A bit of a slow week progress wise on XPM78-01 Möbius this past week as our work week was unexpectedly reduced to four days due to a complete power outage at the Antalya Free Zone where Naval Yachts and about 30 other shipyards are located.  We are now entering the wet winter season here in Antalya and while we have been having some spectacularly beautiful blue skies and sunny days, the rain has also been arriving along with LOTS of thunder and lightning last weekend.  I assume this is what took out the power in the Free Zone and gave us all an unexpected “snow day” off as we used to call it when I was a kid growing up in various parts of Canada where we would often get so much snow overnight that the roads were all impassable and so all the schools would close.  Oh drat said all the parents, Oh Yayyyyyyy, said all us kids!  While I’m still very young at ❤ I was now saying “Oh Drat!” at not being able to work on Möbius at Naval but I just turned my bike around and pedalled back home to work from there so it wasn’t a totally lost day.

Several members of Team Möbius were not working on Möbius this past week but for those of us who were we did get lots done so I have plenty for this week’s Show & Tell for you and I also have some photos to share that I didn’t have time to include in the past few blog updates.  So grab a comfy chair and tasty beverage and let’s go see what happened onboard the Good Ship Möbius for the four days of December 15-18, 2020.

You will figure out this week’s Update title as you go through this posting where many of the jobs being worked on started wtih the letter “T” such as the dinette Table, the Tender, Teak shower floors and TreadMaster.  A bit like when Sesame Street would be “Brought to you by the letter T” perhaps? and you will soon see what the “Ado” is all about so let’s get going ……………………….

First though, we interrupt our regular programming for a word from our sponsor, well MY “sponsor” so to speak. 

** Wayne’s “mushiness” Warning!!!  This next bit is NOT technical  boatbuilding stuff so if that’s what you are anxious to get to, scroll down to the next section please. 

For the braver souls and fellow romantics, read on……………

Happy 7th Anniversary of our First Kiss Captain Christine!

*  If you have not already done so you may want to read my previous post here on 22 November for some context.  It was titled “The simple comment that Changed My Life Forever Better”  which it tells the story about how Christine and I first connected thanks to this little character; “Barney the Yorkshire Terror” .
If you read that story you will already know that I’m a hopeful romantic.  (who would call romance helpless?!?!?!!?!?)  

Given our rather unconventional first connection and all the equally unique adventures that followed, we have a LOT of different “anniversaries” and we LOVE celebrating every one of them, every year.

My favorite anniversary though is the one we celebrate today, December 19th of our very fist kiss on the very first day we met in person when Christine flew all the way from her sailboat in Florida to where I was on my sailboat in Fiji and I snapped this very fist photo of her as she walked into the Arrival gate at Nadi International Airport on 19th December, 2013.

Christine says that for her it was “Love at first Skype”, which happened about a month earlier and I won’t refute.  However for me it was THAT FIRST KISS when we finally first met in person on 19 December, 2013 and I knew for sure that I had just kissed (and been kissed back I might add!!!)  by the woman who would become my best friend, my lover, my wife, my Captain and my partner in life, for life.

Happy 7th First Kiss Anniversary my Love!  Can’t wait to get started on our next set of adventures for the next 7 years together!  First though, lets start by enjoying this First Kiss anniversary day with these flowers in our cozy little apartment in Antalya.

OK, OK!  Now back to our regular programming ………………..

“T” is for Table

For those who were not with us last week, we saw Ramazan get started building this ro$ewood Table.
Which, when finished, will be mounted atop this very cool air assist height adjustable pedestal with that X-Y slider you can see in the background.

All this aluminium beauty comes from the Zwaardvis Pedestals company in the Netherlands and it is all “boat jewelry” in my eyes.
This Z-axis or vertical height adjustable pedestal has 2 stages for maximum height adjustment which is assisted by an internal gas lift cylinder similar to what you might have on the rear hatch of a SUV.  You order these by the weight of your table top so the assist is just right and changing the height an easy single handed operation by simply releasing one or both locking handles, moving the table up/down to the height you want and closing the levers.
The XY slider, allows us to move the table  200mm / 8” fore/aft and side to side to also get the XY position of the table just right. 

Up high and close in for eating or working and then down and out for more of a coffee table setup and then all the way down to put the table top and surrounding seats all the same height to create a very large bed for those rare occasions we have more overnight guests than our lovely Guest cabin with a Queen + Pullman bed can accommodate.

