lenseman
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 3 Jun 2006
- Messages
- 7,077
- Location
- South East Coast - United Kingdom
Toy boat set to sail the Atlantic
But it is already hard on the beach at The Needles waiting for l'Escargot to rescue him!
http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0xeXvW8cOXyhelJW3qqj1jac49yD6m4ZC
A lone beagle attempts a six-month ocean crossing.
RMS Titanic, before being set on her maiden voyage across the Atlantic, was a hulking mass of metal and human ingenuity. If that 46,000-ton, 175-foot high “unsinkable” ship went down in history as the quintessential symbol of man’s hubris, how will a pint-sized, 30-pound vessel with three-foot sails be remembered? As a model of humility?
Robin Lovelock, a British scientist and toy-boat hobbyist, just hopes his craft will survive its transatlantic journey. If Snoopy Sloop makes the 6,000 mile hop across the pond successfully, it will be the first vessel to complete an unmanned crossing of the ocean.
Photo: Courtesy of Robin LovelockIt won’t be in the path of any icebergs, but if it were to sail up on a growler it would probably just bonk off the side. Due to its small size, the boat should also be able to ride atop any big swells out without capsizing.
More on MSN Living: 50 things everyone should know about marriage
Snoopy Sloop’s attempted crossing is part of a friendly international competition suggested by French hobbyists a few years ago, who set rules that crafts must be wind-powered only and able to report position by GPS.
"The other teams have probably built their boats far more professionally, but ours has undergone a long period of testing," Lovelock told the Daily Dose by email, noting that the boat has logged about 5,000 miles of sailing on a lake since April. "If we do better than the other teams, I will be very pleased indeed. That's all I'm thinking about right now — it may all end in tears in the first hour
."
Lovelock has said that Snoopy Sloop represents a total of about four years of robot-boat work “including sinkings and rescues." The craft is a legit sailboat, with sails fixed at an angle to the foam-filled hull. Eight solar panels run across the deck, powering a 5-volt battery for the small motor controlling the rudder plus the all-important onboard GPS system, which relays position information and instructions to the small PicAxe computer onboard.
Of prior attempts, a Welsh team lost their boat somewhere off the coast of Ireland, and two French attempts went belly up after only about a week each. Sailing from a launch point along the English Channel to the East Coast of the U.S., Snoopy will cruise at a breakneck land speed equivalent of about three miles per hour — making for a journey that could last six months.
But it is already hard on the beach at The Needles waiting for l'Escargot to rescue him!
http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0xeXvW8cOXyhelJW3qqj1jac49yD6m4ZC
A lone beagle attempts a six-month ocean crossing.
RMS Titanic, before being set on her maiden voyage across the Atlantic, was a hulking mass of metal and human ingenuity. If that 46,000-ton, 175-foot high “unsinkable” ship went down in history as the quintessential symbol of man’s hubris, how will a pint-sized, 30-pound vessel with three-foot sails be remembered? As a model of humility?
Robin Lovelock, a British scientist and toy-boat hobbyist, just hopes his craft will survive its transatlantic journey. If Snoopy Sloop makes the 6,000 mile hop across the pond successfully, it will be the first vessel to complete an unmanned crossing of the ocean.
Photo: Courtesy of Robin LovelockIt won’t be in the path of any icebergs, but if it were to sail up on a growler it would probably just bonk off the side. Due to its small size, the boat should also be able to ride atop any big swells out without capsizing.
More on MSN Living: 50 things everyone should know about marriage
Snoopy Sloop’s attempted crossing is part of a friendly international competition suggested by French hobbyists a few years ago, who set rules that crafts must be wind-powered only and able to report position by GPS.
"The other teams have probably built their boats far more professionally, but ours has undergone a long period of testing," Lovelock told the Daily Dose by email, noting that the boat has logged about 5,000 miles of sailing on a lake since April. "If we do better than the other teams, I will be very pleased indeed. That's all I'm thinking about right now — it may all end in tears in the first hour
."Lovelock has said that Snoopy Sloop represents a total of about four years of robot-boat work “including sinkings and rescues." The craft is a legit sailboat, with sails fixed at an angle to the foam-filled hull. Eight solar panels run across the deck, powering a 5-volt battery for the small motor controlling the rudder plus the all-important onboard GPS system, which relays position information and instructions to the small PicAxe computer onboard.
Of prior attempts, a Welsh team lost their boat somewhere off the coast of Ireland, and two French attempts went belly up after only about a week each. Sailing from a launch point along the English Channel to the East Coast of the U.S., Snoopy will cruise at a breakneck land speed equivalent of about three miles per hour — making for a journey that could last six months.
