The heat was way up all this week both inside the building and outside. Like most parts of the world apparently we had quite a heat wave this past week with daytime highs often getting over 40 degrees. That’s over 100 for you Fahrenheit types. Not the best week to chose to really up the amount of MIG welding going on inside but that’s the way it worked out and the boys at Naval never missed a beat. This was also one of those weeks where the progress is not so visibly obvious as much of the work was going on inside the hull and out of site as Sezgin and the other welders were busy laying down all the welds where the hull panels are in place and the stringers and frames can be welded to them. As you’ve seen in previous posts and you’ll see if you look closely at some of the pictures below showing these inside areas, the welds are not continuous but done in about 100mm/4” lengths alternating on each side. This is done to minimize the distortion caused by the heat of welding and has been working out very well. And this week also brought the milestone of the first continuous welds on the exterior of the hull panels.
And Christine had a fun side trip with some friends to the awemazing ancient theatre of Aspendos so check that out at the end.
But enough words on on with the show!
As per the title the most visible progress this week was on getting the aft swim platform plated.
To help with your visualisation of this area here is quick & dirty rendering of the swim platform. Stairs will provide additional storage underneath or “inside” from them, the opening to Port/left of the stairs is the fully sealed HazMat locker which will have a WT door on it for storing diesel, oil, paint, thinners, propane, etc. all outside of the boat. WT door Stbd/Right of the stairs is the entrance into the Workshop and Engine Room and the two boxes on either side are for storage and seating. Platform is 1.2m/4’ long and 2.6m/8.5’ wide so should make getting on and off the Tender and in and out of the water very safe and easy. There will be the option of putting stanchions and lifelines along the aft edge to make it more secure if someone might want to be down there while underway hauling in a big Mahi Mahi.
Back to the real and upside down world you can see the 6mm plate for the platform being lifted into place.
This manual jack with a board clamped to it is used to push the swim platform plate up tight against the stringers and Uğur tacks it in place.
If you go back and look at the rendering above you can see how the hull sides make an angled transition around the aft corner and down to the Swim Platform. The piece you see here is about to be tacked in place along the aft edge of the hull plates.
Like this.
As per the rendering there are many more pieces which make this transition and form the seat boxes so you’ll be seeing that take shape in the next posting.
Meanwhile, inside Sezgin is hard at work as ever laying down miles of weld. 
If you click to enlarge this photo you can see on those vertical stiffeners how the welds are not continuous but done in about 100mm/4” lengths which alternate on each side to minimize the movement in the AL plate from the heat of the welding. 
If you stop and think about how many lengths of stringers, frames, stiffeners and bars there are in Möbius you will get a feel for how there are literally nautical miles of weld going in.
Each of which has to be cleaned before and after the welding is complete.
Team Mobius here at GreeNaval are doing awemazing work!
Here is a peek into what will be some additional long term storage area underneath the Swim Platform. Lots of space that can be easily access from the Workshop and is completely sealed with no penetrations on the Swim Platform to preclude any water getting in. Probably a good spot for the four spare CPP prop blades for example.
That large hole in in the bottom left corner is where the eXtremely large rudder tube extends through the rudder shelf you can see running from side to side where the steering cylinders will be mounted.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, we also had a new milestone this week with the first continuous welds on the exterior hull plating. Sezgin is truly a master welder.
These exterior welds above the waterline will be carefully ground down flush and flat with hull plates but all other welds will be left to show off their natural beauty.
Looking ahead and while we are waiting for the 3D curved hull plates to arrive, construction of the upper super structure can begin marking another stage of construction. The roof section in front of the SkyBridge holds three of the 14 solar panels and the SkyBridge bimini roof will hold 8 more. Should enable us to enjoy weeks on the hook in complete silence.
These two quick renderings will show you how this looks and how the aluminium superstructure will provide the solid framework for all that window glass and form the roof and SkyBridge above.
Here you see Uğur and Umit are taking together one of the upper frame pieces which will form the roof of the Pilot House.This will form the roof of the raised Pilot House with the SkyBridge on top of that.
And meanwhile back in Christine’s world she had a fun trip to the ancient city that begat modern Antalya and the nearby Aspendos theatre.
Two sailing friends, Chuck and Patty on sv Soulmates have been docked here in Antalya for the past 2 weeks and we’ve had several chances to spend time with them.
