In hindsight we should have started blogging about this over two years ago when we made the decision to make the transition from sail to voyaging under power as we have so much to catch up on now. Some would call this “going over to the dark side” though we have never thought of it that way, and to make matters worse/better soon thereafter we decided to design and build a new boat. This would likely result in a consensus amongst most family and friends that we have truly lost our minds this time, but that’s also not the way we see it nor is it anything new for them or us.
I often call our project to design and built the Goldilocks, just right just for us boat as being “a collaborative work of art and engineering” and so perhaps it is fitting this blog will reflect that as we share our grand adventure with all of you. Be warned therefore, that if you chose to follow along with us, and we very much hope you do, you will likely feel like you are watching a collaborative work of art & engineering coming together in front of you in real time because:
· some posts will be written by Christine and some by myself to provide our different perspectives and experiences
· some postings will go back in time to chronicle the design process that began aboard our previous home, a 52-foot steel sailboat s/v Learnativity, on our three-week passage from Majuro in the Marshall Islands down to Fiji at the end of April 2015.
· other postings will be closer to real time as they cover what is happening with the build process
· yet other postings will look ahead as we work through decisions needed for next stages of the build.
· and some postings won’t be time oriented at all as we outline and discuss our thinking on how best to do things or explain the why’s of what we are doing.
Most importantly though we would like to have YOU to join us as fellow collaborators on Project Goldilocks aka MV Möbius with your comments, suggestions and questions all along the way.
This posting is intended to provide you with the big picture overview of Project Goldilocks or PGL by outlining the high-level requirements we developed to guide us through the design phase of the project and now through the build process. These will progress from the very top level “mission statement” down through successive expanding layers providing more context of our use case and then the key attributes we want to have in our new boat.
HOW DID WE GET HERE?
All of this comes as a reflection and culmination of our collective experiences on other boats we’ve sailed and lived aboard during our many passages and adventures throughout the world. Christine has been boating most of her life and as she recently commented to me “dangerously approaching 50 years of sailing now”. I on the other hand didn’t start sailing and messing with boats till I was in my 50’s and I’m still not sure to this day just what prompted this as I had no previous marine orientation to my life nor any in my family. However, curiosity and learning have most often been the drivers in my life so once I became curious I jumped in with both feet and have now been sailing full time for the past 11 years. Christine has done everything from building two 54’ sailboats with her first husband Jim and subsequently sailing and chartering one of these for almost 15years including raising their son onboard for most of these. My experiences have mostly been single handed sailing my 52’ steel cutter from Victoria BC down the west coasts of North, Central and South America and then meandering west for many years through the Pacific. So, we have ended up with about the same number of nautical smiles under our respective “bottoms” and just over 100 thousand nm in total. Our prior experiences have almost all been under sail and so part of what is calling our name to try voyaging under power was that it would provide us with a whole set of new challenges and adventures and adventures are what we live for.
Our intent when we started this process over three years ago was and is still, to distill our collective experiences and preferences into a set of clearly stated high level goals and objectives to guide us throughout the whole design and build process such that at any time we could stand back from the process and use these overarching statements to check that we were keeping our priorities straight and still on target. It has served us very well throughout the design phase and will do even more as we now go through the build phase of executing all these design decisions.
We spent countless hours over those many first months and now years, thinking this through individually and discussing our goals between ourselves as well as other sailing friends. We kept working at synthesizing and articulating what we wanted to achieve with the new boat, what our top-level priorities were and the key attributes and characteristics this boat would need to have to be just the right, just for us Goldilocks boat.
It should be noted that we are NOT striving for perfection when we talk about getting this boat “just right”. Rather it is about finding the just right fit for us. A boat that we love a bit more every time we swim up to her in an anchorage. A boat we have unconditional confidence in when at sea and the poop hits the fan at O Dark Thirty as it so often does. A boat that inspires and invites us to go when someplace new is calling our name and yet is so comfy at anchor we never want to leave. You get the idea. We are setting out to design and build the just right, just for us boat.
These design goals are shaped like a pyramid with the singular mission up at the top and then expanding out with the more detailed levels below. At the very top we worked to articulate what might be called our “mission statement” though that sounds much too formal to us, which was our way of boiling everything down to the very essence of what we were setting out to achieve. Then cascading from this, the more detailed and itemized essential characteristics and requirements we were setting for ourselves and for those we would be enlisting their skills and expertise to collaborate with us on the design and building of Möbius. If you’ve ever tried to create such all-encompassing “mission statements” you know how difficult they are to do well as you try to condense it all down into as few as words as possible.
