Cleaning, Sewing, Organizing, New Tools and Boat Building
Our new Tormach CNC Mill arrived and we made room for it and spruced up the shop and yard. Many thanks to our crew. I just love that folks. We had Bruce from Oklahoma City who is going to help with our hydraulics, Joachim who was in the States from Norway, and Leigh for New Brunswick. Leigh was a special treat as he started as a commercial fisherman at 13 years old and has built dozens of boats. And in Bart and Jack and Jim who came for a visit and stated too long, and we had a good time got a lot of work done. Seeker crew rock! –Doug
Seeker LIVE Mar 4, 2017 – Shop Remodel
Excellent weekend. Bruce came up from OKC and he it going to be helping design our hydraulic system. Leigh and Caroline stopped in from New Brunswick. Awesome to spend the weekend with a man that has spent his life on the water. Jack and Bart and Joachim Johansen from Norway rounded out the crew. Dam if we didn’t get everything out of the shop, the walls stripped bare, the shelves built and everything piled back inside by Saturday night. Sunday we started cleaning up the boat yard and making ready to get back to the old cut weld grind. Thanks everyone for the awesome support. –Doug
Davits EFA
We asked our viewers to help with the FEA, or Finite Element Analysis which is a computer process that predicts if a structure is adequate for a specific load. My engineering background is “that looks strong enough” and all items are measured by the number of pounds they sustained before doing permanent damage to the structure. Engineers work from the other direction. They start with a design load then build a structure in the computer and plug in a “safety factor” such as 2.5 which means the structure should actually only fail when 2.5 times it’s design load is applied. The FEA simulation identifies the portion of the structure nearest the safety factor. Unfortunately this is a complete waste of time on us farm boys who know they do this and will apply twice the recommended load with little concern. …unless it is Chinese made.
Francys Therrien from Montreal, Quebec stepped forward and modeled our davits in CAD, ran the FEA process and generated a detailed report. It was best to run the FEA without the attachments to the pilothouse roof, but we will attach them to the roof as they will add support to the roof as well as gain some support from the roof. The bottom line is that each davit can be loaded with 3371 pounds and stay within the 2.5 safety factor. So will I be willing to put 7000 pounds on one davit? Hell Yes!
Thank you Francys!
Seeker LIVE Feb 25, 2017 ROV, Paint, Axles and Money
You can join us LIVE every Saturday at 10 am -6 GMT to help find solutions, answer questions and see what is happening around Seeker. And you can lean more about our crew from the links here: Annie Ellicott David James Pattrick’s Rotor Widgets Scott’s DaedalusImaging
ROV Hull Completed
It’s finally coming together. All the hull pieces are assembled and we’ve started running wires to the various components inside. Once that is done we’ll take her to the lake; not to run but to simply see where she needs weight to trim her and make her just slightly positive buoyant. Then comes the programming. Fortunately Drew Morgan and Patrick Forringer have agreed to help out. Drew is an engineer with an excellent grasp of electronics and Patrick is web programmer and quad-copter racing enthusiast. The starting point for the code can be found with other details on the ROV Controls page.
ROV Wiring, Ice Damage, and Talk about a Water Maker
Many thanks to Bart and Paul for fixing stuff around the shop. Jim, Drew, Tim, and Ole Hermann Godø for help with the ROV Thruster. And Cody, Bob, and a few others for contributing idea for a water distillation unit. We appreciate all the support. –Doug
Boat Transport – 15 miles to the Tulsa Port of Catoosa
Bart has a long career driving Army tanks and commercial trucks hauling oversize loads. And he was the perfect crew member to go with me to look at some heavy hauling equipment. We just wanted to see if it would work for hauling the boat, but now we think we might just build some wheels onto the keels. Temporary of course. –Doug
We might also haul from the aft end. The hitch structure would need to be a little more elaborate but it provides the advantage of hauling the rudder shoe close to the truck making it easier to cross railroad tracks and other bumps in the road.
ROV – Remotely Operated Vehicle work continues…
Back to the ROV, and the first job was to remake one of hull sections. I expect that we will be modifying parts on this ROV for a long while but I have growing confidence that it will be a real game changer in that we’ll be able to reach 3000 ft with forward and side viewing sonars for less than $5000. There is lots of work to be done but there are lots of discoveries to be made. Let’s get busy.