Idiot Swing

Take one charter boat, a spare spinnaker halyard and some clowns fired up on rum...The pictures speak for themselves really...some extras added for amusement also...

What's that boat in my mouth?

Had an idea for a big boat (well bigger than a moth). It's a variation of someone elses idea for a small sports boat which used a straight horizontal board that could be shifted sideways to produce lift on the leeward side of the hull. This would increase righting moment and provide a little vertical lift. The problem I see with that idea is that it is very close to the surface when the boat is flat and produces a negative side force when heeled. My idea puts the foils deeper in the water and allows it to be rotated to nearly horizontal no matter the heel angle.



The case mechanism could be a little tricky if the board isn't circular, but some carefully placed hinges, guides and flexible water barriers should do the trick.

Someone else has probably had this idea too, but thought I'd share it anyway.

The hull is one I prepared earlier.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CG3gQ_I1L3E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=886H3CXYR5o
It's the future...maybe...

Hopefully this brings us back in line with our usual standard of posts after marklas last couple of (really) weird ones.

trifoils

curious about trifoils?

hydroptere is my desktop.

• Route WRC (or ply) into pressure/suction sides.

• Use a bricklaying style to assemble routed pieces into one long lenght, long enuf to do both foils

• One Wrap in WR carbon.

• Screen with a fairing template along entire length. Also route a female shape for the pressure and suction sides, cover in brown tape and use as a mould for the bog. This doesn't have to be the length of the whole job, just the immersed length of one hydrofoil side.
  
  
• chop lenght into parts as required and secondary bond together.
  
  
• use with my existing T foil.
  

(doesn't include holiday my parernts so I can use their garage again)

Wind is gay

schwinge!

http://www.schwinge.co.uk/

The Architecture of the Tetrahedron Super Yacht.

The design is instigated by the re-thinking of the form, superstructure and propulsion of the modern super-yacht into a radically simple enclosure and an elevated mode of travel above the water line.

The superstructure form is reduced to the absolute geometry of a Tetrahedron. A three-based pyramid consisting of 4 faces and 6 leading edges provides fundamental stability and enclosure. Its form produces a pure, precise, logical and mathematical ‘roof’ for which to connect to the hull assembly. Generally, simple forms are not known in ship and motor yacht construction through restrictions in ocean-going hull design.

Ocean Flying Triangle

The Tetrahedron would have the appearance at high-speed of ‘levitating’ over the water: a boat that can fly. This is produced by a HYSWAS hull - A Hydrofoil Small Waterplane Area Ship - that is comprised of a single retractable vertical strut onto a single submerged ‘torpedo’ hull. The vessel will lift out of the water at speed on side-mounted adjustable hydrofoils.

This hull form has two working ‘waterlines’ for its operation. At low speed the Tetrahedron sits gently onto three underbelly hulls. At high-speed the hydrofoils rotate on the lower submerged hull, causing the effect of mysteriously raising the triangle out of the water.

The concept design of this HYSWAS craft is based upon an existing hull design which has been developed by several companies, notably the Maritime Applied Physics Corporation in America, and has been proven by their technology demonstrator - ‘The Quest’ - in 1995.

An auto-pilot ‘fly-by-light’ system from the aviation industry would take control of difficult roll forces and maintain ‘foil bourne’ speed. This would also control pitch and heave.

Long distances are achievable with reduced out-of-water drag and stormy ocean conditions would incur virtually no slamming. Improved efficiency is driven by elevated hydrofoil propulsion and would be an inherent performance benefit of this type of design.

Long distance, smooth travel through rough water at high speed: the key performance attributes of this new motor yacht design.

Sent

Well that was a great day of mothing. Good wind, good height control, reasonable endurance (well compared with all previous attempts), no breakages and plenty of speed. Unfortunately the GPS is busted so no top speeds to tell of.

Markla was lucky to get three days of mothing in last week and it really showed on Sunday. His windward heel looked pretty much spot on with mainsheet and hiking skillz working well together to keep it all smooth. It sounds obvious but getting the basics right on a moth is tricky as well as important. He tried a couple of gybes too, first two were far enough but he didn't move across quick enough, third was an over correction and didn't go far enough around before trying to change sides.

I was nervous about going out because it looked quite windy but after seeing Markla handling the conditions easily and the boat looking very stable on the foils it had to be done. And it was well worth it, upwind was fast and in control, downwind was fast and in control. Paced a cougar cat upwind for a reasonable distance. Tried a gybe but wasn't sending it through far enough or with enough speed. Longest foiling rides I've had by far. The arms and hands gave up first and the quads were sore (but didn't cramp like last time) but the hamstrings really weren't used to sitting on the wing bar that long and hard and were the sorest on Monday and Tuesday.

