Pegasus Open 50, The Official Transpac Raceboat Of Gizmodo
Philippe Kahn founded Borland, invented the Camphone, and decodes human motion. He’s also a fellow outdoorsman, splitting time skiing Tahoe and sailing in Santa Cruz. He’ll share his Transpac 2009 sailing race with us live from the Pegasus Open 50.
The Pegasus starts the 2009 race, from Los Angeles, CA to Honolulu, Hawaii, this Sunday. But final preparations are being made, including weather analysis and route planning, both computerized and decisions made by experienced humans.
For now, read this interview Philippe gave us while aboard the boat, during the race, in 2007 (the first year he raced with the Open 50). Soon, I’ll have video tours of the boat.
How do you stay connected out in the ocean?
It’s hard to type… Small boat, big motion, big fingers… So excuse the typos etc…There are several satellite communications systems; weight and power consumption matter a lot. The practical ones for a project like this are the Iridium network and the Inmarsat Fleet-33 system. The bandwidth is limited, to say the least: 2400 baud for Iridium, 9600 baud for F-33s, but Iridium is far more reliable and completely global. The challenge is also that these systems lose their connections. And of course, with that kind of latency, all standard email and download systems fail and get into endless loops. Latency just kills them as they try to eternally restart operations that never complete. We use systems that pick-up where they started after a connection is dropped to remedy those short comings. Yes, those systems are generally ‘line of sight ‘ and as long as there is not a massive storm it will work well, similar to Direct-TV. Iridium and Inmarsat are the main makers. They are not really water resistant, but pretty rugged. We protect it carefully. Everything is redundant on the boat except the F-33 that is a luxury that we enjoy once in a while when it works.
Tell me about the Boat.
The boat is all ultra light made out of the strongest and lightest pre-preg carbon fibre, the same methodologies of fabrication as the Boeing Dreamliner. The small cabin-pod that you can see on the drawing has a roof-top made out of kevlar so that it is not a Faraday cage. As the rest of the boat is made of carbon and there are many sensitive parts, like high precision stabilized compasses, running networks for sharing information between sensors and devices is tricky. We end-up using Cat 5 wiring, ethernet-style. And that is what connects the sat phones to the laptops and how I am sharing these emails with you. This is like a little spaceship. In fact, that is what people say when they see the boat. It’s made for two guys who want to work hard and take some risks to compete with fully crewed yachts with tens of professionals sailing. So it is light and designed to make everything doable by two.
How are you charging you gear? What kind of electrics are on the boat? Does the weight hurt your performance?
The boat has high performance batteries that get recharged by running the main engine as a generator. We run the engine a couple of hours a day to get enough charge. Weight is the enemy in these kind of boats. So we keep everything to the bare minimum.
What would the difference be without all the electrics?
The Sextant is a super handy Gizmo. Yes, you can get a $US99.95 GPS and think that you know where you are, but you wouldn’t know about the stars, the planets, the moon and the sun as you do if you are proficient at finding your position anywhere in the world with a sextant. And that is really where we are, in the midst of the stars and the planets. That’s where we live…
I combine my Tamaya sextant with their celestial calculator so that I don’t need to carry all the site reduction tables. I tell you, at a party with smart hip people, you get more attention with a sextant than you got attention with an iPhone a month ago. Kids love it. Sophie, our 10 year old, is always eager to go and take a planet or a star site. It’s really fascinating to her.
I have a Suunto watch with a barometer, my sextant and always with us a hand bearing compass. If all fails, that will work. It’s important to know how to use those tools and like them.
How are you and co-sailor Richard Clarke taking shifts?
We really are flexible. Right now, I’m on watch, trimming, checking, navigating, taking care of things, writing email… I’m letting Richard sleep as long as he needs to because conditions are fairly stable. When things get hairy, none of us gets any sleep. It’s an exercise in sleep deprivation.
[From the blog: "by the way, we get both less than 4 hours of sleep every 24 hours"]
More to come.
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Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
@BuyingPowerTools_GitEmSteveDave: I agree for the most part, the only picture I ever recall seeing was in "Discovery" magazine. But other than that, there are no good pictures, which, considering boats go through their on a regular basis (one of the sailing routes for a trans-Pacific trip)it raises some skepticism :/
rjdsmith
I'm prototyping an all-in-one device combining a sextant and a compass. I call it the sex-ass.
@WarOperationPlanResponse_GitEmSteveDave:
I spy with my little eye...something that starts with the letter P!
jcrockerman
I am very much looking forward to this series. I am a land lock sailor wannabe at heart, so this will be the next best thing to risking my OWN life at sea, by following others as they do it.