I will let the pictures speak for themselves but this will help you understand more of the reasons we chose to build Möbius in this awemazing area.
So that is the week that was July 2-6, 2018 for us.
As always here is your quick video summary for this week.
Thanks for joining us and be sure to leave your questions and ideas in the Comments section below.
Incredible amount of welding! I don’t know how they can take all the heat and still do good work!! 🙂
Quite right Elton and part of why I often note how awemazing this team is. I think you have had your share of a hot week there too as I read a few headlines about how there have been new heat records set all around the globe. We are fortunate to have good winds here most of the time, though this past week they have been coming off the deserts to the north so not quite as cooling but tonight they have shifted more southerly and the difference is dramatic. And we are also quite fortunate to be siting right on the coastal waters of the Med and then we have a very big pool at our apartment which I look forward to diving into every night when I get home from “the office”. Enjoy the rest of your summer and thanks for joining us on this adventure.
Excuse me BUT the FBP started out with an open “Skybridge” type structure which has evolved into a closed Matrix deck. Are you prepared for that possible evolution? lol.
By the way, I won the naming contest for the Matrix deck of the FPB series which I took to mean I understood the concept correctly. Got a very nice set of electronic copies of Dashew’s publications as my prize. Good thing I’m humble or it would have gone to my head.
I guess the original FPB did not even have bimini on flybridge to start with, so evolution into fully enclosed aquarium with air conditioning is indeed huge.
Problem I think with the latest concept is it leaves no space to actually enjoy being outside while underway. It kind of cries another flybridge level on top and if you go that way there is no end in sight….
Ain’t that the truth. Kind of a floarting Chinese pagoda? Or maybe a telescope image that is displayed on a wide screen tv? Or a drone that follows the boat around broadcasting images? Direct high resolution satellite imagry? Where does it end?
Some of what you’d like to see in order to plan the voyage is available via various services.
Some of what you’d like to see in order to operate ithe boat s available via raised structures of various sorts on the boat.
Then there’s the question of weight placement vs visibility.
Crusing climate trade offs – open vs enclosed.
You makes your choice and work the trade-offs
I like the low looks of the Mobius but I understand the choices that led to the Cochise. and a little of the resulting trade-offs.
Christine and I obviously like the low, lean and mean looks of Möbius and our eyes see the same as yours with how the 78’s have as you aptly put it “.. a floating Chinese pagoda” look to them. Of course this is all very much “eye of the beholder” and all that matters is that YOU like the look of YOUR boat and fall a bit more in love with her every time you row up to her as I often put it.
One of the things which made Dennis (Artnautica) the “just right” designer for us and Möbius was his talents and willingness to work with us to first and foremost design an eXtremely functional, no nonsense, low maintenance boat and yet also believe that this can be done with style and beauty. The former is quite objective and “style and beauty” are clearly at the more subjective end of the scale, however this is not entirely true as Christopher Alexander articulated and captures so well with his now classic Pattern Language book and concepts wherein there is a very clear set of patterns and proportions which appeal to us as humans of all types and ages. As I understand it we, or our brains, are somewhat “hard wired” for these patterns and proportions which can be found in an infinite variety of things from flowers to algae to paintings and designs of objects of all types from buildings to furniture to boats. At first introduction to this idea many feel that it sounds restrictive or that it is saying that there is one “just right” or perfect design for any given thing but in fact the opposite is true and coming to understand the Pattern Language in any field provides one with quite literally a “language” which you can use to describe whatever you can imagine and do so in an infinite number of ways. I won’t ride my favorite horse Distraction any further on this, at least for now, my point is simply that form and function are NOT mutually exclusive and while not easy, we CAN have both.
In the case of the FPB’s I personally think that the exterior design of the 70 speaks this Pattern Language the most fluently and eloquently. Zooming out focus out a bit more and going further down the evolutionary path of this new “species” of boats, IMHO the recently announced Circa 24m Offshore Motor Yacht speaks the Pattern Language even more with its proportions and overall look.
Of course Christine and I think Möbius, thanks to Dennis, uses this pattern language to tell her/our story best of all but it’s possible we might be just a wee bit biased.
-Wayne
Holly hobkins Batman, I didn’t know anyone else read Christopher Alexander’s Pattern Language or even knew it existed! Must be the architect in you. Too bad the experiment in Mexico didn’t meet political expectations.