The internal vang works now that it doesn't twist up inside the boom, only problem is that the line is a little too small and the cleats don't hold it when fully cranked.

Still a couple of jury rigged repairs to finalise; the pushrod is held together with grey sticky weld, wand paddle is huge and heavy (it's a resin infused 50mm paint brush taped to the wand, the wand will bounce up on a wave and without plenty of shock-cord it comes down very slowly which is affecting ride height a little), the gunwale edges under the heavily loaded lacings are cracked (markla is still debating which solution to implement).

I busted my ankle at touch last night, can't put any weight on it, so won't be sailing this weekend. Bugger, was looking forward to it.

Whitsunday Trip

Not really a lot to say except that it was near perfect. No major incidents, lost track of the days, didn't get too sunburnt, saw the sights...perfect.

Next trip for markla and I is this weekend, road trip down the east coast of Australia to deliver my cat to the new owner in Canberra. Rum, hookers and blow here we come!

Rock Star Revisited

Alan (light wind God) Goddard is being flown in over the weekend as test pilot of the SLINO. With a national championships heat win under his belt, it will be interesting to see what he makes of it...

nuff said

wtf? see here...

Whitsunday's Bareboat Charter

A gang of would-be adventurers will be heading to Airlie Beach Sunday and Monday to begin what will go down in history as either the greatest sailing voyage in history or the greatest sailing fail to befall the Whitsunday's. Fat, Al , Markla, Nessie, Ninja and Ncik/Narkla are the instigators/perpetrators. Frivolity or felony will ensue and we'll be sure to update the mothosphere upon our return if not during the event.

NameD

It's been awhile but it appears democracy has prevailed. After numerous recounts, legal rangliing and court orders, the name has finally been set in stone....lets hear it for....drum roll please....


LEEERRROOOYYY JEEEEEENNKINNS!!!


Thanks to everyone who voted and congratulations to the write-ins, without your support this momentous...ah...moment...would never have been achieved. Thank you.


This does't mean you won't see this craft appear under other names such as "this.is.SPARTA!", "mushroom mushroom" or "bon3r pirate" but atleast we can put something new in the pole (cough-poll-cough...learn to spell if you're going to h4x0r my posts markla (in joke with my mother f00l - M.) (((whatever)))) section.


Incedentially we have also recently discovered that Slino is Slovenian for, well I'll let you find out...





The urban dictionary also has an interesting definition.

Loosing Less

a club championship race today in perfect breeze. A consistant SE 18kts gusting to 20. The first race in foiling wind I have finished and I seem to be loosing by less.

I got the boat foiling nicely upwind but still got no idea which angle to sail down wind. Whenever I try to hot it up and bear away I loose the pressure in the rig and it becomes rather unstable in heel.

Foiling in amongst a fleet is so much fun. Slotting into gaps between a chain if optmists while doing 3-4 times their speed is extrordinary.

Narkla and I took it out in a gusty westerly yesterday. Patchy with gusts up to 18. Narkla has set a new best speed on the boat of 18.6kts and claims, on his first decent sail to have pulled off a foil gybe and a fast foil touch foil tack. I wouldn't know I was at the crab island bar.

My gps is boned. The foretrex 101 battery compartment has leaked and the terminals are very corroded. I have heard others have had this problem. It's a pity it's a great unit and cheap.

Insurance

Time for some third party indemnity I think.

Today was sprint races. First race was 5kts breeze and 2.5kts current. I hit a lazer, a 420, a 29er, 3 jettys, a sandbank, the bottom mark and got my rudder foil tangled on the top mark. Then my coke drifted away.

I skipped that race and the next and joined the last one. Managed to get it flying in 10kts of breeze which is a new best.

first

the only question is just how much purchase is inside this boom of doom?

can't...hold...it...in

we've designed a wand linkage system incorporating a cam on the wand axle (just a quick screen shot, parts to come) and also built a vang that sits inside the boom with just one dyneema rope coming out of the bottom to the king post. more pictures to come.

aahhh, I've been holding that in for awhile...whether those two items work or not is another matter, time will tell...it may all just be ill-conceived tinkering...

well, that was a secret fail

boatwork

I am glad all this reposting has stopped. i did put a comment to that effect foilermoth but it didn't appear to get past moderation. i feel oppressed lol.

a bit of boat work going on atm which is no excuse to not bloog really. two weeks to go till the start of my season and time to do the first real servicing session on my boat since it was built. all in all it has held up will for an amateur home build... so far...

the list of maintenance/mod jobs:

• replace 6mm fibreglass push rod with a 10x1 carbon pultrusion (50% comp.)
  
