ball valves here for quick and easy access whenever we need to switch which tank we are drawing from and returning to.
The manifolds have 14 hoses connected to them, six each to/from each tank and then a main supply and return line leading up to the Day Tank in the Workshop and they have now started laying in all these rubber fuel hoses along the “superhighway” of wire trays that you’ve been seeing installed over the past month. Speaking of the Day Tank, it moved aboard for a temporary stay to determine the precise location it will have and finalising the brackets to hold it there. Here you see the partially welded up Day Tank making its way through the WT doorway from the Swim Platform into the Workshop. Moving it straight forward from the door the Day Tank nestles into its spot up against the WT Bulkhead into the Guest Cabin and the Starboard side wall of the Engine Room on the left here. If you look closely you can just make out the WT Bulkhead in the back as it is all covered with the black EPDM insulation and you can see two of the aluminium pass through sleeves on the right where hoses, wires and plumbing lines need to penetrate a WT Bulkhead frame. Where hoses, wires and pipes need to pass through a Water Tight Bulkhead, oval shaped aluminium sleeves have been welded in such as the three you can see on the left of this photo. Near the end of the build once all the systems are fully installed these sleeves will be filled with a special certified foam to completely seal them. And there are some off/on ramps built in where we need to run hoses and cables across a bulkhead such as this. You might think some giant squid has squeezed aboard but this is the beginning of installing the larger 50mm/2” ID rubber hose for the Fill & Vents boxes where they connect to each fuel tank when refuelling. These might look like two periscopes watching the action happening on the hose trays but they are actually two of the Fill/Vent connections into this fuel tank in the Basement that is inboard of the Grey Water tank in the background here with its access port on the right and some of the SAE5 flanges on the left where the Maretron and Hart tank level lines go. Up in the Master Cabin the water tank access ports are being fitted with their SS studs…………. Fuel rated gasket material is cut to fit……….. ……… and lids are carefully torqued down and then each tank is pressure tested to ensure it remains fully sealed. Finishing up with tanks for this week, Uğur and Nihat are welding in the flanges around these two void (empty) tank sections which separate the water tanks in the aft end of the Master Cabin from the fuel tanks in the Basement This is required by CE and class certification but is also just good practice to eliminate any chance of fuel and water mixing. 6mm / 1/4” aluminium plate covers will be bolted in with gaskets to keep this area fully waterproof as well as providing access in the future should it be needed for these areas which are located under the Queen bed in the Master Cabin. Up at the front of the Master Cabin Mummy is busy finishing off the installation of the special acoustic insulation on this WT Bulkhead where the Forepeak on the other side. With 50mm / 2” of EPDM on the other side, this is our typical over engineering just to ensure that anytime someone is sleeping in the Master Cabin noised from anchoring don’t interfere with their sleep. These large acoustic insulation panels have peel & stick adhesive to keep them fully sealed against the aluminium plates and then these aluminium fasteners are glued to the aluminium bulkheads and the foam is pressed in place.
To finish, these large diameter aluminium locking washers are pressed on and the spikes are bent over and cut off to ensure these panels stay put prior to having the acoustic plywood panels fastened over top.
Finishing off the insulation update this week, Mummy has also been busy completing the exacting job of applying the thick cloth backed foil over all the EPDM foam insulation on the Basement walls and ceiling. This foil has proven to be a great solution to providing the just right surface in the Basement. As you can see it is VERY bright in here with all the reflection off the aluminium foil and it is Xtremely durable and easy to clean. What’s not to like? Installation of all the glass topped deck hatch frames we’ve designed and built in house is now finished with these last two 70cm / 28” square welded in place on each side of the Aft Deck. These are located overtop of the middle of the length of the 5m long workbenches below in the Workshop. At the very back of the Aft Deck Uğur, Nihat and Sezgin were hard at work building the door for the entrance into the Engine Room. We decided to put a fire rated glass window in this Engine Room door so we can do a visual check of what’s going on inside before opening this door. We have plenty of gauges that would raise alarms if something goes wrong in the Engine Room but this adds an additional degree of safety when we are doing our hourly Engine Room checks on passage.