STARTING at the TOP:
Perhaps it is best to start with a similar summative statement which captures the Why we live the adventurous life we do before we get to the What we are setting out to achieve. The Why is even more difficult than the What to summarize but that which drives and unites us both is the pursuit of constant daily adventures strung together into the necklace of a lifetime spent living, learning and loving as we explore this awemazing world of ours together. We do our best to live up to this every day whether we are traveling by land, sea or air and in ways both large and small every day. In my previous blog when I was out single handing my first and only boat up to now s/v Learnativity, I came up with the byline of
“Wandering, Wondering and Pondering the world one nautical smile at a time”
and this still seems to sum it up well.
With that and distilling a mission statement for Project Goldilocks, we wanted to similarly summarize what we are setting out to accomplish and ended up with this:
To design and build an exceptional long range Passagemaker that is strong, safe, fast, fun and efficient, serving as our full time home along with the infrequent guests who join us on expeditions exploring the most remote locations of the world in exceptional safety and comfort.
As anyone who knows me will tell you I am “brevity challenged” to a severe degree but if I were to boil it all down even further we are setting out to design and build
“The just right boat for exploring extreme locations with equally extreme safety and comfort.”
OUR USE CASE CONTEXT:
Setting out to design and build our Goldilocks just right boat isn’t about seeking perfection, it is about seeking the best FIT for us and so for the next level down in this pyramid it was important for us to articulate how the boat needs to “fit” our lives and selves. Not unlike designing a piece of clothing, a sweater let’s say, that you are going just love to wear because it is so comfy and makes you feel so good that you want to wear it all the time. We want a boat that fits us similarly well and as such we need to know not only the specific physical measurements but also how, when, where this sweater will be worn, under what conditions and who is the person that will be wearing it? In the case of our boat this is about describing our Use Case scenario that summarizes ourselves and how we will live in and use this boat. In no particular order our life consists of doing the following:
LIVE to the POWER of 2:
It is just the two of us 99% of the time and we are not “camping”, this is our full time home. Our floating home will be optimized to be a “couple’s boat”, primarily for just the two of us and then very inviting and comfy to grandkids, friends’ family to come join us occasionally as well as having another couple or two we meet along the way over for a meal and sundowners.
CREATE: Christine’s Work Space
Christine revels in being a best-selling author with no interest in retiring and needs the just right space for writing her future thrillers and running her book business. We will design her onboard office in such a way that it converts into a very comfy Guest Cabin and will have its own shower and head, but priority is to be that Goldilocks work environment that inspires and motivates her. Minimizing distractions is a key factor here so keeping it extremely quiet and absent of any interruptions or distractions of views out picture windows, or dirty Mr. FixIt moving about, will be the priority. Whenever she wants there are plenty of spaces up above for views, breezes and company.
CREATE: Wayne’s Make/Fix Space
Wayne’s work/play is more to do with making and fixing things. This requires a well-equipped workshop with the tools and equipment enabling him to work with his hands making and fixing things. Thus, Wayne’s Workshop will be required to accommodate the many tools, workbenches, equipment and machines for working in wood, metal and mechanics such as lathe, milling machine, welders CNC router, 3D printer, etc.
GO FAR:
We love being at sea and answering the call of long distant destinations so long passages are the norm for us. Creating a boat that inspires confidence to GO anytime whenever the sea or other locations call and to be snug and safe on long passages getting there is a primary requirement. We were both single handed sailors for many years and have come to appreciate the high value of having a boat that can be single handed safely in all conditions if the need should arise.
GO EVERYWHERE:
We have had the most previous experience in tropical settings and love this climate. We often talk about our “20/20 Rule” of staying within 20 degrees of the equator. We like heat and we can tolerate humidity up to a relatively high point and intend to explore explore new tropical areas as well as going back to some many that we have enjoyed previously. However high latitude areas have been calling our name more and more, areas that are predominantly cold and would involve motoring through high winds, rough seas, freezing temperatures and ice invested waters. We are equally drawn to slightly less extreme locations a bit closer to the equator but still cold to us such as going up the inside passage of Vancouver Island and Haida Gwaii islands in my native British Columbia, and Greenland, Iceland and Norway. We want the new boat, and us, to thrive in all the above locations, climates and conditions.
