This week’s Progress Update will be short and sweet as we are still working very shorthanded on XPM78-01 Möbius and it has been another very full weekend of boat related work for Christine and me so it is already late Sunday here as I sit down to write up this week’s Progress Update for you.  However, progress is being made and there are interesting new developments to show you so let’s jump right in for this week’s Show & Tell aboard the Good Ship Möbius.

INTERIOR OUTFITTING:

Serkan was onboard for two days this week as he continues to work on the last of the hardware related work in the Master Cabin.  On Tuesday he was installing the last of these beautiful SS latches on the doors and drawers on the front Starboard/Right side wall of the Master Cabin.  He is down to the last latch on the bottom drawer below the vanity sink that you can see in the bottom Left here.
A bit different perspective on Thursday, looking straight down the centerline towards the bow of the boat you can see that the bottom drawer has now been installed along with the two matching latches on the White bottom cupboard doors inside the Head/Bathroom on the far Left.

And Serkan has almost all the Green/Gray leather panels installed now, just the small strips around the Vanity cabinet at the far end.  The door of that Vanity as well as the main Head door will soon have mirrors mounted on them to finish this area off.
Upstairs in the SuperSalon an exciting new development is now visible.  The window frames are now all filed with their plywood templates which will be sent out to the glass company next week so they can cut and prep all the 25mm/1” thick laminated window glass as well as the other glass for the flush Deck Hatches.
And the “eyebrow” around the upper SkyBridge.

Still very much a “work in progress” but the whole SuperSalon is beginning to come into view now.

It will be a VERY big day when we finally get all the glass installed onboard and make Möbius fully weathertight for the first time.

ALUMINIUM WORK:

Our faithful Dynamic Duo of Uğur and Nihat had another full and productive week.  If you were with us last week you’ll remember they were busy getting the ceiling over the Outside Galley on the Aft Deck all fully insulated wtih 50mm EPDM foam and the attachment points for the White AlucoBond laminated sheets that will form the ceiling itself.
As with the other AlucoBond panels you’ve seen them mounting in the Engine Room and Workshop, they use these very nice covered screws to attach the AlucoBond to the aluminium L-bar supports.  If you look closely at the screw in the upper Left here (click to enlarge any photo) you can just make out the brass threaded washer around the head of the countersunk screw and then the chrome dome cover thread onto that to completely hide the underlying screw head.
Here is what the ceiling looks like viewed from down inside the SuperSalon looking up and out the Entryway WT Door onto the Aft Deck Galley.

For those wondering, the White, Black and Red lettering is just a protective film on all AlucoBond panels which will be removed just before we launch to reveal the White anodized aluminium outer surface of all these panels.
And here is what it looks like from the other end out on the Aft Deck.

The Black wiring hanging down is for the six LED lights when we are cooking in this Outdoor Galley or dimmed down for safe lighting when entering or leaving the boat.
This is the Port/Left Vent Box which served double duty as one of our Outdoor Galley countertops with this SS sink in it.

The rectangular openings are filled with the Mist Eliminator grills and damper system for the Entry Air going down to the bottom of the Engine Room.
And this is the matching STBD/Right side Vent Box with the two rectangular openings for the extraction air from the Engine Room and Workshop.

The raised surface on the Left will be the main countertop in this Galley and the lower countertop will soon house the 220V electric Grill/BBQ.

All the countertops will be Turquoise Turkish marble to match that in the inside Galley.

For the observant ones who might wonder, the two small outlets on the Aft facing bottom of this Vent Box on the far Right are for the quick connect water fittings for our Deck Wash hoses; one for Fresh Water, one for Salt.
However the most exciting new milestone Nihat and Uğur hit his past week was that they started on the final cleanup of all the bare exterior aluminium surfaces.  Nihat spent most of the rest of the week working on the AL surfaces surrounding the SkyBridge.

This is a two part process, first grinding all the welds to be either flush or nicely radiused corners such as you can see Nihat has done here on the frame for the SkyBridge Console and the surrounding interior walls.
Then he moved on to all the AL surfaces and welds on the surfaces outside of the SkyBridge itself.
Such as the tops of these “horns” on either side of the Front hinged Solar Panel bank and the outer walkway that runs down the sides of the SkyBridge.
Uğur took on the daunting task of grinding down all the welds on the outside surfaces of all the Hull plates.  There are three longitudinal runs of welds down each side where the different thicknesses of hull plates butt together.  The top one he is working on here is the only “hard chine” or corner on the hull which is a bit trickier as the weld needs to be ground down flush to each plate and then have a nice radius for the turn of the corner.
It is difficult to capture in photos, especially at this early stage but this will give you an idea.