This is where Ramazan started on Tuesday with the solid 50mm / 2” solid Rosewood edging all glued with biscuit joints around the circumference.  Then he has put a large 40mm / 1.6” radius around all the edges and given it a good sanding.
Now the table moves up to the 2nd floor Finishing Room where Neşet here is inspecting all the surfaces with a very fine eye in order to ……
……. find any remaining small spots that need filing in order to make them glass smooth after this first coat of clear Polyurethane “varnish”.
Then it is “rinse & repeat” four more times to build up the five coats of PU that goes onto each piece of Rosewood cabinetry.

This is how it looks after the 2nd coat has been applied and is ready for wet sanding before the 3rd coat is sprayed on.

“T” is also for Teak Shower Floors

We didn’t want any Teak on the exterior of Möbius, nor any SS, paint, etc. but we welcomed the use of Teak to make the removable floor inserts in both Showers.

Orkan is the Teak Decking specialist and Naval so he was the perfect guy to apply those deck making skills to these interior floors as you can see he has done masterfully here.

In keeping Low Maintenance as a top priority, we didn’t want to have a Teak grate style flooring so we came up with this self draining system where all the water simply runs off the four sides through these recesses and then runs over to the drain in the center of the fiberglass shower floor below.

These floor plates have a series of fiberglass “feet” on the bottom to keep the air/water space between the teak and the fiberglass and they can be easily lifted out to clean underneath from time to time.

The shower drains use the relatively new Whale Gulper IC Intelligent Control automatic Gray water pumping system. (click for full resolution of this or any photo)

We use diaphragm pumps almost exclusively for all our water, bilge, crash pumps on Möbius as our experience has taught us that these are FAR superior to centrifugal style pumps in that they have that proverbial “suck a golf ball through a garden hose”  type of suction power and require NO filters or screens so they almost never clog.

The IC or Intelligent Control that Whale has added to these pumps makes them work all the better by having a simple solid state water sensing probe embedded in the Yellow manifold you see here which automatically turns the pump On/Off as needed and allows you to connect 2 different sources of Grey Water which we use to drain both the Master Bathroom/Head and Shower floors.

Simple and efficient, what’s not to like?!!
At the other end of the size scale of our diaphragm pumps is this brute underneath the Stbd/Right workbench in the Workshop.
It does double duty being both our high volume/high water bilge pump and our Fire “hydrant” system that pumps sea water from the Sea Chest to a fire hose and nozzle stored in he Aft Hazmat locker.
Several of you were curious about this pump so HERE is a link to the basic specs on our Feit PVM 1R diaphragm Pump.

*  24V 0.75 HP motor

*  120 Litres/min / 32 USG/min

@ 7 meters / 23 ft Delivery and 4m / 13 ft Suction

“T” is also for TreadMaster:

Another job continuing on from last week’s Progress Update is the laying of the last of the TreadMaster on all the aluminium decks and stairs.  You can read all the details of the method in the previous posts and here is the TreadMaster Team; Faruk (Left) spreading the epoxy adhesive, Ali bringing the cut-to-size piece of TreadMaster to lay down on this epoxy, and Orhan following behind getting ready to cut the next piece.
Ali in position with the piece of TreadMaster that Orhan has pre-cut as Faruk evens out the peanut butter consistency West Systems epoxy with his V-notched spreader.
More “Rinse & Repeat”  and they soon have the Aft Deck fully covered with TreadMaster.  After drying overnight Ali covers all the fresh new Treadmaster wtih protective cardboard as these will continue to be high traffic areas during the rest of the build.
Taking a quick tour around the boat to show some of the other areas getting the full TreadMaster treatment.

Treads on each of the Spiral stairs up from the Aft Deck to the SkyBridge ready for their TM.
et Voila!  Super safe, easy on the feet stairs up to the SkyBridge.
And same going back down.
Rough cut TM set in place down the Starboard/Right side of the SkyBridge with the 20mm / 3/4” spacers fast glued in place to keep the spacing just right while they are being epoxied down.
With all the SkyBridge deck sheets of TM cut to finished size with their radiused corners, Faruk and Ali get busy gluing them all down.
SkyBridge Helm Chair just set here for now.  Once the TM all dries it will be moved aft to the Helm Station and through bolted in place there. 