GO NOWHERE:
Anytime we are not on a passage we are on anchor and often for extended times of weeks or months with no desire to be in marinas. We put extremely high value on our privacy in this context and like to either be “the only boat in the bay” or otherwise off by ourselves. This necessitates super comfy living spaces, independent self-sufficiency and SWAN ground tackle enabling us to anchor out in deeper waters and Sleep Well At Night.
GO ASHORE:
Given our remote, deep and isolated anchorages and our love of exploring ashore we will need a tender that enables us to think nothing of heading to long distant shores without a worry for weather changes to get back, adventuring out for even overnight trips on the tender up rivers and inlets in to suit, and staying safe and dry throughout.
GO ALONE:
Our passion for remote locations puts a premium on being extremely self-sufficient and self-reliant. We prefer small or no populations ashore, so we set our shore side expectations and dependencies as close to zero as possible. We assume zero availability to shore transportation, shipping, shopping or services. This prioritizes great food preservation, water and electrical independence, plentiful spare parts, ultra-reliable systems, lots of storage, repair capabilities and communications.
STAY ALONE
No uninvited guests! Our remoteness, both at anchor and underway sometimes puts us near potential danger from others who would like to “board and borrow” anything from items on the boat to the whole boat and ourselves. We therefore like to have deterrents built into the boat’s design such that we do not look like an inviting nor easy target for those who might be sizing us up.
LOCK n LEAVE:
There will be times when we want to leave the boat unattended for anything from extended multi day trips on the Tender to month or more trips back to see grandchildren and family when they can’t come to us. So, we need a boat which we can easily and quickly (several hours) lock up and safely leave knowing she will be fine and require no assistance. This includes leaving the boat at anchor as well as leaving her ashore on the hard or in the water. A lean/mean military “don’t mess with me” look will help with this.
KEY ATTRIBUTES:
Moving down to the next broader level in this pyramid, we had some very specific attributes we knew we wanted the new boat to have. These are all gleaned from our lessons learned from our extensive number of experiences and years living and sailing. Retaining the theme of a “collaborative work of art and engineering” we think of these attributes like an artist’s set of colours or an engineer’s tools in that they are not the painting or design itself but rather what will be used to create the end result.
With all the nautical miles under our bottoms and nights at anchor around the world, we had a good sense of what we wanted, some very general and broad, others quite specific. However, we also wanted to start with a blank canvas and create a boat that was not defined by past notions and traditions, ours or others, but rather shaped by these key attributes.
It is challenging to come up with the best words and concepts to group or categorize things under and we no doubt stretch the traditional definitions of many of these here. There is also some overlap between several groups, but the following list is what we came up with in the end and still use today.
LONG
· Length; maximum LWL for hull efficiency & speed
· Days, high mileage per 24hr day, averaging 240-260 nm days in typical passage conditions
· Range, minimum 6000nm @ 10kts range in typical open ocean conditions
· Anchorage times, measured in weeks and months not days.
· Forepeak for storage only
· Engine room with workshop, all aft
LEAN
· Beam with wave piercing style bow for maximum “silent and slippery” wave piercing and minimal wave/wake making.
· Green energy wise in all regards, propulsion, electrical, maintenance
· Remember the 99% Rule: Designed for just the 2 of us 99% of the time
LOW
· Physical appearance being long and low in the water with low house and superstructure above decks.
· Air draft for as many options of canals, locks, lower bridges
· Maintenance Unpainted exterior, minimum stainless
· Costs to maintain and operate
· Dependencies ashore, maximize self sufficiency
· D/L ratio, low displacement to find the “Goldilocks” just right balance of having enough displacement for maximum sea kindliness and yet minimum mass to drive through the water
· Height, no double stacked living spaces
· Shoal draft less than 1.5m (5 feet) for exploring the shallows
· Fly bridge “lite” on roof of cabin with full upper helm station
LIGHT & LITE:
· Visual appearance on the water, long, low, lean and mean.
· Displacement by saving weight where possible and spending where wise.
· Bright everywhere inside, 360-degree light & views in SuperSalon
· Open plan galley & salon
LONGEVITY:
· Value
· Service intervals
· Equipment, engine, propulsion, systems
· Max fuel capacity for longest range and time between fills
LOOKS:
· Matching her/our purpose and mission.
