Another slow week aboard Möbius unfortunately with the combination of lack of staff to another boat ‘Caledonia” that launched on Friday and an unexpected 4 day week due to two workers testing positive to Corona 19.  Those two men who had both been working together on Caledonia have been quarantined but and the rest of that team were all tested so we are hoping that we can get back to work tomorrow, Monday here. 

However, Uğur and Nihat made great progress on the Tender and I got in some solid days working on Mr. Gee so I’ve got lots to show you and let’s jump right in to this week’s Show & Tell.

INTERIOR WORK:

Serkan our Hardware specialist, has continued with the installation of all the many latches and gas lifts on the cabinetry doors and drawers in all three cabins.  Below is a short little video that will do the best job of showing you how these work.

Now that we get to try these out we really like how our design has all worked out for these Galley Garages.  As you can see in the video above, even when you have messy fingers while cooking, a simple flick of your finger allows the door to fully open and move out of the way so you can grab whatever you need inside.
These gas filled lift cylinders snap into SS mounting balls which you screw to the inside of the cabinet and the door so while Serkan needed to spend a bit of time figuring out the exact placement of these mounts with the first door, it goes very quickly after that.

I thought the instructions on the plastic bags the cylinders come in would do the best to show you how this works.

The Silver coloured one I’m holding here is a Lift cylinder so it compresses when you close it and is what is used on the Galley Garage doors.  The White one on the counter is a “drop” cylinder so it works in the opposite direction to slowly lower our fold down doors where you flip the latch open and then the gas cylinder slowly telescopes out to smoothly lower the door to its fully folded down position rather than free falling open.

NAVIGATION LIGHTS:

Exciting for Christine and I to see that we are now at the stage where our OGM Navigation Lights are getting mounted. 

Uğur and I came up with this simple design for the mounting bases that go on each side of the coaming around the SkyBridge for our Red/Green side nav lights.
For those not familiar with COLREGS, the standards governing navigation lights for ships of all sizes, this graphic shows the nav light requirements for a power vessel a over 20m/65ft length.
For the Port/Starboard Red/Green lights must have a Horizontal View Angle of 112.5 degrees and >70 degrees Vertical so they must be mounted at an angle of 33.75° from the centerline of the vessel.
I’ve been using these OGM nav lights for 15 years with great success so sticking with what I know for Möbius.  The body is CNC milled out of a solid block of aluminium and then the 2 nautical mile LED sets behind a glass lens and the whole light assembly is “potted” in epoxy so there is nothing to come loose or leak.  KISS at its best!

Up on top of the Main Arch we have these 2 OGM lights, a Single White Steaming Light: Visible over a 225 degrees arc forward with the all around 360 degree White Anchor Light mounted above.

Yet to be installed at the end of the Aft Deck is one more OGM that is a Separate White stern light covering 135 degrees Aft.
Just up front and off to the Port side of Red/Port light is this GPS head which is dedicated to providing the satellite based GPS data to ………….
………….  our em-trak Class A AIS transceiver that is mounted overtop of the Main Helm.  We like to have a lot of redundancy for our GPS data so this GPS head is one of five that we have all together onboard Möbius.

Given our speed and size we decided to upgrade the AIS Class B we have had on our previous boats to this Class A unit and the table below explains why. 

With Class A we get bumped up to high priority over other boats with Class B, increased power and range broadcasting at 12.5W vs 2W

Dynamic information is transmitted every 2 to 10 seconds while underway and every 3 minutes while at anchor vs every 30-180 seconds on Class B.

Not cheap, but one of our five principles for Möbius is Safety, so when it comes to Safety at Sea we don’t compromise.
Courtesy of Digital Yachts site here is a nice graphic (click to enlarge) and overview of AIS (Automatic Identification System).

AIS is the mariner’s most significant development in navigation safety since the introduction of radar. The system was originally developed as a collision avoidance tool to enable commercial vessels to ‘see’ each other more clearly in all conditions and improve the helmsman’s information about his surrounding environment.
AIS does this by continuously transmitting a vessels identity, position, speed and course along with other relevant information to all other AIS equipped vessels within range. Combined with a shore station, this system also offers port authorities and maritime safety bodies the ability to manage maritime traffic and reduce the hazards of marine navigation. Due to the great safety benefits offered by AIS, this technology was made compulsory throughout the world in 2002 for all passenger ferries and vessels over 300 gross tonnes.

