Exploration 45

It's been a long time since my last post but summer is a very busy time for the Morgan family.  Sailing takes precedent over everything!  We had a small issue with our current boat, a Shannon 43 Ketch, which required much of my time recently.  Seems the yard forgot to shrinkwrap it over the winter and we suffered a wee bit of water damage.  More on that later.  The good news is we have confirmed our build slot with the yard for our new Gracia Exploration 45.  This is the custom Allure 45 that I eluded to in earlier posts.  We'll be busy for the next year planning the build and with project management.  The crew at Garcia/Allure is very tech savvy and post pictures of the build on an almost daily basis.  Much easier option than having to be over in France!  We're still very excited about how the boat has been modified for the "expedition style" of cruising.  If you click on the link above, and go to the downloads section, you can see the various configurations available.  We're going with the Jimmy Cornell version as we hope to have a full crew for most of the time.

Anyone interested in a Shannon 43 Ketch?  In the middle of a total refit, should come out just like new!!!

Arctic Monkey Options List

Here is the factory Option List for Arctic Monkey.  I welcome all comments and suggestions.  We'll be adding a few aftermarket things too.  Zetty also has a special cook top in mind but I don't have the specs yet.

Arctic Monkey Base Boat - Custom Allures 45

Hot water at swim platform shower - Must have for high latitude sailing with 4+ girls!

MaxProp upgrade - I'm a performance sailor at heart.

Remote Windlass Command

Power Upgrade to 75hp Volvo D2-75 Sail-Drive - Safety reasons, when you have to get somewhere...

Mooring Package, anchors fore and aft.

Safety Package for 8 - Includes Life Raft, flares, harnesses, etc.

Port Aft Cabin instead of technical cabin - 2 more bunks.

Workbench in sail locker

Lee cloth for all bunks

Foot pump for sea/fresh water in galley

Washing Machine

Katadyn 160E Watermaker

Microwave Oven

Upgrade to 1 frig, 1 freezer drawers

Radiant Heating - Wabesto

40L Water heater

Electro-Scan for One Toilet

Electric Gas Shutoff

Dual Racor fuel filters

ALGAE-X fuel conditioner system

Upgraded Electricity Package to include USA 110v

Battery Manager

D400 Wind Generator

280W Solar Panel w/Charge Controller

Watt&Sea Hydrogenerator

Isolation Transformer 3600W

B&G Zeus 8" Navigation Package

B&G AIS Black Box

NAVICO WiFi GoFree Box

B&G 4G Broadband Radar

2 Waterproof cockpit speakers

Performance Sail Package - No bed sheets on this yacht.

Self tacking Staysail, furler & back-stays

Mini Doger with handrails

ICOM M802 SSB with Pactor III modem

Backstay Insulation for SSB

IRIDIUM antenna on arch

8 Hella Turbo2 Fans

1 Electric Toilet, 1 Manual

Complete HARKEN upgrade for all winches, furlers and running gear.

New Name and Possible New Boat!

  I realize that its been a long time since my last post but we've been working hard.  We've decided on a new name for the new new boat, Arctic Monkey.  Kind of mixing our Arctic journey and our current name, Monkey's Orphan.  Everyone called us the Chunky Monkey so now we're just chill'in it out.

As for the new new boat, that's where the time has been spent.  Our friend Jimmy Cornell called about a month ago to ask if we had purchased a boat yet.  I said no, his reply was "good LJ, I'm going to get a new boat and you may be interested too."  Turns out that Jimmy has been working very hard with the Allures yard in France on a custom Allures 45.  It's setup for world cruising and has all the things that you'd need.  We took one look at it and decided that made economic sense.  Since then we've been working with Allures Stephan Constance on the options for the base boat.  As this is the Blue Planet Odyssey, we've gone as green as we can with Solar, Wind and Hydro for power, ElctroScan for the holding tanks.  We done quite a bit of research on the equipment but thankfully there are some very thoughtful owners out on the water sharing their ideas on the net.  One thing I had to insist on was Harken gear where we could and Allures said no problem!  This is a big plus for us as Harken is a very big company close to our home town and Olaf & Peter are very good friends!  On the next post, I'll get into the equipment we've chosen and why.

Arduino Uno + Grove = Ultimate Boat Sensor

We've been pretty busy on the boat front lately but nothing solid yet.  Still working on all aspects.