Yes, I’ve long been puzzled as to why Pattern Language isn’t more broadly known and appreciated. Based on my experiences many moons ago teaching about this it doesn’t really take to much, mostly a few good illustrations to have the light bulb turn on bright when you are introducing this to someone and then a bit longer to help them see how to apply it but as that happens the effect is quite profound upon them. And I’ve also long been disappointed that some really smart people have not taken it upon themselves to take Alexander’s principles and patterns, decontextualize them from his application to architecture and apply them to different disciplines. I appreciate the difficulty of doing so but I appreciate the power and the benefits from having these additional languages to turbocharge design overall.
In any case, I’ve certainly benefited a great deal from what I gleaned from my work with PL and find it an extremely useful perspective and priority to use when designing things. Glad to know I’m with fellow PL fans and speakers!
-Wayne
You keeping up with the mods Steve Dashew has done to the Matrix deck?
I like this statement from his explaination: “What we are using at sea is quite different from when we are on soundings”
Regardless if you have a Matrix deck, there’s a lot of interesting (makes me think) stuff there about a “navigation capability” and the ability to configure as needed.
Yes, we both continue to read and learn from Steve’s work and like you are definately intrigued by his latest experimentation with different helm layouts on his Matrix Deck of Cochise. Even back several years ago when we are sailing on Learnativity our 52′ Bruce Robers sailboat, we were experimenting with different nav instrument layouts in our pilot house on that boat. And since then I’ve been sketching up more and more ways of going with both a more modular and a more movable setup for nav instruments at our two helms. As per the quote you cited, our boats do have a very substantial range of use from rough weather passages to idyllic anchorages and so a setup that has the most adjustability and adaptability to it would seem much more likely to yield more success than a single fixed setup. I am also putting as much “future proofing” into things like the helm design by making the whole station area as modular and easy to redo or modify as possible so that as we live with Mobius over the years and as new ideas come along we can most easily adapt those and improve or completely redo our setup.
Our timing is such that we can continue to learn from what Steve and others out there are doing while we work on mock ups and modeling of different setups that will work best for us. We are purposely leaving the electronics and nav instrumentation to as late in the construction as possible in part for this reason and in part to get further down the ever changing price/performance curves of modern technology so all is looking well so far.
Huge indeed Andy, in many respects.
As you may read in my excessively long response to John’s initial question here about the evolution of the Matrix Deck on the FPB’s we are in “heated agreement” with your observations about
Furthermore we left off your “while underway” part and have designed the SkyBridge on Möbius to give us a wonderful space that is very much open to Mother Nature whenever we want. There are so many aspects to this for Christine and I. On one end of the spectrum we wanted to maintain a similar degree as we enjoyed on our sailboats of what I think might be correctly described as situational awareness onboard and particularly when underway with the sounds and feel of what’s going on in any given situation. And carry this all the way through to the other end of the pure joy we experience at anchor as well with that cooling breeze flowing over us, feeling the first rain drops, smelling and feeling the change of the wind and weather, hearing every little external noise and so on.
As I also mentioned in my previous answer to John’s question, Christine and I don’t hear that Siren’s call so many others do, to as you so aptly put it
Instead, we kept pushing the design the other way; down. Pushing to make the external profile lower and lower and doing the same with weight. As I think/hope you will see quite clearly once we start building the Pilot House and the SkyBridge we have ended up with a design which not only achieves these goals but does so with a very proportionally pleasing external look which also captures the “lean and mean” impression we wanted.
-Wayne
Wow! You really ARE famous now aren’t you. Or at least you had quite a cool “15 minutes of fame” and thanks for sharing that fun fact. I didn’t realise that all the Dashew books were now available electronically so I’ll have to check that out more. I did take him up on his very kind offer a few years ago to download their Weather book when they offered that on SetSail but would love to have all the others too. I just so miss the search function with paper books and especially with something as detailed and voluminous as with the Dashew encyclopedias I find search to be invaluable. Sorry to veer of topic there and congratulations again Sir Matrix!
Re the beginnings of what became your Matrix Deck on the FPB’s they certainly did start out very small scale and simple on Windhorse and the FPB64’s with just a simple cloth covered pipe frame bimini top and some acrylic sheet for the lower “walls” so it certainly has been an extreme evolutionary set of changes for where the Matrix Deck ended up on the FPB78’s and even more so on Iceberg. I’ve studied and analysed this evolution quite extensively in terms of trying to glean the most learning from the various changes over the years which were more and more driven by my favorite form of learning; experiential, as both Steve & Linda and then all the subsequent FPB owners put it to the real world test of living with this space day to day.
