Best material for autonomous transatlantic boat

On your next boat use tried solutions. Not "experiments".
I'd suggest glass/ epoxy for the hull, crossarms, and outriggers.
A rigid sail only works well when the wind is at a small angle to the sail. Not good for open ocean sailing and it adds lots of weight up high, which is really bad for keeping the boat vertical without a significant amount of engineering.
You don't seem to have the structural engineering capability.
Forget the silicone coating - nothing working in real life design has such a system.
Foam in big solid chunks is heavier than a typical hull.

Did you ever test the first boat on a lake where you could retrieve it? I assume not or you would have found the boat would not reliably make progress in a chosen direction.

There are RC control boats as large as 2 meter. Perhaps one of those would work as a starting point for your self controlling boat design.

You might send a message to Doug Lord on the forum. He has designed RC boats before and might be a good source of info on such a small boat.

 

No, I have just learned about autonomous boats. It is really possible to sail without adjusting the sail. Some have done this on autonomous boat competitions (or you can google "Snoopy Sloop" testing on a lake). You can sail RC model pretty accurately in all directions just by moving the rudder. It works when the sail is allowed to max. 30 degrees.

 

The boat went through waypoints on a lake, but the ocean is a different animal. The boat is now sailing perpendicular to the wind because the compass failed during a storm 20 days ago, the control software is not working and the rudder stays at a fixed position to starboard.

I have already tested my new concept in a small scale and the rigid sailwing works well. I just have to make it strong enough - maybe using carbon fiber and Kevlar? Actually, I have to forget all tried solutions and find a radically new approach, because everything that has been tried failed. In the last 10 years, there were many transatlantic attempts like this - universities, hobbyists or experts. Even one multi-million dollar company that is building autonomous boats for years failed to cross the Atlantic. We need something special that nobody has tried.

 

Good luck, but I expect you to find new ways to fail.
If you are going to ask if graphite and kevlar is the right solution without understanding materials you are just thrashing about. IMO.

 

Yes, that's what I want - fail like nobody else!
I will test all materials by building small parts and examining their properties - this way I will find the best answer. I just want to narrow down the number of trials.

 

Just a concept...

I was sitting around the pool last week waiting for Hurricane Matthew to come by, it never did. But anyway had some inflatable toys in the pool been blown around, and I remembered your post.

If you plan the time, location right, the darn should just be able to to be blown across with very little programming. No reason or need to sail against the wind.

In this case, something like this would likely work. KISS - Keep it Simple and Stupid... The only way to make it.

My second thought would be a really big multilayer beach ball. Even if a ship hits it, it would gain some height and just bounce across the Atlantic. and it would certainly act as a sail.

 

Nice concept, but the hardest rule of the MicroTransat Challenge is to reach the target point within 25 km radius. It rules out boats that are driven just by the wind or ocean currents. Only then the boat can be considered fully autonomous.

 

I think that rules out most solar power too. Ocean currents are going to be far stronger that any part time propulsion will do. In the days before gps we cross rhetoric oceans using currents and dead reckoning. We where usually off by 30 or 40 miles. But you don't fight the currents too much. You adjust your bearing taking account the currents. From where to where do you have to go?

 

The West -> East route is from Canada or USA to Ireland or UK. The East -> West route is from UK, Ireland or France to Caribbean. The routes are chosen not to be against the wind or currents. I can choose the starting point and the destination before I launch the boat.