Progress continues full speed ahead with Team Möbius for the week of September 10-14, 2018. Most of the work and the most visible change is the continuation of work on the superstructure for the above deck Pilot House that creates our SuperSalon with the Galley, main Helm station, Dining and Lounge areas with a staircase at either end leading down into the fore and aft cabins. As you are about to see the full shape and scale are emerging more and more each day as 3D models and renderings are transformed into very real spaces of aluminium. Much less visible but no less important and time consuming is all the welding going on inside the hull within the tanks as Sezgin and Mehmet work their way through the seeming endless number of baffles in the tanks welding each one to the now finished hull plates. But enough talk, on with the pictures…………………
Standing on the aft deck looking forward through the Pilot House this is about where we left off last Friday and now Monday morning Uğur and Nihat are setting the upper part of one of the rear most frames of the Pilot House/SuperSalon. The plinth on the left by Nihat is to provide plenty of headroom when you enter from the aft deck down the stairs into the SuperSalon.
We are quite liking the random swirl pattern you see here formed by a brass wire wheel to create the final finish on all the external aluminium which will stay bare and unpainted. What do you think?
This slightly different angle lets you see the tack welds locking the whole assembly in position. Not that front vertical bar you can see on the far left here and above is a temporary brace from when the horizontal brow or overhang plate was initially placed to ensure that it is the right height and brace it until all the final welding is complete.
Standing on the aft deck again looking through the opening where the stairs end and you walk into the SkyBridge you can see how the ceiling/floor framing works. The short vertical wall marks the front end of the SkyBridge and the plate you can just see in the bottom left corner is the aft end so it is a very good sized space 5.3m/7’4” with perhaps the best views on the whole boat being up higher and having an unobstructed 360 degree view.
The large recessed area running the full length of this front section of the Pilot House roof serves two very important functions. First a rack holding four large solar panels will fit in between the triangular vertical side walls and be hinged at the very aft end atop those vertical bars you can see here. When on passage this large expanse of solar panels will be locked in place with the forward edge tight against the forward end of the roof overhang and then when we anchor this front edge will be lifted up about 200mm/ 8” so they are horizontal and generating lots of power to keep the house battery bank well charged but also performing their second function which is to funnel more of those beautiful breezes blowing aft from the bow.
As with the vents you saw above on the underside of the overhang, these breezes will flow into the boxed in area behind those vertical bars and then down into the center of the SuperSalon ceiling through three large 300mm / 12” diameter aluminium tubes. Both the smaller tubes up front and these large tubes aft will have adjustable vents in them, similar to the “eyeball” type vents in many cars dashboards so you can adjust the direction and amount of air flowing through. We think this combination of vents to capture the breezes almost always blowing over the bow will provide more than enough fresh air throughout the boat in most conditions. However the vent boxes will also have very quiet fans inside which can augment the air flow if there is just no breeze and in very hot conditions we can also turn on the AC.
Video summary as per usual is below for you to get an even better sense of all that happened this past week.
** Sorry. It will take me a bit longer to get the video ready so I will post this later so you have this update for now ***
I am going to be traveling for the next 3 weeks to the US, Canada and Brazil for a combination of some friends and family time and a keynote down in Sao Paulo in memory of a dearly departed friend and colleague. However Yiğit our new CAD engineer has kindly agreed to step in and take pictures and video while I’m away so I will do my best to keep posting a weekly summary for you and I’ll now be anxiously awaiting his pictures just as eagerly as you.
Thanks for coming along on this exciting adventure with us and please add your comments and questions in the “Join the Discussion” box below this post. See you next week.
I like the pattern swirls on the aluminum, although it is hard to see in the small photos. I like texture. You probably need the surface to be smooth.
Thanks Sherry, look forward to discussing this more with you and getting more of your artistic input when we meet up on Sunday.
See you Sunday.
Nice to see a milestone achieved. It is coming together very nice but still a ways to go before sailing off into the sunset.
Quite right on both accounts. We are hoping to launch by the end of 2019 and start sailing off into more sunsets after that.
worth noting that despite the added height of the skybridge, Mobius still maintains a very low profile. How many feet from the waterline to the skybridge? I too like the swirls.
Hi Richard, sorry to take so long to get back to you. Good to know that you too like the low sleek profile on Möbius. We worked very hard to both reduce the weight throughout the boat and keep everything as low as possible. As you have noticed we dropped the Pilot House down as low as possible, basically until the bottom of the window frames were at deck level and are very happy with how this helped us create a very sleek, proportional and low overall profile. Dennis also did a great job of adding a bit of flair with what we refer to as the Clint Squint in reference to Eastwood’s old westerns with the say the sides of the PH curve down as you move aft.
In regular passage making mode, distance from the WL to the top of the arch will be about 6.4m / 21′ and when converted to canal or low bridge mode by folding down the arch and SkyBridge roof air draft drops down to 4.0m / 13.1′. We have engineered the arch and SkyBridge bimini to fold down this way so we can do some canal cruising and be able to get through some of the lower bridges in some parts of the world.
Thanks for your vote on the swirls, we will do some test panels with different patterns and post them for you to see when we get ready to do the finishing work on the exterior aluminium.
-Wayne