· The UN Yacht: unpainted aluminium, no stainless, no wood, no extras.
· Blend in at a local working port or commercial fishing harbor and not fit so well in marinas
· Strong Industrial/commercial quasi-military “vibe” partly by a design that is long, low, lean and mean” and partly through the use of very high functionality very low maintenance exterior items such as all unpainted aluminum hull and superstructure, beefy aluminum rub rails and booms and other functional “all business” meant to be used features reminiscent of modern pilot boats, tug boats and commercial fish boats than a “yacht”.
· Starkly contrasting the “lean & mean” exterior, the interior will have an extremely high craftsman level fit and finish of all cabinetry and interior surfaces
ECONOMICAL
· Economic to build: Maximized use of 3D CAD modeling, CAM and CNC for all construction, exterior and interior materials (aluminum, wood, fabrics, etc.
· Economic to maintain; Careful selection of materials, equipment and installation to minimize maintenance and failures.
· Economic to operate: Maximum efficiency throughout.
· Minimize size of interior with maximum comfort for 2/4/6/8; Live 2, sleep 4, eat six, entertain 8
· 2 cabins, 2 heads
· Down Up Down design; Raised center house with 360 degrees of glass and cabins down below deck level on each end
· Maximum solar output
EFFICIENT
· in all regards; hull, engine, propulsion, electrical as well efficiency in use.
· Maximum solar panel re‐charge ability, sufficient to eliminate need for genset
· Low rpm ultra-efficient and robust diesel main engine,
· No generator
· Battery based boat, maximum size 24v house bank, all loads 240v AC off battery/inverters
SAFE
· On passage first and anchor second.
· Integral tanks below WL for maximum fuel and counterbalancing water.
· Self-righting; Maximum positive stability to “survive and thrive” a capsize. All our past boats were sailboats which are inherently self-righting, and we were not willing to give this up with this transition to voyaging under power.
· Unappealing and menacing to others on the outside
· Inviting and alluring on the inside
STRONG,
· Like the Timex watch commercial “take a licking and keep on ticking” self-righting and able to have an inevitable grounding and keep going, no haul out required
· Strategically “over built and over engineered” in the just right places with high redundancy of all critical systems
· Thrive not just survive
· Watertight “crash” bow compartment at front of forepeak
COMFORTABLE
· At sea first and foremost, in all weather conditions. Passive stabilization with active designed into hull but not installed at launch.
· At anchor, great ventilation in all conditions, flopper stoppers, great seating, lots of light, spacious outdoor areas
· “Thermos” hull; Cool in hot climates, warm in cold climates.
· QUIET: weather, mechanical systems, humans, insulation, vibration.
WHERE DID THIS LEAD US?
It has already been almost a 3-year process for just the design phase, but we could not be happier with the end result which is a result of finding a great designer, thank you Dennis and then disciplining ourselves to follow the guiding principles and attributes you’ve just read through above. Ultimately our process evolved the design that is now the finalized model of Möbius with the following set of statistics.
•LOA: 23.8m / 78.2’- •LWL 23.8 / 78.2’
- •Max BEAM 5.13m / 16.8’
- •DRAFT 1.3m / 4.2’
- •DISPLACEMENT w/ half tanks 41,000 kg / 90,000 lbs
- •CRUISING SPEED 10.5 kts
- •MAX. SPEED 12 kts
- •RANGE @10kts 7000+ nm
- •FUEL CAPACITY 14,400 L / 3800 USG
- •WATER CAPACITY 5300 L / 1400 USG
Some of these numbers are of course theoretical estimates at this time such as cruising speed, range, etc. and we won’t know the real numbers until we launch and have real data from initial sea trials and then ongoing use of the boat, but with the amount of detail we have in the 3D models and the amazing power of the algorithms that can be run on this model, these numbers should be quite close.