Inside the Port side of the Workshop looking forward we see the Engine Room doorframe tacked in place. Uğur fits the short stingers that Nihat has cut to shape for the short area between the new door frames and the rest of the ER walls. And Sezgin arrives to fully weld the frames to the walls. Yiğit designed up these hinges and Uğur quickly fabricated them and tacked the door in place on the new door frames to check that the door can open the full 270 degrees so it folds all the way around out of the way up against the back wall of the ER. You can see the window cut-out here as well. It is a bit of an odd angle but might still give you a better sense of how this ER door fits. This is looking aft towards the door diagonally across where you enter the Workshop from the Swim Step. Last but definately not least the rest of the hand hold railings have been fabricated and tacked in place around the perimeter of the whole Pilot House. Here we are looking at the Starboard/Right Aft corner of the Pilot House looking forward along the side decks. Moving up to the front of the Pilot House, there are similar hand holds run across the forward overhang. These are huge safety factors enabling us to go out on deck if ever neccessary and always have an Xtremely sturdy and easy to grip hand hold around all 360 degrees of the Pilot House. These hand rails are about 1.4m / 4.5ft off the deck which is a just right height for easy reach while walking along these areas and they also provide a continuous series of places to clip your safety harness to.
Early Thursday morning Christine and I went out to the Antalya airport to start our most recent led of the Never Too Nauti Grandparents World Tour with a quick trip to Florida for some much needed time being Gramma and Grampa with our three grandchildren and three children and their respective spouses. This low quality shot is as we were amongst the very first flights to land at the brand new Istanbul airport which opened thee days earlier First time we have been able to get all of this extended family together and is about the only thing that could pull us away from building our boat with Naval Yachts. Inside this new airport is truly enormous and stunningly designed. We had a chance to explore and admire it as we had a few hours before our flight to Miami. So we are leaving our beloved Möbius in the Xtremely capable hands of the rest of Team Möbius and Naval Yachts and staying in close contact via Email and WhatsApp to make sure we are there to answer questions and provide input whenever needed. We fly back on the 26th and thanks to Yiğit taking photos every day onboard Möbius I will be able to continue to get these weekly update posts coming so that you, and we, don’t miss any of the action as this incredible voyage and adventure continues.
Thanks for joining us and don’t forget to add your questions, comments and suggestions in the “Join the Discussion” box below.
Thanks Laura, glad you are enjoying it. We are always looking for feedback to understand how our posts are working, how we can improve, etc. so please do let us know more as time goes on how well the posts are working for you, what would make them more useful, etc.
Hi John. Short answer on how we plan to record and keep the “as built/launched” details of the boat is to keep an up to date 3D model and Excel spreadsheets. The XPM boats have been designed and built using Rhino 3D and Orca 3D to do all the 3D modeling, AutoCAD for 2D drawings and then I use Fusion 360 for individual components I design such as the hatches. As changes are made during the build we use these same tools to design and build all the components so when the boat launches we should have an up to date and fully detailed 3D model, drawings and spreadsheets. I’m sure we will need to do some work to clean up all the various versions of these files to be sure they reflect the most up to date data.
We are now 3+ years into this adventure from the initial design stages with Dennis at Artnautica and just passed the one year mark of the build with Naval Yachts and these tools and their resultant models, drawings and spreadsheets have been working very well for us.
Once we launch and back to exploring the world living aboard Möbius Christine and I will do our best as we have on our previous boats to keep tracking all these details in these same tools and add additional spreadsheets, models and drawings for things like onboard inventory, maintenance and new additions or changes we make. Requires more discipline than technology in our experience so the key is ensuring that we keep up with the data entry. Getting much easier now with automation with such things as full data logging and recording but there will always be the human requirement and hence the discipline.
Thanks Orville. We just got back “home” here in Antalya last night and are now busy unpacking all the new boat bits and pieces we picked up in the US and brought back with us on the plane. We had a fabulous time with our family and friends and were able to get all three of our children and three grandchildren (2, 3, & 4 yrs) together for the first time so it was a particularly memorable time. Always great to get back home though and we are now looking forward to getting the first XPM78-01 aka Möbius finished and splashed, hopefully before the end of this year, and be back on the water and out eXploring the world again.
I was able to design and build our wedding rings as a 3D Möbius Strip but I’m not sure how well a Möbius strip boat would work so I think we will stick with just using Möbius for the name of our boat. However you might be interested to know that we commissioned our very talented niece to create what might best be called a 3D cloth sculpture of a Möbius strip for us and we have built a special spot just for this work of art in our Master Cabin. Hope to have some renderings and photos of this to show you and others here soon so stay tuned for that.
