It would seem appropriate to say that this week’s XPM78-01 Möbius Progress Update is brought to you by the letter I as in Independence.  First, Christine and I want to send out our very best wishes to all our Canadian and American friends and family as they celebrate their respective July 1st Canada Day and July 4th Independence Day. 

All the more so given these extraordinary and challenging times all countries are facing right now.  Whatever your nationality, citizenship, residency or location right now we sincerely hope you are all finding ways to navigate this current storm and are staying strong, healthy and positive.

Thanks to Christine’s friend Victoria Allman for the fun Canadian fireworks flag image and to Tenor.com for the neat little GIF of the USA fireworks flag.

With each passing week, the progress that Team Möbius makes, while it  never seems to go fast enough, does move us closer and closer to our very own Independence Day when Möbius splashes at last and we return at last to a life afloat and at sea which is THE best form of independence which Christine and I have ever known.
Here at Naval Yachts, as June passed into July this past week, we saw a bit less progress than usual as several members of Team Möbius were pulled away to work on other boats in the shipyard.  However progress was made in every area that did get worked on so we still have lots to show you and let’s get on with that now.

ELECTRICAL TEAM

Seems only appropriate to start of this week’s Progress Update with our very own “Sparkies” aka Electrical Team of Hilmi who is now has Selim working with him on wiring.  Hilmi was one of the team who was called away to work on other boats this week but for the three days he was working on Möbius with the added bonus of having Selim’s able hands to assist, good progress was made.

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Down in the Basement here with the Main DC Distribution Panel which is continuing to fill up with cables large and small.  The astute will notice eight large cables coming out of the sealed battery compartments in the foreground here through that large oval penetration which will eventually be fully filled with special sealant to make it completely waterproof

This week they have been working on the BIG cables at the very heart of our Battery Based boat; the House Battery Banks and the cables which connect the 24 FireFly L15+ 4V @ 450Ah to the bus bar and shunts in that Main DC Panel on the Left here.  These Red/Positive and Black/Negative cables are eXtremely large at 120mm2 or “five aught” 5/0000 AWG size each which is about the size of a good sized thumb.

There are four individual 24 volt battery banks, each consisting of six 4 Volt @ 450Ah cells connected in Series, which is abbreviated as “6S”.  Thus their voltages are all added together to create a 24V @ 450Ah battery bank and then these four banks are wired in Parallel so their Amp Hours are all combined to create an overall House Battery Bank of 24V @ 1800Ah or 43.2 kilo Watts. 

Hence the big cables to carry all those amps with as little voltage loss as possible.

I’ve put together these two schematics for those interested in some of the details of the House Battery Bank setup and the overall Electrical System on the Left here.
As per the reminder in this Victron Installation Guide for the three Victron BMV712 Smart Battery Monitors, it is very important that the lengths of each of the cables connecting the battery banks to the negative side shunt and the Positive Bus Bar be the same length.  This is something I see missed on many boats and it creates problems over time as the voltage drop will be different if the cable lengths are different and this leads to battery imbalance which can shorten their lifespan.
Last week, Selim & Hilmi connected all these battery cables to their respective terminals inside the Main DC Distribution Box as you can see here. 60mm x 20mm Positive Bus Bar running horizontally across the top and same size for the Negative Bus Bar on the  bottom.  High amperage T-Class fuses visible on the Positive Bus Bar, two Remote Battery Switches with their Yellow manual knobs visible in the background.
Barely visible in the photo above on the bottom Right end of the Negative Bus Bar, they have also mocked up the layout for the three Shunts that provide all the data to the BMV712 Smart Battery Monitors that tracks volts, amps, battery temperature and uses this information to calculate SoC State of Charge, Amps In/Out, etc.  The final installation will use properly sized copper bus bars for all the interconnections between the Shunts and the Negative Bus Bar.


With all the cables terminated on the Bus Bars, Hilmi & Selim have routed them down through that large oval penetration you can see in this and the photos above to take them inside the three WT battery compartments which are integral with the hull and sit on either side of the massive Keel Bar than runs like a spine from Bow to Stern.

