Day 2: two boats secured

Project Bob Update: Day 2

Two boats secured. An incredibly generous donation from @DanielMavlyutov is going to let us build dueling boats. The race is on. This means we can take a bit more risk en route, taking one through storms to get the wildest footage possible. Once again, I'm blown away by the support from the Twitter universe. I had no idea there was such a willingness to support at this level. 

Manufacturing update. The hull geometry needs to get released to the CNC shop. Here is an overview of how that's going to work. There is some risk in this approach, but I don't want to waffle on this for a month.  Will we regret it? Possibly? This is the surfboard type approach, doing a wet layup with 6oz eglass twill directly on the plug. It will mean that the keel is captive after the glassing occurs. There will be access to the motor enclosure from the top side, under the solar panel. This should be sufficient, as the bearing shafts should never need adjustment after initial installation. The avionics pod will have a slide out tray, about 6ft long, carrying the batteries and electronics. 

It does appear that we can get a conformal acrylic camera pod pointed towards the prop. This would be awesome for diagnosis on propulsion issues, as well as whalespotting. 

Also entertaining the idea of a redundant and independent small drive pod in the rear. Would only be used to limp to land in case of a main prop failure.  

https://twitter.com/andrewmccalip/status/1817705645224964604