Pierre Lannoy's Posts (2)

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OpenSailor: wind and sun as engines!

3689415566?profile=originalHi all!

I came a few months ago to talk about VRC-A class, a class for autonomous sailing boats (without crew).

I will come to you today to talk about OpenSailor, the first sailing boat that will meet the VRC-A class measurement rules.

OpenSailor is an autonomous sailing boat - unmanned - capable of covering several hundred nautical miles in complete autonomy (nautical and energetic) ... This is a monohull of slightly more than three meters which has forms similar to an Open 60. Because we are enthusiasts with a limited budget, we build it from a canoe that we have cut and constrained.

From the energy viewpoint, OpenSailor will carry the equivalent of 200 Ah battery wich will be refilled by wind and solar energy.

OpenSailor will carry everything needed to be aware of its environment (wind,atmospheric pressure, wave,...), position (GPS) and its physical behavior (speed, drift, heel, trim,...). It will be able to adapt to weather conditions (sail trim, reefing, cap,...) to go to a point defined in advance.

The yacht is currently under design and construction, and all the design documents (available under a CC: BY-NC-SA license) will be on the site www.open-sailor.com progressively following our steps forward!

We are at the beginning of the project, but here's a first provisional schedule:
  • July 2012: first navigation in "radio controlled" mode on Lake Geneva
  • July 2013: first autonomous navigation, probably St Malo -> Jersey -> St Malo or Les Sables d'Olonne -> Douarnenez

Sincerely yours.

Pierre

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A class for autonomous unmanned sailboats

3689391205?profile=originalHi all ! First of all, let me introduce myself : I'm Pierre from the north of France. I'm a RC sailboats enthusiast since my childhood. 

 

Two years ago, I decided to launch a community site to enable all practitioners of model sailing to share their experiences : Voile-RC (sorry, french speaking)...

On this social network, I met people with whom we are now to mount a construction project: an autonomous unmanned sailboat whose only sources of energy are wind and sun. This sailboat, when ready, will perform journey of about 200 nautical miles in complete autonomy (Atlantic or Mediterranean Sea) ... Needless to say that this project is both exciting and motivating ...

 

For other enthusiasts to join us, and eventually build comparable sailboats, we decided to create class rules. And that's what we've done here: vrc-a.org! Of course, all is not yet fixed in this class and we're listening to all those who want to participate. In particular, these class rules currently only exist in French ... If you understand French and want to help us to translate it into English (and in any other language) you're welcome.

 

This class has the distinction of being published under a Creative Commons license because we want it to be used by anyone who wants ...

 

In a future post I will talk about "Open Sailor", the first sailboat to be designed to meet the requirements of this class. Let me just enough time to give her a nice website ..

 

Pierre

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