Scout blog

Hey guys-

We’ve recieved a few emails (especially through Kickstarter) asking why we haven’t updated anything. Between Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Kickstarter, our website, and our blog, it’s easy for things to get out of date. While we’ve been updating the blog quite a bit, people seem to think that because there hasn’t been a new Youtube update video or a tweet in a while, something’s happened.

To solve this problem and to keep everyone up to date, we’re offering another way to keep up with this project- it’s called FeedBurner and essentially lets you get each blog post, complete with pictures and video, sent to your email address. We don’t post that much (about once a week) and you can unsubscribe whenever you like. Fill in the box below to get started:

Hi everyone-
A few days ago I went to a funeral over in Wisconsin. While it was a gray affair, there were a number of people there who’ve heard about SCOUT and asked lots of questions. Since some of them were recurring, I thought that I’d answer a few of them here.

What happens if it gets picked up by a fishing boat? or a Navy boat? or a pirate ship, etc…
While we’ve taken every measure that we have available to us to steer clear of high traffic areas, this is a remote possibility. However, we don’t worry about this very much for a few reasons.

• It’s big (pretty heavy and awkward to get out of the water as well)
• It’s hard to see (black deck, black panels, low [6-12" freeboard], relatively small, no sail)
• It will be documented (a set of documents to explain the project and why it’s there)
• Other people don’t worry about it (The Pinta, for example, with their sail, was much more visible)

The Pinta. Lost at sea on her transatlantic attempt

What happens when it flips over?

If you take a look at our photos page, you’ll notice the big fin or “keel” as it’s called. This will be cut down (currently it’s quite a bit bigger than we plan for it to be, but we can always make it smaller- making it bigger would be a challenge). This keel will have a bit of weight on the bottom that will be enough to keep the boat right side up (and if it flips, it will right itself).

What happens when water gets inside? Do you have bilge pumps, can it sink?

SCOUT will be completely full of foam upon completion. If you drilled a 6″ hole through it, or broke it in two, it would still float.

Why doesn’t water go up the propeller shaft?

We’re using an exterior fiberglass tube, inside of which are a number of sealed bearings. Between these bearings is a grease that we believe will eliminate this problem. Keep in mind that the propeller shaft is more than 6 feet long and actually rises above water level (so even with no grease or bearings, it would hypothetically stay dry unless it flips over).

I hope that this answers some of your questions.

If you have a question, we can answer it for you if you put it in the comment field below. It can be about something that I can answer (like why the bottom paint is blue) or something for David or any of the other guys (like why we’re using three compasses).

Thanks for sticking with us through all of this
Dylan

Yesterday, SCOUT took a trip to Tiverton High School for a bit of show and tell. We ended up presenting SCOUT to one calculus class, three trig classes, and a bit of a geometry class. We thought it was a blast and were surprised at the level of interest that some of the students showed. We tried to show the project as accurately as we could, and fielded some questions. While we originally brought this project to these classes because of the math we used in the code, we’ve realized that it could be presented for virtually any class. After the presentation, we stopped at Cumberland farms and ended up discussing SCOUT with a number of the store’s customers (as SCOUT was on the roof of the car, it is hard to miss).

We hope that we can visit more schools soon as after our first presentation; my sister’s friend, who attends THS, sent me a text message after the first presentation- “you need to tell kids where you go to school and you business engineering major bc chris who you just presented to wants to do that too”.

It was great seeing our old teachers and we hope that we can do this again soon. While students might not have learned a tremendous amount about trig or calculus during our talk, I’m confident that we did make an impression on many of them. I like to think that it’s experiences like this that set me on the path that I’m on today, and so whatever we can do to to make a little bit of impact on other students, we try to do just that. Who knows, if I hadn’t seen “Deck The Halls” (the inspiration for my computer-controlled Christmas light display) then my Christmas light display may never have been built. Small influences have a way of turning into big things if you combine them with a little bit of passion and a little bit of encouragement.