Absolutely spectacular looking boat. Your planning, thought and care in the design is awe inspiring. Makes perfect sense when your lifestyle, safety and well being is going to depend totally on this beautiful boat. I sure hope it all goes really well for you considering all the hard work going into it. A dream of a lifetime that will give back every day once you start living in it. 🙂
Thanks for the far too generous and kind remarks Elton. I am counting on you to keep me “honest” with your comments, critique and suggestions as the build progresses. And it is not THAT long a plane ride over here for you if your curiosity ever gets the better of you and/or you feel the itch to come join in the fun. Just sayin’ ………………………
Hi Wayne,
Thank you for the overview of your requirements and how you’re going to meet them. I’m curious about a few things:
1. Does the fly bridge remain fully or partially in place when expecting heavy weather (roof, side panels)?
2. The deck drawing shows an anchor arrangement on the port side of the bow. Does this allow the boat to rotate around the anchor without too much noise or do you use some sort of extrusion?
3. The propeller and rudder look well protected, while a Gardner should be highly reliable. Does that mean you’re going to do without a get-home engine and second (folding) propeller?
4. In case you decide stabilisation at sea is a must (I’m hearing many motorboat owners have a pry-them-from-my-dead-hands attitude when it comes to these :), while sailors have the sail(s) for stabilisation), would you go with hydraulic fin stabilisers as drawn or would gyro’s (Seakeeper etc.) be of interest?
Sorry if these are too many questions. My excuse is that yours is a very interesting project!
Hi Wayne,
I just saw on the drawings that the fly bridge roof sports 8 solar panels, which probably means the roof stays on.
Not sure if it’s intended, but this post isn’t shown on the home page of the site, whereas it is shown in the RSS feed as well as the recent articles list in the right sidebar on the home page?
Thanks Carl, just the kinds of things we so value about having people like you comment on such things so we can keep improving this blog. This post should now appear on the Home page. Christine and I are still messing around with the blog to get it working the way that works best for those reading it and part of this is deciding which categories to push onto the bottom of the Home Page. When I first posted this article it wasn’t in one of the 3 categories/columns so was only showing up on the Recently Added list as you noted. I’ve since gone in and categorised it so it shows up on top of the Home page now and should make it more discoverable by others. We’re thinking it might be best to just make one of the columns, perhaps the far left one a “Newest” column and that should help.
We hope you and others will keep letting us know via your comments when things are not working well for you and any other suggestions for making this a better experience for you. We are often way to close to be able to see such things so we really appreciate your help.
Hi again Carl, or Merhaba as we are learning to say over here. Christine and I are both ex teachers and serial learners so we love curiosity and there are never too many questions. Not sure we will always be able to answer them well or quickly some times but we can assure you and others here that we absolutely read them all and benefit from them all so please keep them coming.
Responding to your 4 questions above, they all touch on very significant aspects of our design and all of these will be the subject of many future posts but let me do my best to give you a general sense of what we’re doing as my best answers right now:
1. Your first question brings up several topics related the roof of the fly bridge or “SkyBridge” as I’m fond of calling it as it has several features relevant to your questions. One of its attributes is that it will be what might be described as a “semi permanent” structure. Dennis, Dincer and I are still working on the details for it but we have the design parameters all in place and the basics for the structure now. It will be semi permanent in that we are not expecting it to survive a self righting full 360 roll over. If we were ever to experience such a highly unlikely event the roof structure, along with the solar panels would most likely be donated to King Neptune.
The roof structure itself will be made of AL tubing with truss like beams, most likely transverse right now as I’m still playing with their direction, which are welded into a perimeter tube frame. It will be soft covered with a Stamoid like material that is stretched over the frame, wraps around the perimeter frame and is lashed to an inner frame. On the aft two corners it will have very sturdy hinged mounts to the pipe based arch and then going forward at each angled corner point where the frame wraps around the front there will be a vertical AL post mounted in sockets on the frame and coaming. It will be very sturdy to provide a strong base for the separate rack that will hold the 8 solar panels but kept as light as possible weight wise. The SkyBridge won’t have any permanent windows in it but we will fabricate a set of acrylic window panels that will most likely hinge along their top edge so they can be folded in and up against the roof frame when not needed.
I will do a whole post on this in more detail once we have it all modeled up and working but the other feature that might interest you is that the whole roof assembly will fold down flat against the top of the SkyBridge coaming to significantly reduce the air draft or height above the water of the boat to open up more options for things like canals, locks, and inland routes that are calling our name but have one or more bridges that are too low for our normal height. The short description of how this will work is that the pipe arch will be hinged about half way up its vertical posts and Dennis has come up with the geometry for two hinge plate mounts where the aft end of the SkyBridge roof structure will fasten. This will enable us to fold both the arch and the SkyBridge roof down together. In the down position, the arch would look like a pipe fence around that aft deck roof where you see the 3 solar panels. The bottom of the SkyBridge roof frame would then be resting on the top of the coaming. Hope I’ve described it such that you can visualise it for now and I’ll have drawings and models to show you when I write this up more fully.