• fit a "dial" to the push rod (50% comp.)
• repair some cracking in the deck edge (80% comp.)
• replace tramp lacing (0% comp.)
• replace deck grip with foam (0% comp.)
• affix the mast ram with epoxy+glue powder rather than the duct tape and sikflex (100% comp.)
• tramps to sail maker to shorten, and add cut outs to moving hiking straps outboard.(0% comp.)
• shorten hiking straps (0% comp.)
• new boom webbing (0% comp.)
• take gantry to sail maker for a monofilm fairing with a velcro pocket (0% comp.)
• sail to sail maker to repair batten pockets and recut pocket opening at hounds. (0% comp.)
• new vang system, but more on that in a later post - a little secret squirrel, will post when it works. (40% comp.)
• New wand to flap linkage system (very secret squirrel till it is actually on the boat and working, we're both a bit excited about it but want to have a working conventional system first).
  

sailing fitness

today i got this email from n4rkla:

http://www.sailfitter.com/sailfitter.html

http://sportstrainingblog.com/sailing/sailing-fitness-10-things-you-must-do

regards,

Nick.

i think his meaning is quite clear, despite the message only having two words, one of which being nick. atleast the internet mothing is going well. this post should clock up teh 20kth hit!

Pitchpoles - Help

I always thought all of this talk about optimizing gearing was a bit of a wank. Well N4rks and I adjusted the lever off the wand to try making the boat take off sooner. Whatever we did has turned this nice happy docile boat into a angry monster.

I spent the whole day pitch poling and struggling to get downwind in about 16kts of breeze. I probably spent as much time on my side as upright. N4rkla took the folloiwng movies. It shows a number of typical pitchpoles.



Can anyone suggest what is going wrong? With the exception of the last clip it doesn't look like the vessel is flying too high. I'll try to get access to a better video camera for next time I go out.

WARNING: Fake Doug Lord Nude Pix

With the 2009 moth worlds in full swing, there is a scramble in the moth bloogosphere to get those all important hits. Some of the lowest kind of bloogers are willing to try anything to increase their website traffic. Recently an explicit photograph was leaked into the public domain aledging to be an intimate photograph of Doug Lord from an internet dating site. For some sites, it has become the mainstay of their hits. Be warned, the photograph below is a fake, and any morally compromised bloog asserting it otherwise should be disregarded by the world moth community.



The use of deceitful means to attract unsuspecting visitors has always been present on the internet. If you don't cater to the lowest 2% of the community, that's 2% less hits. While few users would actively search out pornographic images of internet phenomenon that is Doug Lord, links such as “See Doug’s Wand” or “Good Lord! He’s Naked” can arouse curiosity.

A well know mooth blooger, wishing to remain anonomous mentioned recently:
“I think this is a really cheap way of running a blog, just catering to hype and the lowest kind of person. It is a sad reality that there are some bloggers out there who have no shame. I am a real conisuer of internet filth. The reproduction of fake images like this can only be bad for the internet.”

But others are right into the pictures, guenuine or otherwise:
“I can’t get enough of them! DL in the nude! I don’t care if its fake, he is sooo hot.”

The final word goes to our in house internet consultant has the following advice
“Personally I think it is just disgusting and I haven’t downloaded porn since I stocked up 2001, prior to the proliferation of edited images like this. I think it is the only way to be safe from compromised images”.

AC33 and moth worlds

WOW! Two very anticipated sailing events within the same country within a month of each other!

2010 Dubai Moth Worlds
33rd America's Cup

Who wants support crew?

SLINO 2

tesaser.

see this site again in about 2 months for a complete design for the above.
will be possible in flat-pack.

gantry material

this evening I saw the new harry potter movie for the second time in two days. prof. slughorn is a splitting image of a boat builder I have worked with...




karl mentioned on my last post that he thought aluminium would outperform carbon for gantries. I produced the above graph comparing the strength and cost of tubes of carbon, stainless, aluminium and titanium. The catch is only readily available sections were used. The metal tubes were sourced from http://www.onlinemetals.com and carbon came from http://www.carbonfibreexpress.com/.

Each type of tube has two columns. The first is the buckling strength of a length 550mm long (I mentioned in an earlier post that the minimum value for this parameter is 350kg). The second column is the cost of 2475mm of tubes (approx what you need for a gantry). The bottom axis is the weight of the 550mm long tube.

Filament wound carbon tube is the clear winner from the list. The tube pultrusion is next. I am sure I was told pultrusion has off axis material however I think for the marginal cost saving I would still go with the filament wound carbon - a little more robust.

First aluminium comes in at 50% more weight, but that only has a 0.9mm wall. You would probably only be able to glue such tubes together into sockets as the wall is so thin. However it is CHEAP!!! $25 for all the tubes you require. And just as strong as the carbon.