This makes it easy for them to layout all six of these big cables to determine the length of the furthest connection/longest cable and then they can cut all of them to this same length.
I laid out the tools of the trade here and those tiny little Red wire cutters make quick work of cutting these huge cables cleanly in one go.  Then the Blue hydraulic swaging tool is used to crimp the copper lugs to the hundreds of strands of thin copper wires that make up each cable.
With the lugs fully crimped on each one gets an additional layer of shrink wrapped insulation which is lined with adhesive that melts with the heat used to shrink each tube and creates a permanently sealed cable connection.  There will be a T-Class fuse at each Positive Battery post so the Z shaped 30 x 5mm copper bars will attach to the battery post on one end and the fuse on the other and then the cable lug bolts to the other end of the fuse.
Time ran out for this week so this is where the cables are now and next week I’ll show you what it looks like once all the cables and fuses are attached.

Once all the batteries are connected to the Main DC panel, a rather exciting milestone will be looming on the horizon; Möbius will have power!
Moving back to the Aft end of the Workshop, they have also been working on the 24 volt power cables going to the two Accu-Steer HPU400 hydraulic steering pumps.
These are very powerful continuous run pumps that can draw up to 60 amps so they require some very large power cables to bring a steady supply of those amps all the way from the DC Distribution box up by the Day Tank.
Fairly straightforward job and Hilmi soon has it all buttoned up with the labels covered in clear heat-shrink which should help them last for decades.  As those of you who have done any amount of electrical work on your home, car or boat can attest, it is SUCH a big help to have every wire fully and clearly labelled so this is a very important “little detail”.

PLUMBING:

Cihan our super industrious Plumber was also in high demand this week but he was able to get a lot done in the two days he was working on Möbius.  Quite an exciting milestone as he was completing the installation of these two large Vetus Sea Water Strainers coming off of the big Intake Sea Chest in the front Starboard/Right corner of the Engine Room.
The pipes coming out of the Sea Chest are all thick walled aluminium which have those two huge PVC Blue handled Ball Valves mounted with flanges in between them and their entry into the bottom of each Strainer.  However, Cihan switched over to 316 Stainless for the outlets from the strainers which T into becoming the manifold. 
These SS Ball Valves in the foreground give you the reason for the switch to SS for the manifold so that the entire manifold is all 316 SS and there will be no problems with corrosion due to dissimilar metals.  You can manage SS to AL joints with isolators and anti corrosion paste but using all SS makes for my favorite kind of maintenance: NONE!
Cihan had our talented machinist Yunus machine the Stainless Steel flanges that bolt to the composite bodies of the Strainers and once he had them in position, Cihan could tack the SS pipes in place.
Cihan works VERY quickly and I didn’t get back to the Engine Room in time to get a shot of all the SS nipples tacked to the body of the manifold but this is what they soon looked like when they were all fully welded in place and cleaned up.

These two large SS Ball Valves on the Left end of the manifold are for the Sea Water pump for the Gardner and our Fire Hose setup. 
These three smaller Ball Valves on the beginning end of the manifold supply sea water to the AirCon Chiller coolant pump, the Delfin Watermaker and the Aft Deck wash pump.
Looking into the ER from the entrance door this is what the whole Intake Sea Chest, Strainers and Manifold system looks like.

Looking straight down into the Engine Room from up atop the Aft Deck this birds-eye view makes it easy to see the layout of the whole Engine Room.

If you are wondering what that big gaping space is in front of the Red bundled up Nogva CPP Servo box is, that is Mr. Gee’s soon-to-be new home!

Bottom of this photo is the forward WT Bulkhead with the Guest Cabin on the other side.  Entry door into the ER just visible in the Upper Right corner and the Exit Sea Chest on the bottom Right.
And for a bit more orientation this the view looking forward at that big Hatch in the Aft Deck looking down into the Engine Room.  The ER Vent Box on the Left will double as one half of our Outdoor Galley and will have a SS sink set into its Turquoise marble countertop.  There is a near identical Vent Box on the Right side of the Hatch hidden from view by the Hatch Lid and this one will have more marble counter with the electric grill/BBQ set into it.

Spiral staircase up to the SkyBridge visible in the upper Right corner and the WT Entryway Door into the SuperSalon is visible behind the Left/Port Vent Box with the Galley on your Right as you go down those stairs.

Almost starting to look like home!

