Alas, the milestone of moving under our own power has eluded us for another week but next week is looking very promising for Möbius’ first of many sea trials.  We continue to experience a series of “installation issues” that have prevented our Kobelt hydraulic steering system and Kobelt Throttle/Pitch controls to work as they should and so without steering and propulsion we haven’t been going too far other than being towed.  But the fuel economy has been fabulous!

As with last week, with less progress than usual and not much of it being very visual, I don’t have as much content as usual for this week’s Show & Tell Progress Update, but grab a comfy seat and something tasty to drink and let’s get started with what I can show you about the past week of March 22-28, 2021.

Nazar Boncuğu Keeps Us Safe!

Many of you may already be familiar with Nazar Boncuğu aka “Turkish Evil Eye” as they are the most popular tourist souvenir of all and these captivating cast glass blue eyes have found themselves being transported to homes and boats all over the world, including ours.  As is the tradition, we have one right outside the front door of our apartment for the past 3+ years.  When Christine and I first came to Turkey back in 2014 so Christine could do her meticulous research for her next book at the time which became Knight’s Cross, we saw these Turkish Eyes warding off evil spirts on the bows almost every fishing boat in the many harbours we visited so of course we had to have them on Möbius’ bow too!

While they can be found in shops almost everywhere, we wanted the Goldilocks Just Right version of Nazar Boncuğu and last week Christine spotted these two beauties in a specialty glass shop in Antalya and knew that these were it! 

As you can see in this photo, right now our pair are basking in the sun atop one of our Ro$ewood Galley Garages where they do look resplendent with the light coming off the water, but they are destined to be securely adhered to the bow next week so do stay tuned for those shots.

Do I See Light at the End of this eXtremely Looooong and Winding Tunnel?

In many ways, this whole adventure began back in March 2015 when Christine and I were making the 3000nm passage from Majuro in the Marshall Islands, down to Suva in Fiji. 
We had spent almost a year in Majuro which we are very much looking forward to returning to on our previous 52ft steel sailboat Learnativity and we had an awemazing 3 week passage down to …..
. ………. Suva with stops along the way at the island nations of Kiribati and Tuvalu along the way.
I had given Christine a copy of Robert Beebe’s “passagemaking bible” Voyaging Under Power and she was reading it on the passage down to Fiji and we would discuss it a lot as we sailed south.  Over the course of that 2+ week passage, we both became more and more aware of just how different passagemaking under power would be compared to sailing which we both knew and loved so much. 

By the time we got to Suva we had made the transition from thinking of switching from sail to power as a fun joke to being a real vision of our future.  As do most adventures I think, certainly most of mine, they begin when you start following your curiosity and now, six years later, we can see that this was when the adventure of designing and building Project Goldilocks, as we called it at the time,

In those six years we have gone from a very big vision to an eXtremely big reality and the path along the way has been like most of our adventures, one that includes several storms and other challenges along the way but always worth it for the joys at the end as one adventure transitions into the next.  We are not quite at the end of this latest adventure as the build continues, but we are now living more and more onboard and we grown increasingly eXcited about bringing this adventure to a close and beginning the next one back out on the ocean, eXperiencing the new storms and joys of what promises to be a very different type of voyaging under power for the first time.

Installation Issues Getting Resolved

The most recent set of “storms” for us has been a series of what I will simply refer to as “installation issues” which we have needed to resolve before we can begin to voyage under power for the first time on our first of what will be many, sea trials to shake as many gremlins out of the brand new Möbius and have as much of what is often referred to as “infant mortality” as possible before we finally leave Antalya in our wake.  This less than appealing term “infant mortality” is actually quite accurate in the context of a newly built custom boat as it refers to the several cases we are sure to have where brand new equipment and a brand new boat, will have items that are DoA or have not been installed correctly and fail to work as they should.  So far we have had very few new bits of kit that have been DoA on arrival but we have had a number of installation problems that have been keeping us from being able to go on our first voyage under power; our first sea trial!

This past week I have been working closely with our new electrician Ismail and along with some continuing eXemplary technical support from Lance, Keivan and Hicham at Kobelt Canada.  I have been working with Lance to design our steering and control systems for about four years now all together, and I can’t say enough about all of them at Kobelt who have been up in the very early morning for them in Vancouver, late evening for me here in Antalya, in order that we can do some live video calls for a techie version of Show & Tell as we went through hydraulic setups, wiring and they could watch what the moving components were doing, hear the sounds when they mattered and really be as close to being here in person with me as is possible.  As it turns out, all of the equipment from Kobelt arrived working as designed but the extensive list of items involved from hydraulic pumps, cylinders and valves to electronic controls and autopilot systems have been installed over the past 18 months and we are only now connecting all the parts together and there have been some issues along the way.

Three weeks ago the problem was that we weren’t getting pressure to the hydraulic steering cylinders, then two weeks ago we were having a long lag in time between when the Throttle or Pitch control levers were moved at one of the Helm Stations and when the lever on the Actuator box in the Engine Room moved and hence when the Throttle/Pitch cables and levers moved.  This past week we have been having difficulty getting the CPP Pitch Angle Gauges at each helm to communicate the correct Pitch Angle as the Pitch Control Levers were moved Ahead/Astern.  It goes as does most problem solving, you trace your way back to where you began, compare the schematics and guidelines from the manufacturers to the actual “as built” installation and you find the differences between those and fix them.  Sounds simple, and it is, but it sure can take time and effort to follow these long and winding paths.

