Our Research & Insights

Microtransat

By Dermot Tynan • October 27, 2013

On September 1st, we launched the hull in Aughinish bay, without sails, rudder or electronics. The purpose was to see how the hull performed in open water, with the keel attached. As the keel wasn't properly attached or sealed in place, the main compartment flooded with water, but as the compartments are individually water-tight, this wasn't an issue. It did lower the boat in the water somewhat, but not to any significant degree.

Microtransat

By Dermot Tynan • October 27, 2013

A quick look at the almost-complete Sailboat Guidance System (SGS). The board on the left is Igor. Otto is on the right, and the main CPU (Mother) is hidden underneath. The ribbon cable brings all the I/O to and from the boards. The red insulating tape is to remind me of some of the last remaining wires which need to be connected. You can also just about make out the DC/DC converter which is just underneath the ribbon cable at the bottom of the picture.

Microtransat

By Dermot Tynan • October 26, 2013

Earlier this month, once the hull and keel were mostly finished, we took the boat down to Aughinish bay to see how she performed. I have some video footage of the hull in the water, which I will upload a little later on. To ruin the suspense, Beoga Beag didn't sink! In fact, she moved through the water quite nicely, but more about that later on.

Microtransat

By Dermot Tynan • October 26, 2013

After a lunchtime conversation with a friend of mine, I ditched some of the earlier design considerations around message-passing and MQ-based systems in favour of the NoSQL database Redis.

Microtransat

By Dermot Tynan • October 3, 2013

Thanks go to Colman Corrigan for designing and building the keel and rudder. The keel follows the traditional NACA shape, with a rounded leading-edge, tapering off to a narrow trailing edge. It is approximately a 6318 shape, with the maximum width being about 36% of the length of the cross-section. Overall, the keel is coming in at about 750mm from hull to the end of the bulb, and about 240mm from front to back. That's a 3:1 aspect ratio.