2. We have spent a LOT of time on our ground tackle and or decision to go with this “side winder” type of anchor roller system. We started with it being front and center as you’d expect but a list of reasons motivated me to see if we could not have it protruding out so far and eventually led us to the design you noticed. Another article or three on this later but here’s the quick overview. Reasons for not wanting it on the bow included; adds almost a meter to the length of the boat, a potential “battering ram” for any other boat that might accidentally tangle with us, is a danger and a problem if/when docked bow first, and it puts a substantial amount of weight very far forward which adds to pitching and digging into large seas. We have experienced all of the above on our previous boats and when one the LRC58 “Broadsword” was with us up in Fiji it’s forward anchor arrangement was problematic for the bow first docking at Vuda Pt. Marina which is a round basin type marina. So it wasn’t that these front and center anchor arrangements don’t work, they obviously do and would easily be 90+percent of the boats afloat today. However we wanted to see if there wasn’t a better way that could reduce or eliminate these problems and create an even better system. I suspect it will be one of several controversial features of Möbius for others but we’re very pleased with the solution we’ve come up with.
As we’ve done in many cases we started by looking for alternative designs on other boats. Two years ago when we were on Learnativity in Whangarei NZ there was another beautiful big sailboat behind us that happened to have dual anchors mounted at an angle to the CL and protruding out through large openings in the hull. We had already had some great discussions with the owners who where fellow DIYers like ourselves and had done most of the modifications to their boat including the anchor setup and they liked it a lot. Once we started looking we were able to find lots of variations on alternative anchor positions and styles, everything from completely hidden ones that dropped down from the bottom of the hull at the bow, to ones that pulled up straight vertically through side openings and I’m sure you’ve notices some like this on large yachts and commercial ships. We spent a lot of hours trying out different ideas and eventually evolved what you see now.
Finally answering your specific question, while the chain will play in and out via traditional large rollers in the side anchor roller assembly, this will only be when you are lowering or raising the anchor. Once the anchor is set we will run a length of 3 strand nylon out through a purpose built tube that sits just under the nose of the bow formed by the rub rails wrapping around the bow. We have come to call this tube “the Donut” as the end which protrudes out the bow has large radius around both sides of the 70mm thick tube walls which creates a donuts shaped end. It will be machined out about 400mm long and be an integral part of the hull. This provides a great pivot point when at anchor and the snubber line will have a very fair lead and those large radius edges to move around as the boat swings. I’ll catch up with more detailed articles with renderings and drawings of all this as quickly as time permits here.
3. We are even more pleased with the whole propulsion system we have come up with for Möbius and there will be many future posts going into these decisions and the setup we now have. The Gardner will transfer its torque through a Nogva CPP (Controllable Pitch Propeller) servo box and then on to a 1m OD 4 blade Nogva CPP which is tucked up nicely into a bit of a prop tunnel. All this warrants much more explanation but your guesses were correct Möbius will be single engine, no “get home” 2nd engine or prop. This was a set of decisions that took many months and hours of discussion as we traversed the long and winding path that led us to the final propulsion system solution. The propulsion system on any boat design ultimately comes down to what is best for the owner/operators of the boat and is perhaps one of the most personal of decisions there is. As a motor or power boat everything depends on this working well at all times and while many will not agree, this is the system that suits us best and is as with everything else, our Goldilocks just right just for us solution.
I can tell you, and will write much more on this as soon as I can, we explored and considered pretty much every possible option there is for propulsion and “get home” systems and thought we would go with several other options before ultimately settling on a single Gardner main engine spinning a large slow turning CPP prop in a tunnel.