GALLEY:

Speaking of Galley and looking like home, Captain Christine (and me too!) were excited to see this show up in the Galley this week.  Christine is a researcher par excellence and she spent a LOT of time researching all the equipment for our Goldilocks Just Right, Just for Us Galley and settled on this awemazing “smart” induction cooktop by Bosch, complete with that built in extraction fan system in the middle.
I will be able to show you more details as this gets installed but if you look closely inside that rectangular opening above my fingers (click to enlarge any photo) you can just  make out a very large “squirrel cage” variable speed fan which pulls all the air and small children or pets, through the two large slots in the AL vent you see in the photo above. 
This connects to a large 150mm/6” round duct in the cabinetry behind the cooktop which channels the air up to this second extraction fan mounted inside the Lower Wing box just aft of the top corners of the Galley and SuperSalon and puts all the extracted air out onto the Aft Deck.

For even more air extraction power when needed, there are two of these large axial fans feed by the Rosewood grill you see here in the Soffit Ceiling panels at the Aft end corners of the SuperSalon which help keep the breezes flowing from front to rear of the SuperSalon.
Below that extraction air grill Selim is finishing the Rosewood Nosings for the Entryway stairs.
In addition to looking AbFab these Nosings provide the Goldilocks just right amount of a lip for your feet to sense and prevent any slipping.  Additional Safety, one of our primary design principles for the XPM, comes from the indirect LED strip lighting that radiates from the underside of each nosing.
Looking straight up above the Entryway Stairs, Omur has finished the slightly tricky installation of this Rosewood Hatch Liner.  This Hatch sits to your Left when you are conning the boat from the Upper SkyBridge Helm station which is on the other side of the wall to the Right here.

The Black box is one of several alcoves for electronics.  This one will house things like a network switch, an N2K multi-port block and other components which feed the Upper Helm Station.
On the Galley side of these stairs there is a cavernous storage area which Selim is putting the finishing touches on here as he readies the Blum hinges for its door.
Moving into the Galley itself, can you guess what these two Ro$ewood beauties are for?
That was an easy one, they are two of the ten doors on the Galley countertop Garages.  Omur is now fitting the recessed invisible hinges.
I’ve used these type of hinges in many of my past cabinetmaking and jewellery boxes and they are the Goldilocks solution when you want an extremely rigid hinge that is completely hidden from view.
Having done all the hard work of mortising the slots for these invisible hinges when he was first building these Garages, it only takes minutes for Omur to screw each hinge into their respective slots.
Et Voila!  Nothing but Rosewood, glass (soon) and marble, not a hinge to be seen.

MASTER CABIN:

Fortunately both Selim and Omur were working onboard Möbius the whole week so they made great progress on cabinetry throughout the boat so let’s go check out what they were working on in the Master Cabin.

Any guess why these boxes are eXciting for me to see arrive?
Yup!  Fresh off the plane from Austria, these are all the undermount drawer slides for all the many drawers we have on Möbius.  Like the hinges you saw above these full extension drawer slides have zero sag even when drawers filled with heavy items are pulled all the way out.  They also become invisible once they are installed as they mount on the underside of the drawers.  These slides also have Blum’s “Servo Drive” which push them into your fingers with an initial push and then soft close when you push and let go.
Being that our home is very “mobile” we will also have positive mechanically locking latches on every drawer and door but these Blum slides also use these nifty locks to keep all the drawers securely closed.

OK OK, so I’ll stop obsessing but trust me, you’ll be impressed too when you try out Blum hardware.
More beautiful Blum goodness here in the Master Head/Bathroom “medicine cabinets”. 

Now you see ‘em…………………….

…………………. now you don’t!

Are you sensing a theme here?

One last bit of hardware happiness for you with a feature that may be new to many of you.  These Blum hinges also have a very handy soft close feature that is now adjustable.  See that little black button just above my thumb?  That allows you to set the little soft close spring on that lever to the Left of my thumb to be either Off or On.  With two or more hinges on any door this gives you a full range of degrees of “anti-slam” soft closing by turning on any number of soft close hinges for that door.

OK, enough for today’s tour through Hodgins Hardware Heaven.

Omur and Selim were busy installing these latch catches on the bottoms of these drawers in the Master Cabin.
Which will soon be installed in these four spaces in the Bureau of Drawers on the Stbd/Right side of the Master Cabin.
With the sloping hull sides behind this Bureau the two lower rows get a bit narrow so these will have down opening doors rather than drawers.  All these drawer and door fronts will be covered with Green leather panels to set them off nicely from the solid Rosewood edging.
Forward of the Bureau of Drawers is this bank of tall cabinets.  As throughout the rest of the boat, the Blue Horizon Line or BHL Handhold wraps around the room and all the vertical surfaces below this “horizon” are Rosewood and all above are Green/Gray leather.