On another front, I've been working on the ultimate boat sensor setup.  I've combined an Arduino Uno and a Grove Base Shield along with the following sensors:
1) Real Time Clock

2) MQ-5 Gas Sensor (LPG, NG, little alcohol..)
3) Barometer
4) Temp and Humidity
5) MQ-2 Gas Sensor (LPG, i-butane, alcohol)
6) Compass
7) I2C Chain (Can use up to 7 I2C devices)
8) Compass
9) Moisture Meter
10) Air Quality Sensor (Carbon Monoxide,..)
11) Light Sensor
12) 2 Relays
13) Motor Control for 2 small motors
14) GPS  (Backup, location/time for logging data)

All the sensors are from Seeed Studio purchased from EpicTinker.com.  The Arduino has a USB port so all the sensors will output a NEMA0183 type sentence which can be read from any MFD or software.  Should be fun.  Future enhancements will be motion detector and maybe a touch sensor and WiFi.  The Arduino is a lot of fun to work with and uses very little juice so we may have a few more for other things???

This should cover a lot of thing that might go wrong on the boat but also monitor our environment as we travel through uncharted territory.

Finished "The Ice Master" book last week, very well done, recommended reading.

Cheers,
LJ

Preparing for Arctic Sailing

In preparation for our Arctic sailing adventure, I've been putting together a list of books on the subject and reading what's available on the web.  I've read a few over the years, my favorite is actually Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing.  I know it's an Antarctic adventure but I hold it as one of the most amazing pieces of seamanship ever accomplished.  Captain Bligh is of course is my other.  Another of my favorites is the story of Dave & Jaja Martin's arctic journey chronicled in their book, Into the Light.

The biggest thing I take away from all the books is that the more prepared you are, the better your journey will be.  I guess this should be obvious but so many of the polar expeditions left ill prepared and equipped, it's astonishing.  The thrill of leaving and the adventure ahead left many men in fates still unknown.

I'm lucky in that we have over two years to get our act together.  My list so far is outlined below, any additions or suggestions appreciated!  I'll go over each of these in separate posts to get as many eyes on them as possible so as not to miss anything.

Boat - Getting the best possible yacht within budget to complete the trip.
Navigation - Charts, Radar, GPS, AIS, Ice reports, Weather Reports.
Clothing - Foul weather gear, layers, gloves, boots, hats, goggles.
Sustainability - Heating, provisions, water making, fuel, sails.
Schooling - Home school activities for kids.
Science - Preparing for experiments and data recording while sailing.
Research - Being ready by learning from past voyages.
Communications - Regular tracking, voice, data, email and emergency.
Safety - Life raft, ditch bag, life jackets, survival suits, comms.
Backup - Parts, systems, etc.
Admin - Insurance, regulations, medical and visas.
Crew - Selection!

LJ

Two possible names and software dev

We've narrowed the new name down to Ice Monkey or Arctic Monkey.  I guess we're going to wait until we've purchased the actual boat and have spent some time on her before we make the final decision.

On the last post I told of purchasing the OpenROV kit.  I've now completed my software development environment setup.  It consists of Ubuntu 12.10, Eclipse IDE, the Arduino IDE, g++ and gambas for the kids. Most of my mods for the project will be C++ apps to control and read sensors.  I plan to add temp and photo sensors to record sea water temps and water clarity to the ROV.  The founders of OpenROV also have a sea water sampling module that would be fun to add.

Best,
LJ

Underwater searching

One of the most fun things we did while on our last sailing trip was to explore underwater.  Zetty and I are both have our PADI rescue diver certifications.  Our kids are fascinated with swimming and all things that go with it.  That said, I wondered how we could accomplish this while in the cold of the Arctic.  A little searching on the web and I think I've found the perfect solution.  A homemade ROV was my first thought but after looking at many designs, I knew that there was not enough time.  Then I stumbled upon the super cool OpenROV Project.  This looks like the perfect project for the kids and I to put together   We've already made a few projects from the www.makershed.com including our latest, Tiny Wanderer Complete Kit.  These kits are not terribly hard to build and its a good father daughter team exercise.  As the OpenROV project uses much of the same computing hardware, I thought it could be a good match.  I've ordered the kit and anxiously await its arrival.  I concur with the project's founder's that it could really bring underwater exploration to the masses. Who knows, maybe we'll be the ones to find Roald Amundsen's lost plane!