We are all back after a wonderful week off for the big Eid-ul-Fitr or Ramazan Bayrami n Turkish which is the “Festival of the Breaking of the Fast” that occurs as soon as the new moon is sighted at the end of the month of fasting. Well rested, well fed and filled with gratefulness and appreciation for all we have, progress ramped up quickly on the good ship Möbius on lots of different levels and materials. The title is in reference to the theme of transfer which prevailed this week including transferring the completed Master Bed cabinetry to the finishing shop, transferring to prepping the Master Cabin to have all its cabinetry mounted, and then lots of work with other transfers such as Dorade Vents for transferring fresh air into the interior spaces and transferring water of all forms (Black, Gray, Potable, Sea) to and from their respective tanks. Whew! That’s a LOT of transferring and too many words so let’s jump right into the show and tell for this week of June 10-14, 2019.
Starting with the transfer of diesel fuel the Day Tank was back in the spotlight as it was completed and prepped for installation onboard.
Nihat on the right here and Uğur provide a good reference to the size of the Day Tank which holds a total of 667 L / 178 USG which is enough for about a day and a half at 10 knots. We “polish” all the fuel going into the Day Tank using our Alfa Laval centrifuge which I’ll detail in a future post when we get to installing it. This ensures that all the fuel going into the Day Tank is super clean and that we are assured to have enough fuel for at least a day and a half on passage.
Following the “belt & suspender” type of redundancy we insist upon for all critical systems, just to be sure the fuel has no dirt or water in it, we have the round drain pipe you see here as the lowest point in the tank to trap and hold any water or debris that may have somehow made its way into the Day Tank. There will be a 3/4” SS ball valve on the bottom so I can easily pull and test a sample of fuel from here.
Peeking further inside you can see some of the baffle plates which prevent the fuel from “sloshing” from one side to the other as the boat moves.
The fuel goes through another series of multi stage fuel filters as the final steps in guaranteeing that nothing but clean fuel is being fed to Mr. Gee, our single main Gardner 6LXB engine upon which we are so dependent for propulsion.
There is this additional access port in the top just in case I ever need to access the inside of the fully baffled tank when it has lots of fuel in it. Uğur is tapping the holes in the access port frames for the threaded studs that will hold the gasketed lid tightly in place.
With all the access ports and baffles all welded up the tank is closed up by welding in this last side. You may recall seeing this type of slot welding when the hull was being built as this is how you are able to weld a plate where you have no access to the inside.
With the Day Tank fully prepped, Sezgin our Master Welder then gets the call to finish welding the slots and perimeter of this last side and then …….
……. lay down the finished continuous welds and fully seal up the drain sump and both access ports.
Looking down through the top access port down to the one on the bottom, you can see more of the baffles which minimize the weight transfer as the fuel moves about when there is lots of boat motion.
Next week Nihat and Uğur will wrestle this completed Day Tank into the Starboard/Left side wing of the Workshop and fasten it into its full time home up against the WT Bulkhead. 
Making sure we keep Mr. Gee VERY happy and running well we we also need to feed him cold clean air and that is what Uğur and Nihat are working on here in the Engine Room. That long rectangular aluminium duct will carry fresh air from the Port/Left Vent Box up above on the Aft Deck down to the floor of the Engine Room.
Outside looking at the Aft Deck this quick rendering shows how the two Vent Boxes provide additional height and a protected place for the mist eliminating vents that will be on the inside of each Vent Box.
These Vent Boxes will also serve as our outdoor Galley with a BBQ in that aft cut out of the far Vent Box and a sink in the nearest one.
This isolated render of the Vent Boxes in Red and their respective below deck ducting in Purple will hopefully help you see how they direct air into and out of the ER as well as air into the Workshop and the Guest Cabin.
The tall purple duct on the left takes the intake air down to floor level in the ER while the smaller purple ducting on the far side pulls the hotter air out of the ER up and out through the upper demister grill outlined in Green.
Back to the real world, here is that tall intake duct you saw above as it extends up through the aft deck plates. The vent box sitting in the top right corner will eventually be fitted overtop of this duct and the air will enter through a demister grill on the inside surface of the Vent Box.