The two Upper cupboards on the Right are Wardrobes for hanging clothes and the third one with the Vigo sink in it will soon have the Bosch Washer inside.  The last upper cupboard is sized for a matching dryer if there should ever be the desire to have one but we have always preferred to use Mother Nature as our clothes dryer since we were children and continue to do so.

MAIN HELM:

Upstairs from the Master Cabin, Omur and Selim also made some more exciting progress as they worked on the cabinetry for the Main Helm so let’s go up there now.

Yesim’s quick render above helps to show the overall layout with the two 19” touch and daylight readable monitors in the middle, the angled “dwarf wall” on the right of where the Llebroc Helm Chair will be and the two triangular “handkerchief” storage areas on either side.

And here is what the real world version looked like at the start of this week.
Selim gave me a hand to test fit this first mock up of the Zig-Zag dashboard we think will work really well. 
It has this narrow “kick-up” where the monitor mounting board will hinge.
So that the base of these monitors will set down at an angle like this.
I am going to KISS or Keep it Simple & Safe by panel mounting the two monitors into a Black leather covered mounting panel that will be hinged at the bottom edge so we can change the angle to eliminate any reflections as well as swing it down anytime we need to access any of the connections on the back.
Of which there are plenty for these eXtremely high spec monitors that we can hardly wait to start using.
As you can see here, all those cables will be fully hidden and kept out of any UV coming through the front windows and yet be low enough that they don’t block any of your line of sight when standing or sitting in the Helm Chair as their top edge is kept very low.  We also tested this setup and angles for any reflections in the surrounding glass and were able to eliminate them by this placement.
Omur had my little sketch of the Monitor mounting panel above turned into reality and all corners radiused, sanded and taken over to the Upholstery Shop.
Where the Black leather was stretched over and glued in place.
Ready to be trimmed and then have the monitors mounted inside.
Back onboard, Omur had the Zig-Zag dashboard all glued up and test fitted with its SS piano hinge.
Which makes it easy to unlatch and lift up to access wiring and the manual hydraulic steering pump underneath.
For any longer term maintenance of more likely trying out new Helm configurations, the whole dashboard can be swung up completely out of the way and exposing the whole back side where the electronics and wiring will be.
With the Monitor mounting panel in place on its hinges you can start to get a feel for the whole Helm.


Another example of all our work at modeling and designing this critical Helm space is this little angled wall on your Right as you sit in the Helm Chair.  Plenty of space inside for cabling and electronic goodies.
Which cleans up rather nicely when you snap the top into place.
Alas though, that beautiful top was not to last for long.
Sadly and feeling almost sacrilegious in doing so, Omur soon had that beautiful Rosewood top panel cut out for all the switch boards which fill most of this surface.
As you can see here.
This is for another boat that Naval is building but will give you an idea of what the switch panel will look like that fills those two lower cut-out in the photos above.
And now the real fun begins laying out all the components to be installed on the Dashboard.  Fortunately Christine had taken charge of this layout and had it all mapped out for the major components you see here. 
Working to the Left from the bottom Right corner; Kobelt Throttle & CPP Pitch controller with round Pitch Gauges hidden behind, Furuno NFU Jog Lever, Furuno 711C AutoPilot head.  Top Right corner is the ACR 360 degree Pan/Tilt searchlight joystick.  Not seen here but to the Left of the ACR joystick will be the Bow Thruster Joystick and the Maxwell Anchor Windlass controller.

Thanks to all of Christine’s planning and drawings, this “meeting of the minds” with Yusuf the lead Sparkie in the foreground, Hilmi in the back and the man in black, Hakan our Master 2D cabinetry CAD man on the Right all went well.
And we soon had the basic layout in place.
Omur and I spent a few minutes doing the exact layout to get the size and location of each cut-out just right and he soon had those all cut, sanded and the Dashboard headed over to the Upholstery Shop on Friday to receive its Black Leather covering to match the Monitor Panel.

Mr. Gee:

Last but never least, while I didn’t get much time to work on him directly I spent a lot of time this past week finishing the designing of the six mounting brackets for the anti-vibration mounts for Mr. Gee and his partner in propulsion, the Nogva CPP Controllable Pitch Propeller Servo Gearbox. 