Nihat is one of our most efficient and hard working members of Team Möbius so while he was waiting for Uğur to lay down more of the finish welds on the Tender, he would move over a few feet to work on cleaning up the welds on the three part Davit Arch. 

Here Nihat is working on the long horizontal cross member of the Davit Arch and the thick plate you can see on the far Left in that photo has a matching plate on top of the vertical legs of the Arch. 
My thinking with this design is that it makes it much easier for us to dismantle the whole Davit and store it on deck when we want to transform Möbius into her “hunkered down” configuration for canals or in hurricane/cyclone conditions when we would also lower the SkyBridge roof.

Prepping for Propulsion:

I was able to spend much of this four day week inside the Engine Room on Möbius getting Mr. Gee ready to have his best buddy our Nogva CPP Servo Gearbox mated to him.  This is looking forward at Mr. Gee’s massive 100+Kg flywheel which now has the Nogva aluminium SAE14 frame bolted on. 

Each of those rounded “teeth” around the inner circumference will fit precisely with the matching grooves on the hard rubber Flexible Coupling which is bolted to the input shaft of the Nogva Gearbox.
Like this.  Makes for an eXtremely solid yet eXtremely quiet flexible coupling of the 180 Draft Horsepower coming out of Mr. Gee to the Nogva and on to the CPP propeller.
Turning around to get this shot of the SS Prop Shaft protruding out of the AL Prop Log Tube I needed to get the Prop Shaft perfectly centered in the Log Tube so I made up this little jig to do so.
Just a short bit of AL tubing machined so it snugly fits into the space between the Prop Shaft and the Log Tube like this.  The two halves of the Red Nogva flange you see in these photos will be bolted to the end of the Prop Shaft on the bottom Left here and then this flange must be very precisely aligned with the matching flange on the output of the CPP Gearbox.  I’ll show you all that in a week or so.

Mr. Gee Gets Dressed:

Remember that big 24V starter motor you saw being rebuilt and painted the past few weeks?  Well here is what it looks like when slid into place on Mr. Gee’s Aft Starboard side.
More Gardner ingenuity to make removing the starter so easily, it slides straight aft like an artillery shell into a cannon and you can rotate it to any position and then cinch it up tight with the silver band clamp you see here.  I’ve put the terminals on the bottom so the big cables will be well protected by the starter above and have a straight run out below.
It also felt great to finally get to fit this Bronze Beauty aka the Engine Oil Cooler, put in place just above the starter and below the Exhaust & Intake manifolds.

Seawater will be pumped into the 90 degree Bronze/Copper pipe at the far end and then out the curved copper pipe in the bottom center here.
Up at the Front Stbd/Right side of Mr. Gee is this centrifugal coolant/water pump that is driven by a gear off the timing chain inside the cast AL Crankcase on the Left. 
The Coolant/water is pumped out through the AL manifold on the Left here and into the two Burgundy Cast Iron Cylinder Blocks.
Surrounded my more Beauty, this time in the form of one of our two “tiny” Red 250Amp @24V Electrodyne alternators.  Time for me to start fitting these monsters to equally robust mounts I still need to finalise.  For this one I’m going to reuse the same method the original Gardner engines did by using strap mounts same as you just saw on the Starter above, to solidly attach the alternator to those three curved you can see are cast into the Crankcase. 
Then two straps wrap up and around the alternator body and are cinched down with a threaded stud.

As you can see, I also need to finish assembling the big Red Electrodyne Junction Box for all those White wires coming out of the alternator body on the Right.  The Junction Box is just sitting loose right now as I measure everything up prior to fitting this in place onto Mr. Gee’s side.

Flip my Tender!