Perhaps it has been thanks to those two Turkish Evil Eyes being onboard that we have been on a solution per week schedule and the first two problems had been resolved in the previous two weeks, and I am delighted to report that as of last night (Saturday 27th March here) Ismail and I have the Pitch Angle gauges working and mounted back where they belong at each Helm Station!  We have tested all this with here at the dock Mr. Gee thrumming away and our Nogva CPP churning the clear waters underneath making Möbius tug at her dock lines.  Once all the other critical jobs have been finished such as finishing the deck hatches so they all close and seal properly, finishing and testing the fire hose and a still rather long punch list of other jobs, we will be *almost* good to go!

Almost, because there remains one last major and eXtremely critical system that needs to be finished before Möbius is seaworthy enough for her first sea trials; Navigation System.  This involves getting the key elements of our whole Furuno Navigation system working and configured as this includes things like our Radar, AutoPilots, VHF radio, AIS (Automatic Information System) and all the related screens, computers and black boxes which controls all that navigation equipment.  Good on that front is that Captain Christine has been leading her very own team of technicians which Naval has sub-contracted with to assist with getting the eXtremely multi-faceted navigation system of hardware and software all wired, inter-connected and configured.

For those interested in the details of our navigation system and to give the rest of you an idea of what all is involved, here is a quick overview of some of the individual bits of kit Christine and I have pulled together to build our Steering & Navigation system**

** FYI, on the Mobius.World blog site, there is a complete list of all the equipment in all the systems on Möbius available under the tab at the very top ribbon called “The Boat” which you can see by clicking HERE.

Here is the list of the components in our Steering, Navigation and Communications systems which are very intertwined:

STEERING SYSTEM

NAVIGATION EQUIPMENT

COMMUNICATIONS/MONITORING EQUIPMENT

• VHF RADIO.. Standard Horizon GX6000 w/ AIS + NMEA2000
• w/ AIS + SART target display & GPS Compass
• RAM 4 remote mic @ Main Helm
• Wireless mic w/access point
• loudhailer….. Standard Horizon Dual Zone 25W PA / Loud Hailer
• with preprogrammed fog signals + Listen Back
• Horn………. Kahlenburg S-330 air horn
• Satellite coms…………. Iridium GO!
• Data logger…. Yacht Devices Voyage Recorder YDVR-04
• Search light………. ACR Artex RCL-95 Pan/Tilt/Zoom 500W Searchlight w/ Remote
• Monitoring….. Maretron monitoring system
• Including All: bilges, tanks, batteries, engine, fuel flow, smoke & heat, etc..
• Viewed on any screen and remotely via Maretron N2K View
• on boat networking… NMEA 2000 N2K dual backbone 2000 network throughout
• Multiplexers for NMEA 0183 + RS432
• Gateways via USB & IPG
• Victron, and Maretron networks for monitoring
• IP Cameras. Forward facing IP camera mounted on Skybridge roof
• Aft Facing camera above swim step
• Reolink Bullet IP camera engine room
• Reolink Dome IP camera engine room
• Video encoder. Axis Camera Encoder
• WiFi Antenna. Microtik Groove 52 AC Wi-fi antenna
• WiFi booster … WeBoost Drive Reach
• Cellular antenna…….. Wilson Wide Band Omni-Directional Marine Antenna for cellular
• ROUTER……. PepWave Max Transit Duo router
• Network Access Storage. Synology NAS Disk Station w/ 2X 8 GB Seagate Barracuda drives

Well, you get the idea, there is a LOT of moving parts to this puzzle.

And as you can see here, some of those moving parts are often crowded around Captain Christine at the Main Helm in this case!  Yunus on the far Right is the the manager of this connection and configuration team and Erdal with the toque in the middle is the lead technician and they have been a true treat to work with.
Some of the “moving parts” are blinking lights such as this set on the back of just three of our network switches in one of three “Internet Alcoves” as Christine calls them.  Strange though, we have “cut the cord” more than most people ashore and Isn’t it great that we are living in a wireless world!
Zooming out a bit of that alcove to show you that it really is quite small but it does have even more hardware!
Another very “wireless” alcove, this one behind the 50” monitor and home of Boat Computer #1 and the Synology NAS on the Left side of the Main Helm.
Out on the Aft Deck looking up at the Main Arch and the Tender Davit on the Left, to show you yet another very “wireless” area along the Arch where all of our external navigation and communication equipment resides.

One eXciting milestone this week has been seeing that 6ft Open Array antenna spinning around for the first time on our Furuno FAR 1523 Radar!
My favorite Geekette, aka Capn’ Christine aka my Beautiful Bride, is a wee bit shy but I was able to at least get her hand in this shot as she tilts the two 19” LiteMax screens at the Main Helm to show how she now has TimeZero running charts on the Left and an awemazing amount of detail of the seabed below us thanks to our Furuno BBDS “Black Box Bottom Discriminating Sounder” where we can watch individual fish swimming below Möbius’ hull and details of the composition of the sea bead down to about 75 feet below the “top of the bottom”. 
I will leave you with this shot of the view at your eye height when sitting in the Captain’s Chair here at the Main Helm.  Now, if we can just get past that sea wall …………………..

Thanks for joining us again for another week in the adventure of Project Goldilocks.  Please be sure to leave any and all comments and questions in the “Join the Discussion” box below and I hope you will join us again next week for what I hope will be the report of our first sea trials!  Wish us luck!  We will need it!

-Wayne