Smooth sailing!
@yogibimbi: I'm guessing the salt water probably isn't to kind to the glass on them and you also would have to re-inforce them for when you step on them working on the boat. I thought the same thing you did, but then when I looked at the pictures in fog, I realized how much sunlight they would probably need.
@strider_mt2k: g-g-g-g-ghost p-p-p-irates???? Oh no Fred. There's no way Scooby and I are going out on that boat if there's ghost pirates out there!
is having an engine plus gas tanks lighter than paving the hull with solar cells?
yogibimbi
@WarOperationPlanResponse_GitEmSteveDave:
Not to mention ghost pirates!
i'll try to take some pics of this boat as it's coming straight to the harbor i work by! they should be arriving by late next week. w00t!
kimchi43
@WarOperationPlanResponse_GitEmSteveDave: Whatever you want to call it is fine by me, as long as you're not calling it "imaginary".
Daniel Maynard
@Daniel Maynard: From that article, it seems the "garbage" patch should be renamed the "Great Pacific Area Where Broken Down Plastic Particles Can Be Found In High Concentrations".
I do like how you can see both the anchor line and the "ocean" floor in the photo where they are cutting the seal out at the beginning of the article. I didn't realize how shallow the water is out in the middle of the Pacific.
@[discovermagazine.com]
Also, NPR did a piece on it recently, and I think National Geographic did as well. I can't remember what TV show I recently saw it on, but they went out to the field and filmed it.
Daniel Maynard
He says that the boat is made of "the same methodologies of fabrication as the Boeing Dreamliner". That's not entirely true. Beeing a sailing fan, he should have said "the Boeing Dreamliner is using the same methodologies of fabrication as this boat". Pre-preg carbon fiber and Kevlar have been around for boat constructions for many years, even for commercial sailboats and ships and cars, but is only now being using for planes!
Thomas Armstrong
Why do I get the feeling that whoever gave the first interview (or one period) would become the "official" boat of Gizmodo?
I mean, why not interview those kids who are trying to save that girl's family home?
-she's got quite a voice...
+ Watch video
@600Followers_GitEmSteveDave: Interesting point. I did a quick search and just about every link had either computer graphics, or pictures of trash washed up on the beach. I think you may be on to something.
There was one picture of a floating basketball with all sorts of animal life growing on it. I wouldn't be surprised if this island of trash were protected in the future because of the animal habitats it creates.
winshape
@Save me: WTF?! I can see the horses in my fields on GoogleMaps, but I can't see a floating refrigerator or anything in this patch? That is Special Pleading, pure and simple, and one of the major logical fallacies.
Look, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You show me a picture(s), and some credible evidence, and I will believe this. But second hand accounts and no visual proof? With all the sailors and travellers, we should expect to see shots of boats surrounded by miles from this "Texas sized" flotilla of garbage. I don't doubt there is a lot of trash out there, from shipping containers going overboard, stuff being washed away from hurricanes/floods, etc... but saying there is a visible mass "twice the size of Texas", but can only be seen by people and can't be photographed makes me VERY skeptical.
As for Wikipedia, any entry that can be edited by the guy down the road from my job who believes he understands what telephone poles are saying when they talk, should also be viewed with a skeptical eye.
@600Followers_GitEmSteveDave: we get it you want a picture.. you can't see it from space.. so start rowing
anon
@Daniel Maynard: It's Wikipedia, so I might believe it, BUT...no pictures? Not even one from a vessel passing nearby? As I said, we have satellites circling the Earth who will take photos of ANYTHING you want if you have the $$, yet no pictures of this. Something that big should be visible from space, no? And if not space, then a plane? Wouldn't a great picture of trash extending miles around be a great shot to use for fund raising/awareness?
@Save me: Ah forget it.
Despite its size and density the patch is not visible from satellite photography.
@Daniel Maynard: Yeah, It's saddening how humans fuck up everything. First, land, then bodies of water, so we say, meh, that's not enough, lets go ruin the space around the Earth.
Matingmonkey is a proud eMac owner
@Daniel Maynard: where can I see it in Google maps?
@[en.wikipedia.org]
Daniel Maynard
Any chance you can ask about the weird things they have come across while racing? I have heard tales from semi-reliable acquaintances of seeing slightly submerged shipping containers/small vessels like two-three feet under the surface that can pose serious danger to vessels.
I'd ask about the floating continent of trash, but despite all of our advanced satellites, I have never seen/found an image of the Texas sized island(s) of trash, and firmly believe this is a myth.