Uğur picked up where we left off last week with some final checks on the critical positioning of the cast aluminium mounting frame which Castoldi supplies with their 244 Direct Drive Jet.
That cast AL Mounting Frame is shown in Blue in this render and the Grey plate on the right is a partial view of the 20mm / 3/4” thick AL plate Transom with what I’m calling the “Mickey Mouse cut-out” to create the whole opening in the boat where the Castoldi will bolt to.
This is what the whole Castoldi 224DD looks like with the Jet nozzle on the Left and if you look back and forth between this and the render above you will be able to see the mounting holes around the whole jet drive casting and how they will fit into the opening above.
Cast aluminum is often a different mixture of the alloys than aluminium plate and can be challenging to weld so we wanted to sure there would be no problems welding this cast AL Frame into the Tender’s Hull plates. 
Those three cross members spanning the Frame above are temporary so Uğur did a test weld on this one and a small scrap of 6mm AL plate and then we all took turns trying to break the weld with long levers.  Didn’t budge or crack so we are good to go.
Always a bit of hesitation when it comes to cutting holes in the bottom of our perfectly good boat and especially one THIS BIG!  But it was soon done and we’re ready to start installing the Frame.

But first, we decided to flip the hull 180 degrees to make working on the bottom so much easier so strap yourself in and I’ll do another rapid fire set of photos that many of you have said you’ve been enjoying to walk you through the whole flip.
Handy having a Forklift is rather handy!
One last check fit of the cast Frame into the opening in the Hull.

You can also see the outline of the Mickey Mouse cut out etched ty the waterjet cutter into the Transom.
We debated whether to have this Mickey Mouse cut out by the CNC waterjet when all the plates were being cut but we decided it would be better to leave it until now when we could double and triple check its position and get the jet drive in the exact right location. 

Aluminium is such a great material to work with and even at 20mm/ 3/4” thick, Uğur was able to make quick work of cutting out the majority with a jig saw while I kept the blade cooled with cutting oil spray.
Ta-DA!

I think even Walt would be proud don’t you?
Frame tacked in place now ensuring that one of the most critical aspects is that the front edge of the Frame on the far Left here and thus the body of the Castoldi that fits into the Flange, are flush with the bottom plate of the Tender.
Seen from above it looks like this.
Frame now fully welded into the Hull and Transom.
Captain Christine arrives just in time for the start of the Big Flip!
Airborne now.
180 degrees, Half way there…..
140 and counting ……….
180!  We’re flipped.
Nihat wastes no time jumping in with his angle grinder to start cutting the deep V grooves so Uğur can get full penetration with his MIG gun as he follows soon behind with the first full length welds.
Like this.
MIG welder up and Uğur gets down to business!
Time for me to get busy as well as I need to remove a few bits and pieces from the fully assembled Castoldi still sitting inside its factory wooden box.

This is the forward leading edge of the Jet Drive where the water initially enters through the grates underneath the far Left of the cast AL body.
I need to remove this electric driven hydraulic pump which powers the Jet’s Steering nozzle and Jet Drive Bucket.

Input Flange where the jack shaft from the 110 HP Yanmar HTE will connect via a flexible coupling and jack shaft.
Propulsion direction Forward/Reverse/Sideways is accomplished by moving the big Bucket overtop of the jet’s nozzle which is done by moving the rod in this hydraulic cylinder on the Stbd/Right side.
That cylinder above connects to the Bucket like this.
I’m very impressed by the design and build of this Castoldi Jet Drive and it only takes me minutes to remove all these parts and have the Jet Drive stripped down and ready to be installed in the hull.
A well tuned MIG welder sounds like a very big buzzing honeybee and all the while I’ve been prepping the Castoldi, Uğur has had his MIG gun buzzing merrily away
…. as he lays down all those first long lengths of full welds and then goes over them all again with the second final bead.
Et Voila!

• The bottom of the hull and the Castoldi Frame are all welded in place.
  We double check that the Frame is still properly aligned and that the heat from all the welding has not warped anything but all is well.

Time to cut out those temporary supports in the Cast AL Frame.
And Mickey is now ready to receive his Italian Bride!
Who has now also been flipped over 180 and ready to be lifted out of her box and into the Tender.
Forklift makes it all very easy and able to lower it slowly in place.
And unfortunately I have to leave you and the Castoldi hanging at this point as I was too busy helping Nihat get the Castoldi lowered in place and do all the measuring and checking of the fit to be able to take any more photos.  Sorry!!

But I’ll be back to pick up with all this next week so I’ll  leave you with this mini cliff hanger for now and hope that you’ll forgive me and join me again next week.

Thanks for joining the adventure and be sure to leave all your questions and comments in the “Join the Discussion” box below.

-Wayne