So i thought this fits here, he calls the boat Helios 11 and builds it with very little experience. He docunents the adventure quite well and shares what he learns, and also shares all the plans for the boat for free.
Frankly waiting for the news story where he gets killed “proving” his concept…
The first warning bell was “rated for cross-atlantic”… “rated” by whom?
Of course then there’s the latter part where he talks about the next one is going to be super amazingly polished autonomous vessel with everything up to and including a sauna from the solar… And of course the sovereign citizen take…
Cool doing a project like this, but it smells of overconfidence in what it currently is and how trivial it will be to get to something much much more…
It does not run forever.
If only we could build an undersea country in this way, but without the psychopaths. And let the land people make hell for themselves if they want, just freedom for the sane ones.
Welcome… to rapture!
Yeah, except not fascist.
You might be better off buying an old aluminium tinny and modifying that. Lasts longer than plywood, and is already a boat. Hardest part done. Making a roof and adding solar panels is relatively easy
hey that’s my retirement plan
Fiberglass and resin or epoxy on plywood can last very well and is easy to repair if you go for “work boat finish”.
I have every book I can find on this. Phil Bolger, Dynamite Payson, Jim Michelak, all easy and good designs.
The Birdwatcher style would lend itself well to solar panels, or Michelak’s IMB (International Marine Beacher, from a magazine competition).
I have a half-built “Cartopper” in my shed. I need to go work on it more. Sometimes it’s more fun to read about than do.
The birdwatcher is beautiful!
How long does the cartopper take to build? (In theory)
And yes, Birdwatcher is great. I bought the plans for IMB; if I ever finish this one, that’s next. It is just short enough to not have to be registered in my state, and you can camp in it easily. And I think the sit inside with windows thing is neat. Safer to bring nieces and nephews along.
Actually the cartopper was used as a guest cabin towed behind a larger boat also, but one person only.
Here is a video of someone sailing the IMB https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XGVhZzj3JlE
Judging by the book, he did his rowing version in like 4 days lol. I started 16 months ago, just haven’t worked on it much. Hull is ready to glass, sailing stuff needs to be built, got the lead sitting there ready to weight centerboard and everything. Life just got in the way.
I probably have only worked on it for about 20-30 hours total, and that was with a whole lot to learn. Had to attempt the stem bevel 3 times before I gave in and bought an old bandsaw used for $200 to make it easier. I’ve just never done anything like this, so when I go out there now, I just read the book and get a bit intimidated by what is left.
I think the best option is to take two old sailboats (already efficient hulls) and connect them together into a large catamaran with a platform in between them. This greatly increases the possible surface area for solar panels, with a minimum of water resistance added. It allows you to add a large section of solar panels in the middle without anything adding drag in the water in that section.
LOL! That’s the best option? Why wouldn’t you just start with a catamaran?
If you ever built a thing like that please give me the link to your YouTube, that would be funny as hell to watch.
A single-hull can be made self-righting, in case it flips in bad weather. A 35 foot catamaran? You’re not getting that back up-right with a crew of one - you basically hope and pray a bigger boat comes along at that point.
… Now I’ve watched the video, there is no ballast, not even a dedicated bilge space, and with the shallow draft, I am uncertain how the boat in OOP isn’t too top-heavy to stay up-right. Forget the “Sovereign Living” bit at the end, I’mma need to see some solid design and build data before listening to another word from that guy.
In short: I take back any mean things I said or implied about Catamarans.
I was just stanning one of my favorite things about, and pet criteria for, properly-designed boats. I just sold my first sail-boat because I wanted a bigger one, with a better capsize-rating.
there is no ballast, not even a dedicated bilge space, and with the shallow draft, I am uncertain how the boat in OOP isn’t too top-heavy to stay up-right. Forget the “Sovereign Living” bit at the end, I’mma need to see some solid design and build data before listening to another word from that guy.
Don’t worry, he said up front it is “rated for cross-atlantic” so it’s all good.