Back down in the Engine Room looking up at the ceiling on the Starboard/Right upper forward corner we see where the hot ER air exits. There will be 24V fans to assist with pulling the heated ER air out and creating a slight vacuum in the ER to make sure none of the fumes and heat are pushed out into the Workshop.
The large radius duct all the way forward penetrates the ER enclosure wall and feeds fresh air into the Stbd/Right wing of the Workshop.
Mr. Gee isn’t the only one who needs to be fed lots of clean fresh air, we do too!
When we are on passage and most often can’t have the hatches open we bring fresh air into our Master Cabin with these four Dorade Vents seen here on the Foredeck.
Dorade Vents are a very tried and true way of bringing fresh air into a ship while also keeping rain and sea water out. Very simple principle, a tall vent pipe such as the three you see here (forth hiding behind orange welder) set up about 150mm / 6” above the deck and carry fresh air straight down into the cabin.
I’m determined to have a zero leak boat so I have a zero tolerance policy for any penetrations through the hull. For example yes of course these vent pipes are welded to the deck top and bottom! 
These vent pipes are then fully covered by the Dorade Box which Uğur has mocked up a prototype of and is lowering in place here.
These aluminium Dorade Boxes will be welded to the deck with generous scuppers/slots all along the bottom edge to allow any water that gets in to quickly drain out of the box onto the deck and back overboard.
When weather and conditions permit though we prefer to have our beautiful big hatches open to let in even more fresh air and lots of light. So our in house designed and built hatches got some finishing touches as well this week, having their Hinge Boxes all welded up inside where they join the inner deck plate surfaces and tie into the support stringers. 
Still looking up at this hatch frame we see one more example of how we make sure lots of fresh air gets in while keeping water out with this drain elbow that carries any water that collects in the gutter around the hatch frame out through a hose into an exiting sea chest.
Continuing with our transfer theme and moving to the Guest Cabin area you can see the black fuel hoses at the bottom of the Starboard/Right side of the hull. Two of these hoses will carry the diesel from the integral tanks under all the floors to and from the Day Tank which will be mounted on the other side of the WT bulkhead on the far right of this photo.
As you can see the hull walls are starting to fill up with more hoses and electrical cables. 
Looking a bit like tentacles of some stowaway octopus these hoses are being fed through their respective through holes in the frames and through the welded in penetration collars where they pass through a WT Bulkhead. Trays similar to the white wire trays you see above will be mounted horizontally to aluminium flat bars that are hiding under the vertical strips of black EPDM insulation you can see on the right but for now they are being routed throughout the length of the sides of the hull.
Each different type of fluid needs to transferred using a different type of hose specifically made and approved for each purpose. In this case these clear 19mm / 3/4” ID hoses are for transferring any bilge water which might collect in the gutters running down each side of the hull where the tank top margin plates aka floor, intersect with the side hull plates. With all integral tanks for fuel and water filling up all the area below the waterline the only place where we have a traditional bilge is below the main engine.
Moving forward into the Basement area you can see these clear bilge water hoses coming through up near the top of the WT Bulkhead, black fuel hoses on the bottom and the white/blue hose which is for transferring Gray Water from sinks and showers out of the integral tanks below the floors to either an Exit Sea Chest or a shoreside pump-out station.
The black & red pump is one of 18 Johnson SPX Power 16 diaphragm low level bilge pumps which we use to suck up any water that collects in those margin plate gutters along each side. One of the many benefits of using diaphragm rather than the more common centrifugal bilge pumps is that diaphragm pumps can be located high and dry and they are also able to pull up all but the very last little bit of water. This is a HUGE improvement and keeps the boat dry and odor free.
Another example of the specialised pipe and hoses showing up onboard is this white PPR tubing which we’ll be using for the main hot water loop that supplies hot water to all our sinks and showers. This 25mm / 1” ID pipe will create what will essentially be a large hot water manifold that runs the length of the boat with a very small thermostatically controlled circulation pump which keeps the water at a set temperature. 
Each length of PPR is fully wrapped with this EPDM foam insulation to keep that heat in and increase the efficiency of our overall water heating. This is the same type of EPDM foam which we have at least 50mm / 2” of covering every interior aluminium surface to create our live in Thermos bottle.
Our water is heated by a variety of sources, primarily from the Kabola diesel boiler and then supplemented by a heat exchanger off the Gardner main engine when it is running or from electrical coils when the solar panels have already fully charged the house bank batteries.