Thanks again for thinking of us and sending along this most interesting article.
The manifolds have 14 hoses connected to them, six each to/from each tank and then a main supply and return line leading up to the Day Tank in the Workshop and they have now started laying in all these rubber fuel hoses along the “superhighway” of wire trays that you’ve been seeing installed over the past month.
Speaking of the Day Tank, it moved aboard for a temporary stay to determine the precise location it will have and finalising the brackets to hold it there. Here you see the partially welded up Day Tank making its way through the WT doorway from the Swim Platform into the Workshop.
Moving it straight forward from the door the Day Tank nestles into its spot up against the WT Bulkhead into the Guest Cabin and the Starboard side wall of the Engine Room on the left here. If you look closely you can just make out the WT Bulkhead in the back as it is all covered with the black EPDM insulation and you can see two of the aluminium pass through sleeves on the right where hoses, wires and plumbing lines need to penetrate a WT Bulkhead frame.
Where hoses, wires and pipes need to pass through a Water Tight Bulkhead, oval shaped aluminium sleeves have been welded in such as the three you can see on the left of this photo. Near the end of the build once all the systems are fully installed these sleeves will be filled with a special certified foam to completely seal them.
And there are some off/on ramps built in where we need to run hoses and cables across a bulkhead such as this.
You might think some giant squid has squeezed aboard but this is the beginning of installing the larger 50mm/2” ID rubber hose for the Fill & Vents boxes where they connect to each fuel tank when refuelling.
These might look like two periscopes watching the action happening on the hose trays but they are actually two of the Fill/Vent connections into this fuel tank in the Basement that is inboard of the Grey Water tank in the background here with its access port on the right and some of the SAE5 flanges on the left where the Maretron and Hart tank level lines go.
Up in the Master Cabin the water tank access ports are being fitted with their SS studs………….
Fuel rated gasket material is cut to fit………..
……… and lids are carefully torqued down and then each tank is pressure tested to ensure it remains fully sealed.
Finishing up with tanks for this week, Uğur and Nihat are welding in the flanges around these two void (empty) tank sections which separate the water tanks in the aft end of the Master Cabin from the fuel tanks in the Basement This is required by CE and class certification but is also just good practice to eliminate any chance of fuel and water mixing. 6mm / 1/4” aluminium plate covers will be bolted in with gaskets to keep this area fully waterproof as well as providing access in the future should it be needed for these areas which are located under the Queen bed in the Master Cabin.
Up at the front of the Master Cabin Mummy is busy finishing off the installation of the special acoustic insulation on this WT Bulkhead where the Forepeak on the other side. With 50mm / 2” of EPDM on the other side, this is our typical over engineering just to ensure that anytime someone is sleeping in the Master Cabin noised from anchoring don’t interfere with their sleep.
These large acoustic insulation panels have peel & stick adhesive to keep them fully sealed against the aluminium plates and then these aluminium fasteners are glued to the aluminium bulkheads and the foam is pressed in place.
Finishing off the insulation update this week, Mummy has also been busy completing the exacting job of applying the thick cloth backed foil over all the EPDM foam insulation on the Basement walls and ceiling.
This foil has proven to be a great solution to providing the just right surface in the Basement. As you can see it is VERY bright in here with all the reflection off the aluminium foil and it is Xtremely durable and easy to clean. What’s not to like?
Installation of all the glass topped deck hatch frames we’ve designed and built in house is now finished with these last two 70cm / 28” square welded in place on each side of the Aft Deck. These are located overtop of the middle of the length of the 5m long workbenches below in the Workshop.
At the very back of the Aft Deck Uğur, Nihat and Sezgin were hard at work building the door for the entrance into the Engine Room.
We decided to put a fire rated glass window in this Engine Room door so we can do a visual check of what’s going on inside before opening this door. We have plenty of gauges that would raise alarms if something goes wrong in the Engine Room but this adds an additional degree of safety when we are doing our hourly Engine Room checks on passage.
Inside the Port side of the Workshop looking forward we see the Engine Room doorframe tacked in place.
Uğur fits the short stingers that Nihat has cut to shape for the short area between the new door frames and the rest of the ER walls.
And Sezgin arrives to fully weld the frames to the walls.
Yiğit designed up these hinges and Uğur quickly fabricated them and tacked the door in place on the new door frames to check that the door can open the full 270 degrees so it folds all the way around out of the way up against the back wall of the ER. You can see the window cut-out here as well.
