Microtransat

By Dermot Tynan • November 1, 2016

Hull #002 is coming along, slowly. The stations are mounted on the strongback and I've been double-checking the alignment. I have time to do this because 1/32nd inch balsa wood is hard to come by, and because I haven't cut the keelson yet. Well, I have, but I need to re-cut it. The original was cut to the wrong profile.

While the work on hull 2 continues, I've been using Hull #001 to test out aspects of the boat design and control systems. In fact, I am very close to launching the hull…

By Dermot Tynan • April 27, 2017

I have uploaded a video (to YouTube) of the rudder mechanism on Hull #1 working from end-stop to end-stop. (Excuse the video quality, I used my phone to record it.)

I connected an Arduino (Mega2560 if you want to know) and a SparkFun stepper controller to the stepper motor which drives the rudder. I wanted to exercise the tiller gears and the rudder shaft for a while. The video shows the rudder swinging from almost completely to Starboard, all the way back to Port.

By Dermot Tynan • November 20, 2017

"Sailing a boat across the Atlantic is challenging enough for a human sailor. But what about a computer? BBC Future visits a sailing regatta for robots."

I'm including a link here for an interesting article published by the BBC on autonomous sailboats.

By Dermot Tynan • March 16, 2021

One would think that a global pandemic would be a great opportunity to hunker down and get some work done on one or other robotic sailboats. Unfortunately, this hasn't turned out to be the case. I am still knee-deep in hull work on boat #2, the main entrant. However, due to lockdown restrictions, I can't physically access the hull and so it has spent most of the last twelve months, waiting for more sanding and filling (side note: never let anyone tell you that you can "fix it at the sanding/filling stage"). But it's not all bad news. The lockdown has been good for boat #1, the test vessel.

By Dermot Tynan • March 2, 2022

It's taken an incredibly long time, but Hull #2 is on the verge of being ready for some layers of chopped-strand mat and woven roving. The image above is of the inverted hull, still attached to the strongback. Some layers of thin balsa over ten or eleven stations, and then coated with West Systems filler and epoxy, and faired to a reasonably smooth surface.