There will be T’s coming off this main hot water loop with short runs of equally well insulated 15mm PEX tubing carrying hot water to each individual sink and shower tap.
What all this does is provide near instant hot water to each sink and shower and eliminates the all too common waste of our highly valued fresh water from our watermaker when you turn on the hot water tap and wait and wait for it to get hot.
Hey! What happened to our beautiful King bed??
When we last saw it just before we all left for the holidays it looked like this!
Oh! More transferring you say? Right, the bed all comes apart so it can be moved aboard through the available openings, got it!
Omur and Selim first finished off the base for the mattress with the two removable hatches to provide access to the two large storage areas not filled up with drawers.
We are loving the contrast between the light coloured Beech being used for these kinds of areas with the dark Rosewood everywhere else.
One last detail was to route in these slots to provide more ventilation below the mattress and now the whole bed is ready for the next exciting stage; applying the final finish!
But before we leave the Cabinetmaking shop one more detail I thought you’d enjoy seeing. This is an example of how to reduce weight onboard. These are not for Möbius but for another boat Naval is now finishing up and these are the interior doors. 
Frames are all made from laminations which ensure they are very rigid and stay flat with no warping. Extra thickness is provided where hinges and latch hardware will be mounted. All the cavities have lengths of extremely rigid foam bars glued in place which weigh next to nothing. Then the door skins are glued on both sides, the whole assembly trimmed to final size and off to the veneer press to have the final layer glued down. Strong, stable, lightweight and beautiful, who could ask for more?
Hang on! Who let Omur and Selim out of the Cabinet shop and into the Master Cabin on Möbius?? 
Oh right! This is where wood meets metal. They are meticulously putting in the wood foundations that all their cabinets will set on and be attached to. Omur is measuring out the end of the bed unit you’ve seen previously and can see the outline of here. 
Behind him is this framing around the four access ports into the integral water tanks below all the floors. These solid wood frames are all sealed with epoxy paint, carefully leveled with the wedges you see here and then glued down to the aluminium tank tops/floor plates with Sikaflex.
Once all these foundations are laid down all the cavities will be filled with 40mm / 1.6” rigid foamboard and then 10mm marine plywood will be laid down to create the substrate for the final vinyl flooring.
Before the plywood goes down the foam will have all the grooves routed in place to create the continuous circuits for the 15mm PEX hot water tubing to be pressed into for the hydronic floor heating that will be in all the living spaces on Möbius.
Those with sharp eyes and good memory, I wish!, will note that the walls in the Master Cabin are also filling up. I’ll cover them in more detail in future posts but the large 50mm / 2” clear tubes are the vents and fills for the water tanks, the smaller 19mm / 3/4” tubing is what you saw earlier for the low level bilge water and the long arced pipe with EPDM black foam insulation running horizontally half way up the wall is the one you saw earlier for the continuously hot water loop/manifold.
But wait! There’s more!
Why is Aziz, Director of all Naval’s Interior work, smiling almost as much as me? 
Because we are both up in the Finishing Workshops looking at THIS! The first coat of lacquer being applied to all the bed unit pieces. 
Words can’t begin to capture and articulate my excitement and joy in seeing this whole new stage of the build taking place so I’ll let the pictures do all the talking.
Here is a bit of a before and after shot with the drawer faces in the foreground being the bare Rosewood and the ones in the background having their first coat on.
We have decided to use this top quality acrylic lacquer from Sayerlack which is a Sherwin Williams line of finishes for commercial cabinetmaking shops. Lots of reasons for the choice over the more traditional varnishes but one of the big differences is the ability to have a hand rubbed finish. I have worked with acrylic lacquers for decades in my prior woodworking and antique car restoration days and it is hard to beat the beauty of a hand rubbed finish. A HUGE amount of added labour but as I think you will soon agree when you see the final result it is SO well worth it.
This is just the first coat and BEFORE these other pieces of the Master bed unit have been sanded smooth prior to the next coat so just wait till you see them when they are fully finished and rubbed out.
Whew! Obviously things quickly got up to speed as we all returned fat and happy after the big Bayrami holiday week.