The surface on the far Right here is part of our experimenting with different kinds of final swirl patterns for the final finish to see which one we like the best. 
This shot will help you see how the process of finishing this corner seam goes.  The corner on the far Left is close to what the finished chine or corner will look like and as you move to the Right towards Uğur you can see the progression “backwards” through the process with the raw untouched weld on the far Right.
This longer view will help you understand the “daunting” part of Ugur’s job!  24 meters / 78 feet down each side suddenly becomes a VERY real and very big number when you are taking it on one centimeter or inch at a time and then three of those lengths (one for each weld seam, on each side.  I’ll let you do the math!
The maximum sheet size for aluminium plates is 6m/19ft so there is also a vertical seam where each end of the plates butt together that also needs to be ground flush.
And up at the Bow there are a lot of transitions where the different hull plate thicknesses, 10, 12, 15, 20 and 25mm thick all come together where they meet up wtih the 25mm thick Keel Bar and that nice round transition up at the top where it wraps around our big solid AL “nose” cone for the snubber line when at anchor.
By quitting time on Friday though Uğur and Nihat has already done their first passes of their welds on the Stbd/Right side so that was a LOT of progress in just a few days.  Lots more to come next week so stay tuned as I show you the continued evolution of finishing the hull.

ELECTRICAL DETAILS:

The newest member of our growing family of Victron equipment finally arrived and got installed this week.  It is the newest Victron Blue box that you can see in the bottom Right corner of this AL panel in the Forward Port corner of the Basement. 

If you click and zoom in on this or the photo below, you can see that this tiny Cerbo GX box provides us with communication ports for USB, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and a MicroSD slot as well as the Victron VE.Can nd VE.bus connections.

We have had Victron equipment on our previous boats for many years with great success but one area that has been lacking is their integration in communicating with each other and the whole GX line is helping to resolve that.
The Cerbo GX is also the newest bit of kit from Victron and makes a huge leap forward in getting all our Victron equipment onto our N2K network as well as bringing all our Victron into a much more integrated system.
Just around that front Port corner is our “Solar City” wall where all 14 of our Victron SmartSolar 100/20 MPPT controllers which connect to each of our 14 320Wp Light Tech solar panels.  The Gray box is the junction box for all the wiring and the 14 circuit breakers for the DC outputs of each MPPT controller.

PLUBMING:

Diagonally opposite on the Stbd Aft corner, we managed to steal our Plumbing Wizard Cihan back for one day and he finished installing the last 2 Whale Gray Water Tank pumps.  This pump extracts Gray water out of the integral AL tank below and pushes it out the Sea Chest that you can just barely see on the far Left here.

Given that we are rarely in marinas and on anchor, the vast majority of the time our Gray Water (sinks & showers) goes directly to an exiting Sea Chest but when that’s not allowed, the Grey Water is stored in one of our three Gray Water tanks and hence the need for this Whale pump to empty those tanks when we are out at sea.

The big Clear/White tank on the Right is our Potable Water tank which ensures that we always have at least 150 litres of pure water to use even if we should somehow loose all access to the 7100L/1875USG of fresh water in our six integral AL tanks in the bottom of the hull.

Some of that fresh water goes into this HazMat Locker on the Port side of the Swim Platform for our Aft Shower.  As you can see here we have hidden the shower mixing valve and head inside this locker to keep it out of the way and protected from daily UV and salt water. 
Cihan has mounted a holder for the shower spray head inside here as well so it is easy to just open the locker and grab the shower head to rinse off after a snorkel exploration or for a nightly shower.  There will be another showerhead mount up on the Aft railing so you can have a hands free shower as well for shampooing your hair or whatever.
Inside on the front Stbd/Right side of the Workshop by the Day Tank, Cihan was also able to install these two Black hockey puck shaped Maretron FFM100 Fuel Flow Meters. 
The upper Left Fuel Flow Meter is on the Fuel Supply line going into the dual FleetGuard 2-stage fuel filters
and the one on the lower Right.is on the Return Fuel line from Mr. Gee our Gardner 6LXB engine.  Having these high precision flow meters allows us to know the exact amount of fuel being consumed at any time and helps us run Mr. Gee at his maximum efficiency at all times.
And if you were to bend down and take a peek underneath the Day Tank you would see this latest addition Cihan has made out the bottom of the Sump on the Day Tank.  The Black threaded nipple you see here is where the WIF or Water In Fuel sensor will be installed.  Being heavier than Diesel fuel, water always sinks to the bottom so if we ever get any water in our fuel is will quickly find its way down to the bottom most point and send us a WIF signal and sound an alarm. 

