Wing shaped floats

We are going to try replacing the cylinder floats with a wing shaped float.
It has about the total volume of the 8 inch cylinder but is half the width.  This gives is half the frontal area and a much lower coefficient of drag. This should let the seastead model move through the water under power faster.  Also, when aimed into the waves the wing shaped floats should react less to the waves and so make a smoother ride.

We made a mold out of some 4 inch PVC pipe , some plywood, and some hinges.  Have poured some floats but still need to do one more.

We used a paint drop cloth to make a liner so the foam would not stick to the mold.  Taped it up so it was like a bag.

Put a chain inside.   Also going to try 2 chains as then the wing should be able to act like a keel or dagger-board to help keep the seastead from blowing sideways.

Pictures below.  Expect to test in the water soon.

Irma and Seastead Model

We were close to ready to launch a larger robot boat when Hurrican Irma destroyed our shop room.    The above video shows our phone app controlling two trolling motors.

 Below is video from during Irma.

After Irma our shop (where first video above was taken) looked like this:

So a lot of extra work after Irma and it took awhile to even get glass back on the shop.   At the same time that many islands needed lots and lots of new glass the main glass place for these islands in Puerto Rico was destroyed.

Ocean Builders launched a full scale Seastead in Thailand and Chad and Nadia lived on it for awhile.  This got me thinking about seastead designs again.    I liked an approach I looked at 10 years ago:

 So we built a model along those lines.  We will be using the app from the first video and similar electronics and trolling motors to motorize  the Seastead model below:

This is a 1/6th scale model of a design that fits in a 40 foot container.   Next post should have this motoring around on its own.