It is a bit of an odd angle but might still give you a better sense of how this ER door fits. This is looking aft towards the door diagonally across where you enter the Workshop from the Swim Step.
Last but definately not least the rest of the hand hold railings have been fabricated and tacked in place around the perimeter of the whole Pilot House. Here we are looking at the Starboard/Right Aft corner of the Pilot House looking forward along the side decks.
Moving up to the front of the Pilot House, there are similar hand holds run across the forward overhang. These are huge safety factors enabling us to go out on deck if ever neccessary and always have an Xtremely sturdy and easy to grip hand hold around all 360 degrees of the Pilot House.
Early Thursday morning Christine and I went out to the Antalya airport to start our most recent led of the Never Too Nauti Grandparents World Tour with a quick trip to Florida for some much needed time being Gramma and Grampa with our three grandchildren and three children and their respective spouses. This low quality shot is as we were amongst the very first flights to land at the brand new Istanbul airport which opened thee days earlier
First time we have been able to get all of this extended family together and is about the only thing that could pull us away from building our boat with Naval Yachts. Inside this new airport is truly enormous and stunningly designed. We had a chance to explore and admire it as we had a few hours before our flight to Miami.
Love this!! Such great detail!
Thanks Laura, glad you are enjoying it. We are always looking for feedback to understand how our posts are working, how we can improve, etc. so please do let us know more as time goes on how well the posts are working for you, what would make them more useful, etc.
How do you plan to record the “as launched” status of your boat?
Hpw do you plan to keep those records up to date?
Hi John. Short answer on how we plan to record and keep the “as built/launched” details of the boat is to keep an up to date 3D model and Excel spreadsheets. The XPM boats have been designed and built using Rhino 3D and Orca 3D to do all the 3D modeling, AutoCAD for 2D drawings and then I use Fusion 360 for individual components I design such as the hatches. As changes are made during the build we use these same tools to design and build all the components so when the boat launches we should have an up to date and fully detailed 3D model, drawings and spreadsheets. I’m sure we will need to do some work to clean up all the various versions of these files to be sure they reflect the most up to date data.
We are now 3+ years into this adventure from the initial design stages with Dennis at Artnautica and just passed the one year mark of the build with Naval Yachts and these tools and their resultant models, drawings and spreadsheets have been working very well for us.
Once we launch and back to exploring the world living aboard Möbius Christine and I will do our best as we have on our previous boats to keep tracking all these details in these same tools and add additional spreadsheets, models and drawings for things like onboard inventory, maintenance and new additions or changes we make. Requires more discipline than technology in our experience so the key is ensuring that we keep up with the data entry. Getting much easier now with automation with such things as full data logging and recording but there will always be the human requirement and hence the discipline.
I hope the two of you have a great visit with your family, and a safe flight back to your beloved Mobius when you are finished.
Thanks Orville. We just got back “home” here in Antalya last night and are now busy unpacking all the new boat bits and pieces we picked up in the US and brought back with us on the plane. We had a fabulous time with our family and friends and were able to get all three of our children and three grandchildren (2, 3, & 4 yrs) together for the first time so it was a particularly memorable time. Always great to get back home though and we are now looking forward to getting the first XPM78-01 aka Möbius finished and splashed, hopefully before the end of this year, and be back on the water and out eXploring the world again.
https://www.dezeen.com/2019/04/18/mobius-loop-topological-folding-house-takashi-yamaguchi-associates/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Dezeen&utm_content=Daily%20Dezeen+CID_0b7bd326b34b1bf3fb94b51d87b10500&utm_source=Dezeen%20Mail&utm_term=Takashi%20Yamaguchi%20%20Associates%20designs%20house%20in%20Japan%20based%20on%20a%20Mbius%20loop
Very cool and fun article John, thanks!
I was able to design and build our wedding rings as a 3D Möbius Strip but I’m not sure how well a Möbius strip boat would work so I think we will stick with just using Möbius for the name of our boat. However you might be interested to know that we commissioned our very talented niece to create what might best be called a 3D cloth sculpture of a Möbius strip for us and we have built a special spot just for this work of art in our Master Cabin. Hope to have some renderings and photos of this to show you and others here soon so stay tuned for that.
Thanks again for thinking of us and sending along this most interesting article.