milestone two

A first round of considerations on wingsail design

Submitted by mac
on Fri, 03/11/2011 - 00:21

One of the main outcomes of the research on wingsails performed so far has been a new "mantra" that I now repeat myself every time I start working on the project:

« The Magellan Machine is all about reliability, not performance. »

It might sound silly, but aerodynamics is all about performance optimisation and it is easy (at least for me) to be carried away by the idea of a custom-built, 50-knots-capable, hydrofoils-suspended, twin-winged, all-composite, custom-built trimaran. Yet, all we need is "just" a sturdy and reliable boat able to sail on its own for months: our goal - after all - is to build the first robot to circumnavigate the planet, not the fastest.

Early ideas on our first wingsail

Submitted by mac
on Sat, 03/05/2011 - 13:51

As the new hull proceeds under the skilled hands of Erl, it's time for me to begin moving on the sail for our second milestone. Here's a little breakdown of my thought so far. Comments and feedbacks (even negative ones!) are more than welcome, of course.

A wingsail instead of a traditional sail

There are many reasons behind our choices. Some of them are admittedly speculative:

02 - Take two

Submitted by mac
on Fri, 02/18/2011 - 18:21

Milestone number 2 aimed at fixing what was broken.

In essence we re-tested the same set of features that we tested during milestone #1. We used the time between the two tests to redesing/reimplement those starting from the analysis of what did not work as expected during the first test, and of course we built a new prototype, since the first was not salvageable.

The boat that was used to hit milestone number 2 was Salty Breadboard.

 

Salty Breadboard

Submitted by mac
on Fri, 02/18/2011 - 18:07

Our second boat is intended as a test platform mainly for rig and sail designs. In other words, the emphasis will be on having a very flexible platform able to sport very different rigs (traditional sails vs. rigid wings, one mast vs. two, etc...). Ideally we should be able to use it for a few milestones / tests.

The codename of the boat - Salty Breadboard - is a reference to the breadboards used in electronics.