Awesome Autonomous-ness

Saildrone Completes First Autonomous Circumnavigation of Antarctica https://www.saildrone.com/news/unmanned-vehicle-completes-antarctica-circumnavigation?fbclid=IwAR1hTOoP5SKOJ7cX1tMLulP59BxfTLZSkAMBGozl4qQOa5HDMPthTwhbdZ0

 

Awesome accomplishment and epic footage of those big waves. Thanks for sharing BlueBell. One small boat. One large step for autonomous sailboats!

 

I can vouch for the need for smaller sail area. With routine 50-80kt winds the smaller sail is a good idea. Great documentation captured on this project!

Initial sail damaged


New, lower profile square sails (back to square riggers...arghhhh!)

 

Great impressive techno accomplishment, but please do not launched too much of such things in our waters, we have already too much floating objects. Moreover, Oceanographers actually need just a few of them especially to calibrate the satellite sensors which are able deliver the most of the seawater surface characteristics in real time mode.

As regard the oceans seawater column collect of data, up to 2000 m (now 3000 m) waterdetph, they rely on oceanic profilers through the world program Argo : 3869 floats (as for today 9 august) cycling from their max waterdepth to the surface while taking measures at every meter, then releasing the data to a satellite when they reach the surface, within a sequence as short as possible to be not an embarassing floating object (such float is 20 to 30 kg, sufficient to damage a sailing boat).
Argo web site : Argo - part of the integrated global observation strategy http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/

 

Agree, less debris in the ocean is good. After a summary review of the Argo buoys it appears they do not measure CO2 content in the water. If not, hopefully they can be adapted to do so in the future.

I found info on this satellite that tracks CO2 in the atmosphere, but not underwater.

Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2 - Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbiting_Carbon_Observatory_2

 

I autonomous-ness the same as autonomy ?

 

They did research and experiments on that, seems challenging re. the accuracy, miniaturisation and autonomy crossed issues (not to mention the cost).
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/11904717.pdf