Voyager 2.0 Hull
The hull was design using Freeship.
This is very powerful free hull design software.
The hull design was not intended to be sophisticated, just a simple balanced hull providing good buoyancy fore and aft.
Once the design was settled, lines were exported and transcribed on the 3mm marine ply to be used as stringers, glued between the closed cell construction foam.
The foam board used was available in 50mm sheets, 1200mm long. This was the main parameter for determining the hull dimensions for Voyager 2.0.
Six pieces of foam were cut to shape to follow the lines from hull design.
They were all to be glued together with the plywood stringers in between using one part polyurethane glue.
It was found that the stringers were not needed, except for the central one incorporating the mast bearing tube and centreboard casing. The use of plywood stingers between the foam board would have made the hull far heavy than desired, and unnecessarily solid.
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| Screen shot of the hull lines in the Freeship program. |
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| Central Plywood stringer part way through construction. It will incorporate the Centreboard Casing and Mast Bearing Tube |
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| Closed Cell Foam Construction Board 1200mm long by 50mm thick |
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Shaped Hull being weighed, prior to Fibreglassing
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The fibreglass cloth used was rated at 2 ounces.
Epoxy resin was used. (Polyester dissolves the foam. A lesson I stupidly learnt the hard way!)
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| Preparing to Layup the Fibreglass |
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| First float test |
Note: This is part of the ongoing development of a low cost autonomous oceangoing sailing drones, utilising a self-trimming wingsail. This is the Voyager series of sailing drones.
