Put All the Pieces Together

After five month, the boat started to look almost like a boat. (So far the sail is made out of plastic film.) 

Wind and Waves

Wind Speed

Waves

It looks like the boat design should be optimized for running with 16 knots wind.

Halloween Rigging

This is how the boat was rigged for the first time. 

Testing The Hull

The hull with keel and rudder is ready! Testing of the basic hydrostatic and hydrodynamic properties of the boat was a success (it did not sink).

raider1.com

Now the address of this site is http://raider1.com

Let's Keep It Simple

The technical pages for the project were relocated to GitHub wiki pages.

And What About Heavy Weather?

For a boat this small, almost any weather is heavy... What can we do to increase its chances of survival in a storm?

Avoid Bad Weather
If we can establish two way communication with the boat, we could change its course to get around troubles.

Storm Survival Mode
In a bad weather the boat could get into a survival mode, when it steers not towards the destination but to increase its chances of survival. Using data from accelerometer, gyroscope, GPS, and wind wane, the boat could compute a micro-model of the environment and choose the best survival strategy for the conditions.

Slow and Steady Wins The Race 
The boat should be build neither for speed, nor for comfort. We don't need large sail area. The autopilot will not get sea sick. The boat must be well built though. Automatic reefing is not realistic here, but we could make the sail to de-power at strong wind by building in a wist.

Any other ideas?

Transpac 2015

This year we missed Transpac 2015 race from Long Beach, California to Honolulu, Hawaii. Let's join the race (unofficially) the next year.

Taxis1 - The Pilot's Big Brother

Though a bit crazy, Taxis1 could chase light sources, avoid obstacles, and stand on two wheels. After the light sensor was replaced by MQ-3 gas sensor, the robot became addicted to alcohol and was subsequently disassembled :(.

Great Pacific Garbage Patch

That garbage patch is on our way! But we don't think this will be a problem because the size of the garbage particles is pretty small, so we will try to sail through it. We will have to think about getting  rid of sea weed and hopefully the first storm will release the boat if it gets trapped. We might also attach a knife to the keel so it will slice through garbage and seaweed.

Testing The Satellite Tracking Device

 This is a picture of about 50 balloons carrying a satellite tracking device somewhere into the mountains.Yes. We found the place where all the balloons end their way. We are going to use the same technology to track our boat.

The Rig

Here are the approximate dimensions of the rig. The rig will be made from 6061 aluminum bars, and fiber carbon tubes bamboo for spars (the mast and boom).

The Hull

For the hull we will use a 6 feet Liquid Shredder foam surfboard. The volume of the surf board is around 1.5 cubic feet, and deck area around 7.5 square feet.

2,000 Nautical Miles To Go

When we are finished with the sailboat it will travel from Santa Barbra to Hawaii. We will meet it at the destination and will send it on another adventure.

The surfboard needs a few modifications

We will turn a simple surfboard into a sailboat that will withstand storms and hurricanes. Our mission is to modify it so that it will travel with an autopilot robot maneuvering the sail following a GPS to its destination in Hawaii. It will be recording every step along the way. 

We will add:

• Mast
• Sail
• Keel
• Rudder
• Autopilot
• Batteries 
• Solar panels
• GPS homing device

Let's send this surfboard to Hawaii

This surfboard may be too small for us but maybe it is big enough for a small robot to travel big distances.