Microship Status 08/24/93

The kayak is becoming a kayacht!

Hard at it, despite lack of reports. Much of the time these days is wall-staring and sketching, trying to nail the center-hull design goals firmly enough that we can express them as a CAD drawing, map the distribution of gravitationally significant components, and pass the whole thing to the naval architect. At the same time, I'm watching for an existing hull that is CLOSE to what we want, hoping to bypass the massive time sink of lofting and hull fabrication. A talk with Wayne Marsala last week emphasized the choice of Current Designs kayaks for the amas, and I'll be talking to them this week.

I had some interesting discussions yesterday with electric boat people, referred to me by Solarex. Ken Matthews runs the EBAA (PO Box 11197, Naples, FL 33941), an association devoted to building and racing electric boats. Kirk Elder is preparing for a solar-powered circumnavigation of the world, and is sending some info on thrusters, generators, and his own boat. Morton Ray makes a 3HP electric outboard motor that's purported to be efficient, and Marshall Duffield has a commercial electric boat. All part of the homework -- I don't know how relevant this will be, but it's part of the education process.

Tom Nute spent a few hours here the other day, and we seriously discussed adding a second mast at the other hard point (the first is on the forward aka; this on the aft). This adds power, gives better running performance, improves tacking, and adds a perfectly-located support for a tent ridgepole -- minimizing the need to keep a free-standing unit from blowing away. I'll discuss this with the gurus at Nelson/Marek, but it's rather appealing.

We had a good meeting today re the student project classes in ME and ECE, and how they might interact with each other and with industry via this project. Lots of enthusiasm and cooperation... it will be interesting to see how this shapes up. I've already had positive feedback from three industry sponsors on the suggestion that they get involved with the student projects at some level beyond tradiyional equipment sponsorship, though just what that might mean has never been explicitly stated. Engineering help, development systems, funding support, project tie-ins that have product potential...

Beyond that, I'm still gathering data, devouring magazines like Multihulls and Ocean Navigator, talking with yachties, inhaling product literature, and trying to keep it all sorted and somehow portable enough to pass along to whoever gets their hands dirty with me. Sok Sun came by this weekend and we did some office cleanup and organization, I spent some time Sunday in a real-life demo of CE/CLR relationships (see, I can even define windsurfing as relevant research!), and landed a deal to write about the Microship in Internet World magazine.

But now, off to dinner.

More soon! Steve