LV

How are you designing air intakes with regards to sea water in the event you start taking on water with a breach or big wave, could you add a snorkel of some kind to help maintain with a lot of water in bildge? Also wondered if compartments could be filled with foam, like bass boat technology if it did try to sink it would still be somewhat buoyant and increase survival percentages.

1 MAIDEN AMERICA

How about a hinged, spring loaded, normally open, door that can be shut and secured quickly with a 1/4 turn latch. No small parts, no tools needed, self storing. Opening these while tired, cold, submerged in cold water, at night would be tough.
Mechanically operated is simple, light and durable but if you added an electric actuator you could open them with a switch. Or maybe a dash mounted cable.
Stopping to open them takes time. Getting back on plane can be tougher in big waves, taking more time.

BigSilverCat

I have been in a boat that does not have a wrap around windshield and one that does while stuffing them through waves. The Skater with the wrap around windshield barely got wet in the cockpit, the deck having a slight concave to the outside lets a lot of the water just run off the side or go down the deck past the side of the windshield. The water that comes straight down the middle of the deck hits the windshield which has a slight angle to the side and pushes that water up and over the cockpit or to the side. The boat that did not have the wrap around windshield was filling up where we were having to bail it out. I knew it was getting bad when my camera bag was floating past me in the cockpit.

Bigger is always better in a drain size to empty something but we had to compromise with structural strength. Cutting at the bottom of the bulkhead takes away the I-beam strength of it so we did not want to cut it any bigger. We were going to have drains out the side where the strength would not be a problem but decided the boat rocking side to side would let water come in.

We technically made the cockpit where you could fill it up and the water would just run over the back when it fills up. The main reason for the drains was for water not to build up over hours of time from getting small amounts of water in from rain or taking some waves over the front.

1 MAIDEN AMERICA

Now that we know where the toilet goes, I'd recommend a cover. Nothing worse than wet TP.

BigSilverCat

Yes we basically have a snorkel for the air in and out, I will post the pictures of it tonight and explain it.

Flotation: We have tested pieces from the same layup as the boat and the bare hull will actually float itself. The balsa core adds enough flotation to overcome the fiberglass so we only need enough flotation to overcome the weight of the rigging and supplies. The boat will have more weight in the back so we have added a lot of flotation in the rear to try to make the boat float level if you knocked big holes in it. The bussle is really thick and tunnel extension/steps are sealed for flotation. You will see big boxes in the engine compartment that are full of foam for flotation, and once all the rigging is done we will be adding pockets of flotation where ever there is room. We are also having a salvage flotation bag made that will go in the tunnel and have a taper up to the front with straps to hook to the bow eye and tow eye on back to hold it in place and we should be able to keep driving forward slowly with it in there in emergency. We have a scuba tank onboard to be able to fill it if we loose power to our compressor.

buck35

Lol 1 maiden, I asked the same thing on pg 8.

1 MAIDEN AMERICA

Plan around a full moon so that you get some light at night.
FLIR for night time.
Check shipping schedules so that in the event you get stuck somebody will be close by. http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ If AIS equipped you'll know who's where, when. Maybe run intercept courses.
A straight line is not the shortest path around the globe.

To attempt this, you probably know/thought of all of this but just in case.
Good luck

BigSilverCat

I helped develop and test the mercury system, After I started testing it I made them change it to have the less sensitive steering as speed increases.

The difference with the arneson vs a gimbal is it does not have a port to starboard pivot point to use a sensor to tell if there straight.

I would rather not have the electronic steering incase there is a problem. We had that on Chris's boat on the Bermuda challenge and had problems with it that stopped up in the middle of the night 600 miles from shore in a storm. I want the boat to be as mechanical as possible. That is why for my steering indicators I will have the electronic sensors to tell if there straight but will also have the mechanical indicators as backup. My transmissions are electronic shift but I have ports to mechanically lock them in if the solenoids fail. If I was going across the ocean and had the option of a carburetor or the highest tech fuel injection you could get I would choose carburetor because it will work and if it has a problem you can fix it.

BigSilverCat

We have two ais on separate systems, we have flir and a big led light bar across the front of the tunnel.
On the Bermuda challenge one thing that made it reasonably safe is we were on a commercial traffic route. we passed a few container ships a few cruise ships. About 300 miles from shore we were passing a cruise ship and he kept coming over the radio telling us were going the wrong way. That there is no way we would make it all the way to Bermuda in a speed boat.

Then we passed one at night 600 miles from shore. Can you imagine his radar operator seeing something coming at them running 70 mph that far from shore? He had to be scratching his head.

Orthobam

How common are encounters with floating shipping containers that have fallen off ships?

That would worry me more than well lit up ships.

What about all the floating islands of trash I've read about?