Now I’ve watched the video, there is no ballast
He does end up adding ballast later. Added batteries, living stuff and about 150KG of rocks.
His takeaway was that it didn’t really affect cruising speed and that he should have made a sturdier, heavier bottom hull.
Edit: he’s in the process of turning it into a trimaran at the moment also for stability.
Except that the risk of a 35 foot catamaran flipping over is very significantly lower in the first place.
Depends where you sail, but I’ve made some edits to that comment since anyways.
Catemaran hulls are specifically designed as such, you can’t use normal hulls.
You do gain the extra room for solar, but equally you also make the boat wider, making it less flacrical in confined waterways like canals and rivers.
In high latitudes having a vertical solar sail might actually work quite well to well as both a solar array and a wind sail. But that will require significant engineering design time to get right.
Uhm. This is not done by welding a bit or using big bolts. If done wrong, your “catamaran” will not survive a single wave, let alone the conditions of the open sea. Don’t forget how much force water has.
So if you do this on a lake, you’ll be fine, but not in open waters.
If done right, this could be more stable as well
Leaving a comment so I can watch this later.
maybe star/save your comment or something because i am doing the same. i’m planning on kitting out my camping setup with solar so i can take our ebikes with us and i bet this video has all the info i need (i am pretty sure i have it all figured out except the precise wiring but more knowledge never hurt okay i just thought up an exception to that but you know what i mean) i am not pausing babylon 5 tho
On my version of Boost there are options to see your upvoted etc, and saved posts, but it doesn’t work anymore
It did work. I atarted out saving things here and there and then an update wiped it all out and no longer works. Or it didn’t the last time I tried it
I remember reading about a Finn who spent 5 years, half part calculating, half building a small aeroplane in his apartment. Neighbours were let in on the knowing when he needed them to open their doors to poke a plane part into their apartements to get the thing down from IIRC third floor and out.
He flew it too!
I read it in the early nineties and the thing was maybe from the eighties. He didn’t solder anything but drilled like 30.000 holes and riveted it all together.
Finns are cool.
And then there’s this German champ hobbying together an entire tank in their basement:
The man had also been keeping an anti-aircraft gun in his basement
How big is this man’s basement??
Reminds me of Richards Reactor, a dude in Sweden who attemoted to build a smal scale nuclear reactor of some sort in his apartment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Handl
Not too long ago his blogg was still up, found this but the nuclear stuff is gone:
https://richardsreactor.blogspot.com/2017/02/170222-visit-from-police.html?m=1
okay you can’t just let those sit around. you have to maintain those.
Someone in the comments said it best, it’s a very cool canal boat but nothing that light would stand-up to open ocean waves.
It could work in nice weather in the Mediterranean or some other more calm seas
its ok for coastal mediteranean too. He did use it through canals of northern europe to get down to spain.
That’s actually impressive.
This specific design maybe not, but similar light plywood-epoxy catamarans based on designs by James Wharram are well regarded and proven open-ocean sailboats.
He gets into this in the later videos but he’s living aboard it quite a while now in the Mediterranean.
Meh, do you know the level of tech that spread mankind across the world. Roughly logs. OP is likely fine.
He want’s to make it
AI controlled
aww man
I respect his solar commitement, but listening to him it’s obvious he’s a libertarian Elon-Bro… my immediate reaction is “oh no… it’s stupid.”
And the concept isn’t new, solar boats have been a thing for ages now and most of them are (like @OwOarchist@pawb.social suggested) catamarans or trimarans.
Can we please avoid using abelist slurs in this community?
AI is completely irrelevant to his project, I really don’t know why he mentioned that. The solar/battery/motor setup looks like off-the-shelf from victron — we can see a screenshot of the app at some point.
Heard and edited.
I’d like to second Povoq’s request and ask that we’re more mindful of the words we choose and their impact please.
