Saturday 23 March 2013

No More Swimming!!

Last year one of the items identified regarding development was the difficulty associated with testing. Both access to a suitable test site (a pond) and a proper chase were both lacking.  To remedy one aspect of this problem we have built a chase boat.  The photo above is of Liam Johnston and Carolyn O'Rourke (along with Tyler "Gordo" Gordon, photo credit) glassing the new vessel, Miss Smith.  The Miss Smith will be used primarily on Long Pond and should improved both our ability to monitor the Arctica's performance and reduce deployment of emergency swimmers.  More photos to follow as the Miss Smith conducts her pond trials.

Sunday 10 March 2013

New Rudder

Austin Young and Adam Day (pictured above) presented the team with a gift last Wednesday - a new rudder. The rudder was designed in SolidWorks and then built using MUN's rapid-prototyping machine.  MUN SailBot hopes to do more work like this to reduce the time between idea inception and the testing of the new components.  Then next step for the rudder is to install it on the Arctica prior to her pond-trials this spring.