Here is your weekly update from GreeNaval Yachts in the Antalya Free Zone on the building of our new all aluminium 24m eXtreme Passage Maker or XPM78 Möbius.  June is here and the heat is on not only with regard to progress on Möbius but with the weather as well and we are now seeing temps in the low to mid 30’s most days.  Usually a nice breeze and they filled and opened the pool at our apartment last week so it is all working out very well.

Similar to watching a new home or building going up there are times when the progress is very visually obvious and other time when you have to look harder to see what’s new and this week has been the later to some extent.  As you’ll see in the photos to follow and the video at the end, the focus this week has been on putting in the frames, stringers and other components of the overall framework for the hull.  In the mid section of the hull this involved putting in the additional baffles, stringers and margin plates around the tanks which you saw going in last week and then assembling the frames at the aft end for the Engine Room ER and Workshop.  

I hope the style I’ve been using of letting the photos do most of the talking along with a bit of text is working well for you and I’d be MOST appreciative if you’d let me know how well this is working or NOT working for you by adding your comments at the bottom.  I can’t promise I can accommodate all requests but I do promise to do my best to bring you along for the ride on this latest adventure of ours and what you can do to help is give me good honest feedback as to what works, what doesn’t, what to add, what to leave out, etc.  Any and all suggestions welcome and I’ll so my best to follow up on as many as possible.

IMG_20180604_152634We’ll start wtih one quick shot of where the bow is at progress wise.  The bow didn’t see much action this week but you can see it has taken shape nicely and that Frame #1 is now awaiting installation.  This Frame is solid and will be fully welded al around to the hull and deck to form a fully self contained “crash bulkhead”, a term I always hesitate typing, in the extremely unlikely but always possible scenario of hitting something with the bow that was big enough and hard enough to puncture the super thick plating up there.  Yet another item on the SWAN list of things which help us Sleep Well At Night.

Between Frame #1 and 4 is the very voluminous Forepeak area which will contain things like the big anchor chain bin, grey and black water tanks, VacuFlush holding tank/pump for the Main Cabin head, miscellaneous other pumps and most of our lines, fenders, inflatable kayak and other items we will store up here. 


IMG_20180601_133907I’ve mentioned previously how we have utilised an “empty ends” design to make the boat long on the WL or water line for maximum hull speed and efficiency and yet just right sized inside for eXtremely comfortable and spacious accommodations for Christine and I and our infrequent guests.  The 4m/13ft at the bow (1m crash bulkhead + 3m Forepeak) is the forward “empty end” and then moving aft as you can see here, the 5.5m/18ft long workshop and engine room plus the 1.2m/4ft swim platform creates a 6.7m/22ft aft “empty end”. 
Together, these two “empty ends” take up 10.7m/35ft of the overall hull length and give us 13.3m/43.6ft for living space.  This empty end design gives us the perfect the Goldilocks combination of an eXtremely efficient long hull as well as the “just right for us” amount of living space. 


IMG_20180604_152837Uğur and Umit welded up this new head for the big hydraulic press and spent most of the first few days this week very careful bending the 12mm plate for what are technically known as “margin plates” which in our case are where the tank top level joins up with the hull plates.


margin plates snipI’ve flipped the 3D model upside down and taken this screen snip so you can see where these margin plates are and why they are bent.  Click to enlarge and you will see that these margin plates need to be bent in order to intersect and be welded to the hull plates perpendicularly.  Because almost every part of the hull below the WL is tankage we essentially have no bilge on Möbius and so these margin plates have the added benefit of becoming nice little “gutters” running down both sides of the hull to make it easy to quickly vacuum up any water or bits of debris that might find their way down to tank top level (purple in the snip).  A clean ship is a safe ship and with aluminium in particular we want to make sure to keep everything is ship shape in this regard so these margin strip gutters make this much easier.


IMG_20180604_152822Here are some of the margin plates all bent to just the right angle and waiting to be tacked into place and then fully welded up as the hull assembly proceeds.


IMG_20180605_172350Many of the margin plates form part of the tank tops and have additional stiffeners and baffles welded onto them and you can see one such margin plate all cleaned up where these will soon be welded on.



IMG_20180606_104654as Umit and Enver are doing here.


IMG_20180606_104839and now Sezgin can fully weld this margin plate up.


IMG_20180606_135029Once welded up they move over to Muammer’s clean up table where he uses various size wire wheels and rotary burr grinders to clean up all the welds. 