If you go back and look two photos above at the FleetGuard Fuel Filters you will see that each of the Fs19596 Fuel Filter/Separators has their own WIF sensor in the bottom so we are sure to know if water ever shows up in the fuel at any time and we can promptly get rid of it before it has any chance to get near Mr. Gee.

Mr. Gee

Speaking of Mr. Gee, I was able to spend more time working on him this past week focusing on timing and plumbing so let’s head over to the Engine Room to take a look.

This was an exciting new milestone for Mr. Gee and me as I finally got to mount this Fuel Injection Pump and Cam Box assembly taking up most of the Port/Left side of Mr. Gee.  If you look at the far front end you can see the PTO (Power Take Off) shaft coming out of Mr. Gee which turns the fuel injection camshaft that in turn created the high pressure that goes up to each injector sprayer at just the right time.
At the aft or flywheel end of the Gardner it is Grand Central Station for all these Copper & Brass lubrication oil pipework’s.  They all come together here where the cast iron Oil Filter acts as the traffic cop for all the oil coming and going to the rest of the engine.
Many hours of “pipe wrangling” later, this is how the pipework’s look when all connected to the Oil Filter on the top Right here and then going heading on to their connections on the other end to the crankcase, oil cooler which has its own dedicated oil pump which is the Burgundy painted unit extending out of the AL Cam Box in the rear Left here.
I won’t bore you with all the details, but Gardner engines have multiple “timing” settings that are critical to get absolutely spot on for the engine to run properly.  The timing of when each intake and exhaust valve needs to open and close is one example that I tackled this week.  The requirement is that the Intake Valve opens at 16.25 degrees Before Top Dead Center and the Exhaust closes at 11.75 degrees Aft TDC.  But how do you measure and set to such accuracy?
The method I came up with was to put a piece of masking tape on the outer circumference of the flywheel covering the distance between the two precise lines punched on at the Gardner Factory to mark TDC and 25.8 degrees BTDC which is for timing the fuel injectors. 
Then I peeled off the masking tape and laid it out on a flat AL surface where I could accurately measure the distance between “zero” at TDC and the 25.8 degree line with my digital Vernier calipers which gave me the numbers I needed to figure out how many mm one degree of rotation is.
Pretty simple math that even I could figure out.  It was 127.7mm from the TDC line to 25.8 degrees so 127.8 / 25.8 = 4.872mm = 1 degree.  Easy to then mark off the distances for the 16.25 degree and 11.75 degree marks.
Now all I had to do was put put the masking tape strip back on with the TDC mark on the tape matched up with the TDC mark on the flywheel and then mark the flywheel at the 16.25 BTDC and 11.75 ATDC lines and then put a center punch mark at each one and scribe a line through them.  Lining these marks up with the reference line you can see scribed into the top and bottom of this opening in the flywheel housing and I can turn the flywheel to align these marks and precisely adjust the valve timing at each point. 

That will be where I start tomorrow (Monday) morning so I’ll let you know how that works out in next week’s Progress Update.

So this is the parting shot of Mr. Gee when I left him last and where I will start tomorrow morning.  And my first order of business will be to find the slob that dribbled that bit of Wellseal gasket sealer on the top of the cam box!   Oh wait, never mind, I just caught my reflection in the monitor and I found him!
Thanks for joining me here on this week’s Show & Tell for the week of September 27 to October 3rd, 2020.  Really appreciate you taking the time to follow along and I sure hope you will add your comments, questions and concerns in the “Join the Discussion” box below.

Hope to see you here again next Sunday.

-Wayne