Oh, it’s OK, he specifically addressed how to get good AI results. He commanded Chat-GPT to give him good info. If you just ask nicely it won’t work, you have to be forceful. Forget boat building, he should clearly be teaching classes on using LLMs.
Honestly not a terrible use of ai. I imagine it’s pretty good at spotting things in a sparse environment like the middle of the ocean.
Wouldn’t that just be a regular software that uses ML for just image detection?
I suspect voice control + a small LLM for tool uses qualifies it as “AI”
Which is terrible imo cause they were never considered intelligence before, just tools that barely worked
Quite frankly, in the last two years, I’ve accepted the AI term because that’s pretty close to what we expected sci-fi AI to be.
Something that you talk to that understands from the context what you mean and that calls the appropriate tool is exactly things like Jarvis, like HAL 9000.
That’s a fair point, we also called video game enemy algorithm AI.
But no one calls that AI, I think the key indicator is a statistical model instead of a human coded script
Yes and no. “AI” has been a marketing term over a decade now, it’s a vague statement which is pretty much mandatory to get funding.
In theory, I agree with you, automated navigation of boats seems like a good fit for machine learning.
Technically over a decade, but feels like that’s an understatement.
In the 1940s some people called a machine to play NIM as “Artificial Intelligence”. People talked about opponent AI in checkers games before most of us were born.
Certainly by the 80s using “AI” to describe the manipulations of enemy characters was all-in.
That’s why AI means everything and nothing. In games, computer controllwd characters are called AI, although they are straightforward algorithms. It’s a catch-all term.
In early 2000s, at least in the academia, we used AI to refer to neural networks, although it wasn’t a strict term. Then anything machine learning (including regression models) were called AI, now LLMs and chatbots are called AI while other type of models are pretty much ignored. A boat navigation system could use a neural network but almost definitely not a language model at its core.
AI can be fine, I cringed at the mention of Starlink, even though that’s a case where it makes sense.
There’s currently not really an alternative to Starlink for this type of use sadly. If speed isn’t a concern then there are, but for typical internet usage there really isn’t.
Sadly true
Removed by mod
USA: and I took that personally.
You have been blockaded by USA.
You have been bombed out of the water by the USA
The USA do be blowing up boats and murdering their crews on the regular these days…
No touching of US boats.
But this touches their drill baby drill with a boat.
This will leave them more confused than after a weekend grinder bender at a GOP conference.
Such a cool project. Now, if only I didn’t live 1000 km from the sea in a small apartment…
Just mod it into a helicopter to carry the boat, easy.
Yeah I’ll make a design on the back of a napkin. Nothing can possibly go wrong.
Just build it out the window and wait for the waters to rise. Biblically correct method 👍
You get to have a bicycle and some backyard grown potatoes for fuel.
Hhaahha ummm yeah :(
And it lets you look like a super-spy.
Does he say how much it cost him?
No, he only says that it is affordable to a medium sized budget.
My educated guess is that it costs around 25,000€ to build this. The ePropulsion engine and battery you can see in the video is about 10,000€ of that.
He also took 200 days to build and that’s pretty hefty
Is that a river boat they started with? That thing looks like it’d crack in two over a strong wave.
No no, he said “rated for atlantic crossing”, so it’s got to be good, right?
The sound of the water moving and echoing throughout the hull would drive me crazy.
Very cool project though
I absolutely want to Rick my life on a first time jr devs code… Err… boat design. 👌
But do you want to Morty your life?
But I appreciate your comparison, it really is analagous to an overconfident jr dev code scenario. Anyone who actually knows understands he’s lucky it’s still intact and cringes at his ‘rated for cross-atlantic’ statement. But it’s been fine so far, so he feels super vindicated into extrapolating to how awesome it’s going to be if he managed to get the basics this in order.
I went in prepared to be unambiguously appreciative of the adventuresome spirit, but turned to dismay as he spoke on what he thought the boat was capable of and close to being. Good job on the adventure, but need to have a bit more humility or he’ll be in over his head, literally.