With such a wonderfully diverse spectrum of interests all of you reading this have it is a challenge to gauge the just right amount of detail to provide in these posts. I tried to cover all this progress as quickly as I can but it is still quite long so if you’ve made it this far thanks for persevering. Hope you enjoy it and please do let me know in the “Join the Discussion” box below what you thought and add any questions or ideas you have to add to the value for all of us here.
Thanks!
-Wayne
Love the details. Wonderful team. Informative posts. Clean construction. Organize roll out of build.
We need a little bigger, enclosed upper wheelhouse, deck level underwater tool and drone workshop, actively stabilized for improved filming operations, bunks, stowage below for 12, and a DNV endorsement to navigate in the ice.
Exceptional build!
Best regards from Homer Alaska.
Carl Nostrand
Thanks for your generous comments and much appreciate the feedback Carl. We have your part of the world calling our name VERY loudly so once we launch we will likely be heading in your overall direction and would really look forward to the chance to meet up with you in person. In the interim if you have any suggestions or concerns based on all your experiences in Alaska and other colder climes please do chime in with those too please.
Gorgeous Rosewood panels!! Love the thermostatically controlled hot water circulation loops for servicing all the sinks. It is being done in houses now too! So much detail to get just right and it looks like you are totally on top of it! 🙂
Thanks for your continued responses and kind thoughts Elton, means a lot coming from someone with all your background and skills in these areas. Hope we can have you aboard sometime soon so you can see for yourself and we can have some good discussions with some good food and wine aboard.
As you would know better than me I’m sure, there seems to be more and more attention and options to having hot water when and where you need it with minimal waste which is long overdue. Hard to imagine how much water we have all put down the drain waiting for the hot water to get to the tap! We have demand heaters here in our apartment which work quite well but are LPG based which we didn’t want to have on the boat so there seemed to be two other options. Not sure of their “proper names”? and I’m sure you know them and others well but for others reading here who might be interested we could have either gone with built in hot water return circuit which puts an extra tap near the regular hot water tap and you turn this on first and let run for awhile which simply circulates water in the hot water circuit back to the hot water tank. Nothing comes out of the taps, so you aren’t wasting any water and then you turn that tap off and turn on the hot water tap which now has hot water ready and waiting. Instead though, we’ve gone with the method I described in the blog of having a single hot water circuit that runs the length of the boat and acts like a manifold in that all the hot water consumers/taps are Tee’d off this line which always has hot water in it. Only requires a very tiny little DC thermostatically controlled circulation pump and good insulation to keep the water in this “manifold” always hot and then very short runs of PEX up to each tap. Much easier to use as there are no extra steps, just turn on the regular hot water tap and other than the small volume of water in the PEX line, which is also well insulated, you’ve got near instant hot water. Seemed like the best match for our use cases. As you’ve seen in previous postings we are going WAY overboard (sorry!) insulating everything with many times more thickness of EPDM foam to create a floating “Thermos bottle” of a boat and then inside of that well insulated hull we are insulating all the hot water lines with more EPDM. The little Kabola diesel boiler, which will be our primary water heating device most of the time is also super efficient, 92-94% so we think we will have a very efficient way of having all the hot water when and where we need it.
We may also be able to increase our water heating efficiency further by using any excess solar power from our big banks of solar panels once they have fully topped up our battery banks and we could use that energy to run the electric heater coils in our calorifier. We’ll let you know how it works in practice in a few months.
Would be interested to know if you have other methods you know of and what your plans are for your place?
So nice so to see your dream come along so nicely. I can start to glimpse the beauty you’re creating and can’t wait to see it with my own eyes
Thanks my friend and great to see you getting in some good kiteboarding and time in new places. Remember we have a room both on land and afloat once we launch that has your name on it anytime you would like to come for a visit and see things up close and personal. In the interim, glad we have all these other ways to share what we are both up to.
It is thrill to read about and see the quality of the construction. Thank you for detailing the logic behind the design decisions you are making. Interesting and educational.
Thanks for letting us know that you’re enjoying being on this ride with us George. Not sure that all would agree with my “logic” and that’s fine we each need to go with what makes the most sense and fits the best with our unique selves and use cases. This blog along with these questions and comments provide me with the opportunity and challenge of explaining what lies behind each of the myriad of choices and decisions one makes in designing and building a boat so this is all a very valuable component of the whole experience for me, made all the more so with feedback such as yours. Thanks.