I always struggle to find an application for titanium (outside of high temperature/corrosive environments). This shows it has very similar strength and cost as the carbon, however its high density (4.51g/cc) makes it twice the weight of carbon, even with 50% less wall thickness. Stainless doesn't even get a look in before 3x weight. Rather cheap tho.

I am a little disappointed to see how far along the list my gantry is. But I am told bladerider uses 20x1.6 aluminium so I am slightly lighter than them. If anyone else wants to divulge what they use I will mark them on the graph above too.

3rd gantry / sails 13 and 14

i should have mentioned my new gantry earlier, it has been on the boat for around 5 sails now. Thanks to those of you who emailed suggestions.



I made a structural model of it at work in beam modelling software. My worst case loadcase was 75kg lift, 7.5kg drag and a lift coefficient of 1.2 on 200mm of rudder 20kts (ie stupit steering).

As most people would expect the highest loaded tubes are the diagonal ones going from lower aft to top forward. On one side the diagonal tube go into compression, on the otherside it will go into tension. The steering load in this tube dominates all other loads so the tension and compression are almost equal at around 350kg. Most materials can handle this direct force, the tube size is governed by buckling limits.

I considered 4 different tube types, all standard sizes.

• In stainless steel I could use 19x0.9mm. (I was very surprised and disappointed 12.5x1.2 hit the buckling limit, stainless would have been so bling).
• In aluminium I got 16x1.6, I believe this is a smaller section than the bladerider (and cloned BR) gantry.
• 10x5 RHS carbon pultrusion
• 12IDx1.5 Carbon tube.
  

Interestingly the 10x5 RHS turned out to be the lightest option - lighter than tube. I think it would be easier to join too compared to tube. However I have access to some welders, and i don't like sticky so I went for teh aluminium.

No aluminium welder could understand how simple the gantry was and they all quoted me around 20 hours. In anger I drew up the CNC parts below which made the whole gantry self aligning once the 6 tubes were cut to the right length. All that was required was to zap around the perimeter of each CNC part and the thing was assembled. Unfortunately the small, thin tube was still hard to weld, especially to the 4mm CNCed plate, so it still took around 8 hours, 2 pies and a bottle of john walker.



The results are good tho, seams sturdy enough. While I am told all gantries are destined to die, I can take immediate pleasure in having one of the lightest going around.

Sail 13 was a another friday, escaping from work. left work late and missed the wind. Sail 14 was quite a bit more interesting. It was blowing 10kts and I haven't had the boat flying in such light weather. I was surprised how hard i needed to work in such little breeze. I think I was undersheeting and not hiking enough on previous sails. This sail I was making a deliberate effort to pull the main on to 100% and hike out as far as possible. It payed off and the boat regularly flew - well until my weak abs gave in. 14kts boat speed in 10kts breeze = w00tage.

11 / wand / footy / jig / machines

A little bit of news:

Took boat out on Friday. 11th sail. It was blowing 22+ knots all day. I put my 7sq chicken rig up, and baring one large sustained gust at 21kts the wind remained at around 16kts for the rest of my sail. So I was underpowered most of the time. I recorded the boats top speed so far – 14.7kts over 2 sec just pipping N4rkla’s 14.666 from April. N4rkla took some photos and video, but nothing worth posting.

I have been testing wand response and there is currently a weight at the end of my wand. I figure the inertia might filter out some of the wave responses. During this sail the bungy came loose and the wand was bouncing through its whole range of motion for each cycle of the chop. The boat was bouncing about all over the place. This was hilarious to watch and a rather interesting ride. I was surprised how quick the height can change. Strangely nothing broke despite these uuuge accelerations and the foil stayed in the water. Pulling the bungy back on stabilized everything again. It will be interesting to see where this spring(shockcord)-mass(wand)-dampener(friction) study will lead.

I put the deck on my footy last night. Holes all over the place. I need to drown it in Tarzan’s grip to seal them all up. Might get it sailing this weekend. I will do a full post on the footies later this week.

I have sold the SLINO jig to a bloke in Melbourne. It will be departing shortly. It will be cool to see another one on the water. N4rkla are currently collating our design revisions and will post them shortly. Hopefully before the construction starts on the next one. I will be making the plans and Rhino model freely available on this site (and the world one too if there is additional interest).

I did a site visit of a marine machine shop earlier this week. They have such cool toys. CNC lathes, 6 axis mills, forging capacity. I need to hurry up and finish designing my new foils, but I got so much work on. But to give you an idea of how busy I am, I am writing this at 5:30am with 3 instances of Rhino open each doing a high res render for 3 different clients!!!!11!1!