This cleanup is perhaps one of the most thankless yet important jobs in the build of an aluminium hull and you can begin to imagine how many kilometers of weld poor Muammer has to clean.  However he is meticulous about his work and always has one of the most sincere smiles and gentle demeanor of the entire team.


IMG_20180605_172544Next up, the margin plates are carefully fitted in place, tacked and then welded to the frames on each end.

O
IMG_20180605_172422Framing in the aft end of the hull is where the most visible progress was made this week and these are some of the tops/bottoms of the aft frames being prepped for the 12mm flat bar stiffeners you can see here being bent to shape. 

The large radius you see on these Frames #21 & 22 are where the prop tunnel plates will be welded.


IMG_20180607_185221Frame #20 was the first to receive its bottom portion which has now been tacked in place.  The hole at the top is where the prop shaft log tube will slide through and be welded in place later.


IMG_20180608_165400And now those parts we saw earlier have been tacked in place for the aft two Frames #21 & 22. 


Prop tunnel plate snip This quick screen snip will hopefully help your AI Augmented Imagination visualise where how the prop tunnel fits into the hull.  This area of the hull will be eXtremely strong when all that robust framework is covered with all that green 12mm and purple 10mm hull plating is welded in.

 


You can also see why we sometimes refer to this as a “sailor’s motorboat” hull with the way the stern tucks in so much as it moves aft on the waterline and create this eXtremely efficient very slender hull which helps the wake release easily and create minimal wake as we cruise around the world.


IMG_20180606_134941The all important Engine Room or ER is also located in this aft are of the boat making this not quite such an “empty” end and we need an even more eXtreme bit of plating to create the beds where the monstrous Mr. G, our Gardner 6LXB engine and the Nogva CPP servo gearbox will mount.  For that we are using 25mm/1” thick plate and this is one half of the lengthwise running engine beds.

My trusty thumb provides some relative reference.

And I must add, how can you not LOVE the look of unpainted aluminium??!! Smile
IMG_20180606_134718Moving over to the other half of each engine bed we find this slab of 25mm AL which has its forward end tapered down where it will butt up against and be welded to the vertical bulkhead forming the front wall of the ER and Workshop  More on why in a moment.


IMG_20180606_155813Each bed is fabricated from two lengths of 25mm plate welded perpendicular to each other to create both an eXtremely strong solid bed for the Gardner and CPP gearbox mounts as well as to provide as much mass as possible so as to reduce vibration and noise transfer into the hull.  By tapering the transition where the massive beds attach to the bulkhead the transfer of the absorbed vibrations is reduced even further. 
Yet another example of the level of detail which Dennis has built into the design of our hull.  As you are seeing our choice of calling this the eXtreme eXploration Passage Maker XPM style is quite literally true not Wayne’s hyperbole! Smile


IMG_20180607_120756Here are the fabricated beds lifted in place and being lined up with the respective frames.  You can see how the aft end is also thinned down where it attaches to the frame to further reduce the transfer of any vibration and noise from the Gardner and the CPP gearbox when we are underway.


IMG_20180608_102517Adding yet more strength and stiffness to this area of the hull, the sides of these engine beds are further reinforced with the inner walls of the two big 1500L water tanks which you see Enver and Umit fitting into place here. 


IMG_20180608_102556Soon looking like this when viewed from the other side.


IMG_20180607_120936Moving forward to about midships, you can see how the equally beefy framing for the future active stabilisers has been tacked in place.  We don’t think we will ever install these as we are going with passive paravane stabilisers instead we think it is smart to “future proof” the boat wherever we can and so building this in now is much smarter, faster and cheaper than trying to retrofit years from now for us or a future owner several decades from now.


IMG_20180608_124053Evidence of Sezgin’s non stop welding keep showing up everywhere.  Here he has completed the welds in these top mitred corners and flat bars of the frames.


IMG_20180606_135513

More evidence of Sezgin’s craftsmanship when you notice all these kilometers of weld he has added to all the baffles and stringer joints.  .


IMG_20180607_185120It’s no wonder Sezgin is such a masterful welder when you start to imagine what his lifetime length of welds would add up to!  He has many many years of welding up ships and we could not be more delighted to have him applying all that mastery to Möbius.


IMG_20180608_165439Stepping back to give you a shot from the stern at the end of this week so you can see how the hull continues to come into view and makes the transition from the virtual 3D model to an eXtremely real hull.


and here is your reward for making it through another week with us, a sped up video compilation of the week. 

Hope you enjoy and we’d love to hear your reactions, comments, questions and suggestions so don’t be shy about going to the VERY bottom of this post and  type in the “Join the Discussion!” box.