4. Stabilisation is yet another of those major topics we have spent many, many hours discussing and exploring and will review in upcoming articles. There was never any question that we would want and need some form of stabilisation on this boat it was a question of what solution would be best for us and here is where we have ended up. The hull is designed and will be built with options for several different types of stabilisation both active and passive. As we are doing with many other components of Möbius she will have a number of features and components which we will NOT install at launch. In the case of the active stabilisers the framing, coffer dams and hatches will all be part of the build but the holes through the hull for the shafts will not be cut. We will launch Möbius with passive stabilisers and you can see the A-frame booms for the paravanes in the drawing of this article. As long time sailors we are very comfortable handling things like lines, clutches and winches so for us we don’t’ think that launching and retrieving paravanes will be a problem for us. We have been with quite a few captains and crews of boats using paravanes and they have all been very pleased with their all round performance. Our intent is to do our first year or so with the paravanes on passages and see how they work for us. If we or more likely some new owner in the distant future decides they want to install some form of active stabilisation then Möbius will be all ready to have what whatever system they choose installed. Two days ago for example Dincer and I met with the co founder and chief technician of DMS Holland who make the very intriguing, efficient and effective MagnusMaster stabilisers and their system would be one of the preferred active stabiliser systems Möbius will be designed for.
However, as I’ve outlined above Christine and I think that paravanes will work very well for us on passages and then “flopper stoppers” we’ll build to let us deal with the relatively rare rolly anchorages we end up in. For us, “sea trials” is just another name for every passage we take as we are always evaluating, improving and inventing ways to increase the Goldilocks just right factor of our boat.
Well, you are surely sorry that you ever asked any questions given the “brief” responses they elicit Carl but I do sincerely hope you won’t be put off and will continue to ask more questions as your curiosity dictates.
Wayne
Hi Wayne,
Thank you for the response, nice to know that there are “some” posts still to be written :).
Seriously, it’s very generous of you two to expand on your requirements and how you’re going to meet them. Designing and building a boat from scratch isn’t known to be low-intensity, even with a good designer and yard; keeping a blog going at the same time can’t be trivial. Much appreciated.
Unfortunately for you and others following along here Carl, there is way too much more where these posts have come from! 🙂
Both the boat and the blog are firmly in the “labour of love” category so we enjoy them thoroughly. Just how well we will be able to keep the posts coming on a regular basis as the build starts taking more and more of our time remains to be seen but we’ll do our best. Heck, maybe it will even force “brevity challenged Wayne” to learn how to write shorter articles and responses to questions? Never say never right???
As an equally-avid follower of Steve’s crafting (way-back to the Sundeer-days, i’m 71, now) , i’m lovin’ this journey with you-two.
In the process of addressing “stabilization”-possibilities, specifically in the “roll”-department, i found this: https://www.rotorswing.com/wing-yacht-stabilizer/.
As a former-pilot, i naturally “get it” about “wings” — nice surprise to find this 3-axis, electrically-driven application also addresses the “get-home” and “dynamic-positioning” matters.
Thanks to the solar-panels, this can resolve the “at-anchor”-roll. No need for flopper-stoppers, nor the added-weight of paravanes and danger of “flying-fish”.
Thank you for allowing me to share its existence with you; both, as a thank-you for this blog of your journey, and for the possibility that this may be the “just-right”-answer you weren’t-yet aware was available.
This is their upgrade from their original, very-workable, but insufficiently-sufficient, magnus-rotor “roll”-answer.
Hi James and thanks for joining us on this grand adventure, having people like you join us is what makes it great. We too are proud pupils of the Dashews who rank right up there at the top of our best teachers, mentors and inspirerers (if that’s a word?). Christine and I were following Steve and Linda for years before we met and back in their Deerfoot and Sundeer days, owned all their books and were avid readers and followers. This became all the more fascination when they decided to try out voyaging under power rather than sail and built their first “prototype” boat Wind Horse in classic Dashew fashion and go do the best kind of learning of all, experiential. While saddened that they are now officially retiring from the business side of things and no more FPB’s will be built, we are delighted that they are going to be enjoying the fruits of all those decades of work and hundreds of thousands of sea miles. One of our fondest hopes is that one day we will find Cochise and Möbius anchored in the same remote beautiful bay and get to thank them in person.