I’m a great believe in Standing on the shoulders of genius. I sincerely hope that many will follow and stand on the shoulders of all of you who are involved to build their own Goldilocks.
Hi John. We’re in heated agreement about the power of standing on the shoulders of giants/genius. I’ve come to think that this is the basis for almost all of our human progress as otherwise we would all be living some cosmic Groundhog Day starting over and reinventing every “wheel” every time.
Very nice of you to say but I’m not sure my shoulders are in that league. I’m just most appreciative of all the many giants/geniuses who have provided their shoulders for me to stand upon and benefit so much from.
And I do hope that one of the benefits of sharing this adventure as thoroughly as I can is that it might provide some additional inspiration and energy for others to follow through on their visions and go create their own Goldilock version.
It is SUCH a great time to be alive with the unbelievable amount of resources we all have at our avail and at our fingertips that the big factor is to have the self confidence that you CAN do it, you just need to take that leap of faith and go for it. I think it was Henry Ford who summed it up so succinctly for me at least when he said “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t – you’re right,”
Another great blog Wayne. What I like the most, is your explanations of why you are using a particular method, or material, and the “COMMON SENSE” approach you have to every step of the build. I have learned many things from you while following this build of Mobius and hope someday to see her in person and enjoy a visit with you and Christine. Very much looking forward to the next progress report.
Way more than kind comments Orville and thanks. I’m a retired “shop teacher” amongst several other careers so always gladdens my heart to know that there is some good learning coming out of these posts. I’m not sure if my sense and logic is very “common” but its just the way I think and work. I start with trying to define the “problem” I’m trying to solve as clearly and concisely as I can, have a set of fundamental principles and overall criteria to stick to and then keep circling back through these as I explore every option I can think of until one or more float to the top and then go with that. Articulating the work here in the blog posts and responding to questions is one of the best ways for me to learn and largely what motivates me to write these updates. I’ve learned so much from all the others out there writing blogs, creating YouTube videos and otherwise sharing what they are doing so I’m trying to return those favors and add my experiences to the mix.
Once we launch Möbius and get back to sailing the world, this blog will transform along with us from building to boating and so you will be able to follow our travels if you’re interested and we would really enjoy the chance to meet up with you and others here as we wander, ponder and wonder our way around the world one nautical smile at a time.
Probably a dumb question but I always wondered about welded on dorade boxes. Isn’t is difficult to clean the interior of the box in those cases? Must be getting fishy in there.
My answers may well qualify as “dumb” sometimes Mathieu but never the questions so no worry and please do keep asking as more questions come to mind. Always a benefit to me and my learning when I need to explain the hows and whys of what I’m doing.
Like you it sounds, Christine and I think about cleaning and overall maintenance ALL the time and factor this into the design from the very beginning. This was certainly the case as we designed the Dorade Boxes given as you noted they are going to be welded to the decks. I didn’t do a very good job of showing this as clearly in the last update so I’ll try to include a sectional drawing once we start building these Dorade Boxes to show more of the details of how they work. In terms of your question about keeping them clean inside the key is the large hole in the top of each box where the threaded collar and ring secure the silicone cowls to the box. These holes are about 120mm/5″ in diameter so plenty of room to get your hand inside or more likely the end of our pressure washer wand to give the whole thing a good cleaning. There are drainage slots all around the perimeter of the base of these boxes to provide rapid drainage of any water that makes is way inside so pressure or hand washing should work quite well I think.
The large threaded ring at the base of each cowl requires no tools, you just turn by hand to either loosen the cowl to rotate it and lock back down or remove the cowl entirely if you wanted to get inside. There is also a round shut off plate that you can put in place of the cowl to completely close off the Dorade Boxes and store the cowls below which you might want to do when storing the boat for long periods or if you are in really rough conditions with lots of green water coming aboard over the bow. Otherwise and under most conditions, the closable and screened vent tube lid that sits atop each vent tube is all that is needed to close things up when underway and there is any concern about water overwhelming the volume of the Dorade Boxes and making it up over the 100mm high vent tubes.
Sorry for not showing and explaining this more in that posting and I’ll be sure to put in illustrations and photos of how this all works once we start installing the Dorade Boxes.