Hmmmm, with a view like this maybe a good spot for a 3rd or 4th Llebroc chair??
Swim Platform done.
Stairs on both sides going up from the Swim Platform to the Aft Deck all TM’d now.
Side Decks ready to have their TM glued down.
Front Deck all done and dusted!

Protective cardboard all taped down.
Anchor Chain Stopper all mounted so this Anchor Deck can now have all its TM glued down.
And the Forepeak Hatch has its Bofor Dog Latches all mounted and has received its full TreadMaster treatment.

Much “Ado” about Flooring!

This will just be a preview to wet our appetite for next week’s Möbius Progress Update and will complete the rest of this week’s title riddle for you.
This is a stack of the Ado LVT or Luxury Vinyl Tile “click-in-place” floor planks that we are using in all the interior floors on Möbius.

Ado is a HUGE Turkish building materials company and one of their specialties is Luxury Vinyl Tile or LVT flooring systems typically used in very high traffic situations such as airport terminals, commercial buildings and residential homes.
  LVT is completely waterproof, Fireproof, made for use overtop of in-floor heated floors, quiet and eXtremely tough with life spans over 20 years even in very high traffic applications such as airport terminals so it seemed like the Goldilocks Just Right choice for Möbius.
This link will show you the white highly textured “Aperta 2010” we have chosen to use from their “Viva Series”.   As per this label on the boxes, this is the “Click” type with a 0.7mm thick “wear Layer” as per the Tech Spec illustration above.
Tough to focus on but this is my attempt to show you how the interlocking “Click” system works.  I suspect many of you will have installed flooring with a similar system in your homes and boats as this has been popular for over 20 years in the building trades and is a very DIY system.
Difficult to show how well textured this flooring is, but think well seasoned and aged wood decks on boats and homes and you’ll have it just right.  We have tested samples with bare wet feet and it has proven it will be eXtremely non-slip throughout the boat.

Stay tuned for more as the Ado flooring installation begins next week.

”T” is also for Tender:

Nihat (seen here) and Uğur only worked on Möbius two days this week but I have all of their work from last week to catch up with you on so still plenty to show you as they finished off their “hot works” stage of welding up the aluminium jet drive tender hull.
Nihat has now had an eXtreme amount of practice at grinding down the welds on all the hull plates on Möbius herself so he was VERY fast at getting all the Tender’s welds flush and all the corners nicely radiused.
meanwhile, inside the Tender, Uğur was busy cutting in this access to the area underneath the bench seat in the Steering Console.
Like Nihat, Uğur is also very fast and he had this hinged seat lid all done in one afternoon from start to finish.

We will either just make up some rectangular seat cushions for the seat and back or perhaps buy some “bucket” style fish boat seats to go in here.
Uğur was even faster at welding in these two Lift Bridle attachment points up at the Bow.
And mere minutes later, these two matching ones at the Aft end corners down at floor level.
Next up was fabricating and attaching these two boarding safety handrails that go on either side of the flat Bow.  Uğur is a master at these nicely radiused bends at any angle which work out better than using a hydraulic pipe bender for small numbers of bends.

A series of evenly spaced cuts with an angle grinder make it easy to form these different radius bends.
And then each cut is welded back solid.
All the welds are ground down and sanded and you’re done!

40mm / 1.6” OD thick walled AL pipe
These safety boarding hand rails needed to be removable so we played with a few positions and picked this one.
We used the very simple bolted flange system that we have used throughout the building of Möbius.
The thicker (10mmm / 3/8”) bottom flange is threaded and welded to the hull itself to create a base for the thinner top flange welded to the handrails to bolt to with NO penetration of the hull itself.
All four bases get tacked in place with the Handrails bolted to them so we can test for just right position before fully welding the threaded bottom flanges to the hull.
Super Polisher Nihat then comes in and cleans up the welds and the hull areas around them and it is all done!

I will probably pick up on the work to complete the Tender by installing the Castoldi 244 Jet Drive and the 4 cylinder Yanmar HTE 110HP engine, but that will all need to wait till after we launch Möbius so this may be the last you see of the Tender here for the next few months but do stay tuned for that and the test drive!
And that’s going to be a wrap folks for the 4 day week that was December 14-18, 2020 here at Naval Yachts and onboard the Good Ship Möbius.

Thank you SO much for taking time out of your busy day to join me here and hope you will do so again next week.  Love to get your thoughts, questions and suggestions on any of the above so please type them into the “Join the Discussion” box right down below.

-Wayne