If you have not yet seen last week’s Progress Update you may want to go back to it now for a more detailed coverage of those mounts and brackets and this is the basic layout of the Port/Left side mounts on the sloping 25mm / 1” thick AL beds welded into the Hull.  Two forward mounts are for the Front & Rear of Mr. Gee and then an underhanging bracket for the mounts on the Red Nogva CPP Servo Gearbox.  Stbd side is the same.

Once I had the design fully modeled and triple checked for accuracy and fit, I printed out a set of drawings for Uğur to start cutting the 25mm/1” thick AL plate these mounts are all made from and he soon had this pile of gleaming aluminium parts on the bench.
Being so thick, you need to have very deep V shaped grooves where the plates join and will be welded so as to get full penetration of the weld and basically end up with a single piece of aluminium.
This is the Right Rear mount on Mr. Gee and they need to fit quite precisely so Uğur and I spent several hours going back and forth fitting each plate that bolts to Mr. Gee.
I extended this Front Left plate aft about 300mm/12” in order to provide a mount for the Jabsco Sea Water impeller pump so it required a bit more work to cut in all the notches to have it clear all the bosses on the solid aluminium cylinder block of Mr. Gee.
My workshop/Office and Mr. Gee are all up on the first floor of the shipyard and it didn’t seem to be worth it to drag a welder up there so Uğur and I made lots of trips up and down while tacking up each mounting bracket down on the shop floor below Möbius and then bringing it upstairs to test fit and measure alignment on Mr. Gee.

This is the Rear Right mount and it is now fitting just right.
Left Rear mount is a mirror image of the Right side and we soon had it all tacked, aligned and ready to be welded.
Moving on to the Left Front mount with the extended base plate for the Jabsco pump we positioned each piece to the lines we had scribed into the aluminium while they were clamped in alignment to Mr. Gee upstairs.

on the Left here is the original Gardner mount which I was going to reuse but it had stress cracks in the corners, one of which you can see on its far Left corner where I ground it out to weld.  However these are cast aluminium and the new welds just cracked soon after being applied due to the different expansion rates between the cast AL and the AL welding rod.  Hence the decision to design and build all new brackets.
Uğur and I have worked well together since we began this build over two years ago and we continue to enjoy doing so and soon had that Front Left mount all tacked up and fitted.

If you are wondering what the big holes are for, the PTO Power Take Off on Mr. Gee which is that cylinder you see to the Left of the mount, will soon have a drive shaft coming off of it to turn the Jabsco impeller pump and hence the holes for this shaft to fit through  If you look again at the original Gardner front mount in the previous photo you will see that it has the same hole in it as Gardner used this PTO to drive their alternators.
Here is the shaft’s view through those holes to the PTO.
The Front Right mount is much simpler and this is one of the anti-vibration mounts that we are using to check heights and fit before welding.
All four mounting brackets all tacked and ready to be fully welded into single solid motor mounts.
As usual, it is all in the prep work and the actual welding goes very quickly.
Uğur was only available for three days this week but by Friday he had all the mounts welded and ready for me to clean them up, do the final fitting and filing and paint them.
Here is a good example of how those big V grooves allow the first weld to fully penetrate these thick plates.
Then the second pass fills in that U shaped groove from the first weld and leaves you with a flat and solid top weld.
Same routine for the Front mounting brackets.  L-bar on the Right one still in place to hold that vertical piece perpendicular while being welded.
By Friday noon, a justly happy and proud Uğur could pose with this Rear Right mount all done and in place on Mr. Gee.
All four mounting brackets all welded up and I think even Mr. Gardner would approve.  I then spent Saturday morning cleaning them up, putting good radii on all the edges, chamfering all the bolt holes, etc. and had them all ready to be painted.
I sprayed them with the same silicone based “liquid aluminium” paint to match what I used on Mr. Gee himself.
And this was the final result.

Tomorrow (Monday) I’ll get busy bolting the to Mr. Gee and he will be all the more a “real boy” as per last week’s Jiminy Cricket reference and able to stand on his own four feet!
And before I seem to blink twice, another month zooms by and we are already a week into July!  How is THAT possible??

In any case, hope you enjoyed this week’s Show & Tell and that all our Canadian and American friends enjoyed a safe and well distanced Independence Day.

Thanks for joining and be sure to leave your comments and questions in the “Join the Discussion” box below.

See you next weekend.

-Wayne