Back in my architectural draughting teaching, yes that IS the correct spelling BTW , I was a huge fan of what we used to call the “green grass” approach to design. The name apparently comes from the practice some architects came up with for planning walkways, sidewalks, roads and the like in new sub divisions and the ones I knew more about which were new corporate and university campus designs. Rather than do the typical “engineering” approach of crunching data on traffic patterns of people and transport devices this method was to not do any of this and simply plant the whole campus in grass and leave it that way for the first year of use. Then go in and put sidewalks, roadways, etc. where all the tracks were clearly marked in the worn away grass. Brilliant! IMHO and a practice I have tried to put into effect in my life overall. Hence my fascination with discerning such “natural tracks from use” in the evolution of the Matrix Deck on the FPB’s as well as other boats and users I could study.
With Möbius we plan to do similarly and will purposefully not build in some things during the initial build and instead use them for the first year or so after launch and see how we end up using these spaces. We are taking a similar approach with stabilization for example where we are building the hull with framing for 2 different active stabilizer types but not installing them during the initial build and not penetrating the hull plates where the shafts would go. Instead we are building a set of A-Frame “booms” on each side for passive paravanes and try those out on passages for the first year or so and see how it works. We suspect we will find these paravanes work great for us and we’ll leave the addition of active stabilisers for a distant future owner to quite easily install. In the case of the SkyBridge, the only thing we are building into that area is the helm station which is located aft of the center of the SkyBridge and the rest will be open floor space. We will put in “temporary” patio type furniture and see how we end up using it in the first year or two and then decide if we want to leave it this way or choose to build in some seating, table, etc. Steve and Linda chose to do this on Cochise as I understand it and their photos show whereas FPB78-2 had Circa build in all the Matrix Deck furniture as part of the build.
While we have certainly spent a good deal of time coming up with our final design for our “SkyBridge” there isn’t much danger for us succumbing to the Siren’s call so many other seem to hear to build up, up, up and more, more, more. We stay petty well self disciplined when it comes to weight in general and as the weight rises in height off the WL we increase that weight diligence exponentially. As you would have quickly noticed early on we kept our pilot house as low as possible with the limit being basically the bottom edge of the 360 degree glass windows which we have dropped down about as far as possible to just barely above deck level and not shortening their height any further so as to maintain the maximum up/down viewing angle.
We have also kept the SkyBridge floor as low as possible and also kept the “coaming” if that’s the correct term for the short walls that surround the SkyBridge. Christine in particular was sensitive to not making these too short and making her feel too “exposed” when up there while underway and to have a very good safety factor with enough wall height to be safe and yet still have great sight lines up there, especially when seated and for both which underway on passages and when using it as our “lounge” when at anchor.
The aspect of the SkyBridge which I think we wrestled with the most was the “roof” in the context of whether or not to use it for solar panels. We want to max out the amount of solar panels we have on board for the independence and quiet this give us at anchor with no generator onboard and yet we would not trade off the self righting capability nor significantly compromise the roll frequency and sea kindliness of the hull with the weight of solar panels up so high. So we spent a lot of time working with Dennis who spent even more time, trying out different scenarios and designs for solar panel placement in general and particularly for having some on the SkyBridge roof and did lots of roll over analysis, roll calculations, weight studies, etc. The end result was a roof design which would be light yet very robust and easily carry the 8 360W solar panels (current capacity which may go up by the time we buy). This was a very tricky bit of design on Dennis’ part because we also layered on the requirement to be able to fold down the pipe frame arch and the roof to drop our air draft down as much as possible which is essentially down to the top of the SkyBridge “walls” or coaming. But Dennis is brilliant at this type of design and engineering and has this all finalized and modeled and we will start building this structure in the next few weeks. I will cover this with photos and more explanations as we get to building the SkyBridge and its roof but the basic design is to build the roof as an rigid but light aluminum grid framework that we cover with the sealed in place solar panels to act as the actual “roof” covering for 90% of the rooftop area. It is such an ideal location for mostly unobstructed sun on the panels and should go a long ways towards letting us be on the hook for weeks at the very least with no generator, no noise and no moving parts.