Great bit of synchronicity with your comments about RotorSwing stabilisers as just last week we met with one of the co founders of the DHS Holland and their lead technician for their MagnusMaster stabilisers.
http://www.dmsholland.com/stabilizers/magnusmaster-2/
We’ve been aware of these Magnus effect forms of stabilisation for several years now and as you note the latest RotorSwing does have some intriquing capabilities for potential “get home” power as well as “zero speed” stabilization when at anchor. We are looking into these further however for us I’m not sure that this added complexity has enough benefit to make it “just right” for us. Granted any active stabiliser system is already reasonably complext though we do think that these Mantus effect type with their electrically driven cylinders are much less so than the more typical hydraulic fin stabiliser systems. As you’ve read too, there are several other very compelling differences with these Magnus Effect style stabilsers such as their ability to be rotated aft and tucked in alongside the hull thus having very little protruding out the sides to potentially contact coral, rocks, nets and docks which is an ever present possibility with fins. We have intentions and hopes of doing some high latitude voyages which will put us in icy waters so being if we did have active stabilisers these Magnus type can be tucked in and much better able to deal with icy bits we would going through. You’ll see in photos on the web that several ice breakers have been built with MagnusMaster stabilisers and they just added a relatively small protective fin in front of the stabiliser housing to take the brunt of any contact with ice and this apparently worked very well.
While we very much like the idea of electric vs hydraulic powered stabilisers we like the simplicity and reliability of passive paravanes and that is what we will be outfitting Möbius with for launch. However as we are doing with many such choices available for so many critical functions, we are designing and building Möbius to have these choices as “uninstalled options”. In the case of stabilisers the hull will be built with all the fittings, framing, coffer dams, etc. for three different active stabiliser options: pneumatic and hydraulic driven fins and electric driven Magnus rollers. The hull plates will be left intact with no openings but it will be a relatively quick task to fit any one of these systems in the future. We think that the passsive paravanes are going to work well for us and we’ll stick with those but we recognise that a future owner, 30-50 years from now, may well want to have active stabilisers installed.
A related factor for going with these “uninstalled options” is that like the Dashew’s Wind Horse we have kept in mind that Möbius may very well end up being a prototype for a future line of boats that GreeNaval or others might offer and so we thought it best to design things like this in from the outset.
Lastly for now in this already too long response, as a pilot you might also be interested in another style of passive stabilisation that some commercial and navy boats have been trying out over the past 10 years or so. These involve a pair of fins, one on each side, which are hinged on the side of the hull so they can be rotated down so they protrude out at an angle similar to active stabiliser fins but they don’t move. These “passive fins” utilize classic wing or foil designs to produce lift which counteracts any forces trying to roll the hull and would also work to some degree to counteract roll when at anchor. Some of the systems I’ve seen so far are mounted on adustable rails or a system that allows the fins to not only be folded up and down but also have their hinge point move up and down along the hull side for best positioning when down in the water and then be lifted well out of the water when in the up storage position when not in use. I’m just beginning to research these so much to learn yet and not likely a contender at this point in time as I’m not convinced their functionality warrants the additional costs and complexity.
In pretty much all our decisions for functional gear and systems we not only evaluate choices by their cost/benefit ratio but also their reliability/benefit ratio. So far for us, passive paravanes have the best ratios for us but we remain very open and actively planning for active or other options.
Thanks again for the comments and questions James. Hope my ebullient response doesn’t deter you from posting more.l
Wayne
This is comnercial but it would be interesting to know of your thoughts on the subject of protecting the shafts from debris? We do supply shaft rope cutters. I haven’t read all of the blog but it is an area that often isn’t thought about until you have a problem.
Looks like a very effective line cutter solution Neil and thanks for bringing it to my attention. We have not yet decided if we will mount some kind of a line cutter for the prop shaft or not so will definately keep yours in mind if we do. Right now we are playing with some ideas for preventing lines, nets and debris from being able to get up to the prop by having a bolt on bar that extends from the aft end of the skeg shoe to just underneath the rudder which would cause most lines and nets to slip straight off the back of the rudder in most cases. However there is always the danger of lines getting snagged by the prop blades themselves out on the sides so a cutter my make sense for added pro-active measures.
Wayne,
As you know I have been following your build for quite some time, but I just found this blog you posted last year. I really enjoyed finding out a little more of the background on all the planning and reasoning, that went into the Mobius build. I never noticed before, that you didn’t have a generator included in your build, or if I did I have forgotten, which is likely. At almost 74, I can always claim a “senior moment”, can’t I? One of the many perks
of living a longer life. I have enjoyed your “brief” description and details as only a fellow “brevity challenged” person can appreciate (I inherited mine from my father, who was a wonderful storyteller, and a great person to have along on long road trips!!!) The story is in the details. I am looking forward to all the future updates and maybe someday seeing Mobius anchored beside me.
Orville