We have no interest in closing the SkyBridge in with build in glass windows and will instead fabricate some sliding windows, bolt rope style, for the very front of the SkyBridge made with the new thin acrylic sheets which are as transparent as actual glass but MUCH lighter. Not sure quite yet if we will use these same acrylic windows all the way down the sides but I’m hoping to do that and be able to quite quickly and easily slide those in or out as needed for different weather conditions.
One of our overarching design requirements for Möbius was to be sure that we did not completely “cocoon” ourselves from Mother Nature by having only fully enclosed spaces onboard. Probably exacerbated by our past experiences as sailors as well as Christine’s extensive bicycling and my extensive motorcycling days we wanted to make sure that we always had the option to be outside and purposefully exposed to and aware of Mother Nature and the elements of our location. We have a very ample aft deck which has been left very open and mostly uncovered overhead which we will also use a bit of the “green grass” approach with and see how we use that over the first year or two, but for me in particular I’m pretty sure that the SkyBridge will be my go to spot both at anchor and when underway whenever the weather and sea conditions are “reasonable”. Hence the addition I outlined above of having these removable “windows” surrounding the SkyBridge so I can maximize my time up there.
Well, WAY too much information and response to your simple and partly in jest question about how far we would be “evolving” the SkyBridge on Möbius but it is an aspect of the design we have worked on a LOT and thought you and others might be interested. Now that I finish this response to your question I guess I should have turned this into a full post but I will leave that for another time and keep it here for now. Hope my eXtreme responses to your very good questions don’t reduce your willingness to ask questions or make observations whenever you have them John and thanks for all the ones you’ve contributed so far.
-Wayne
I am using this dialog to think and rethink some stuff and chase a few rabbits. I am concerned that my doing so does not interfer with the construction process. On the other hand, stimulating your rethinking and articlulation MAY add some value. A long way of saying thanks for leaving room on the voyage of construction.
In that spirit, elements of “green grass” thinking that I find attractive are forcing thinking about what part of the structure is deemed functionally necessary at what point. Buildings are different than sidewalks. It is necessary to observe any yet not interfeer with the process. Tough. It is itterative in that not all elements are executed at once. It is humbling in that it normally contains some suprise discoveries that usually start with, “I didn’t know people would/wanted/willing to etc.” Yet there has to be enough in place for the students to get to the buildings during the process. etc, etc. The first time I ran into it was the folk lore tale about the way to plan a walking trail up a hill is to let a cow walk her way up the hill and watch were she goes.
As to the Dashew books, I recieved them on a CD ROM. I don’t know if they are available that way now.
Appreciate your concern for my time but not to worry it is all my choice as to when and how much to respond and so far I’ve enjoyed our discussion thoroughly. You guess correctly that it is stimulating and does force me to rethink and revaluate my decisions and choices which is extremely valuable so my thanks for that.
The green grass example is certainly a very simple one, which works well for having those new to it to quickly understand it but does require much more work as the applications become more complex and it is not something that is applicable or relevant in all cases so I think the key is to be selective. A version of “the right tool for the right job” I think.
In my experiences using this the humbling surprises are not only the ones you mention of “I didn’t know people would….” and all the more so when “people” turns out to be ME! As a result I’ve become reasonably good over the years as I find myself or put myself into new situations and scenarios to observe how I seek out ways and things that work best in this new setting and then find ways to mazimise and use those whenever in this same setting. It is very tricky in that you can’t “think” too consciously about it or you will force it to be the same as what you’ve done before or what you “think” would work best. So I try to approach these in a Ouija board or divining rod kind of way by trying my best to just “go with the flow”, let things happen and come to me and be as authentic and natural as I can be such that the scenario and the elements of the environment drive me. In my last 20+ years of my professional life I traveled the world very extensively and so I stayed in a LOT of hotels, was in a lot of meeting rooms, planes, trains and automobiles and I used these as learning experiences to seek out and find things like the best place to sit and work, what kind of work was I most productive doing in this setting, where was the best place to sit, to sleep, that kind of stuff. With the frequency of doing this multiple times every week I got a LOT of practice so it served me very well. Now I’m trying to apply this to Möbius and all the new situations and scenarios she is providing so all that prior learning and experiences are paying off very well.
-Wayne