Kiteboat Development

K4 tramp

2/10/12

Today Dudu cut and sewed the fabric section for the trampoline wings.

K4 bulkhead update

2/10/12

Damon is working on permanent installation of the bulkheads. He also attached the rudder supports for the center hull.

K4 hulls: so smooth!

2/10/12

Yesterday Damon and Vincent and Emmett wet-sanded all six hull pieces. Today Vincent is finishing up the work.

K4 beam hinge placement

2/8/12

Today Gabe and Dan continued bonding the C-channels to the beams, positioned the hinges, and began bonding those as well. The small carbon rods shown are to mark the center of the hinge holes and to help the guys position the hinges correctly. They used two laser levels positioned at right angles to sight the rods.

K4 hull sanding, filling, priming

2/8/12

Vincent and Damon continue to sand and fill the hulls. Today Damon primed the hulls again. Tomorrow they’ll do some spot filling and prime again. After that, wet-sanding.

Boat weights – K2 & Kitefoiler

8/2/11

Today we weighed K2 to check its actual weight against our estimates. With both floats, the center hull, both beams, all bulkheads and bonding, and both cassette boxes, K2 now weighs 228 kg (503 lbs). This is about 45 kg more than our calculated estimate, and 18 kg more than the highest individual estimate (everyone guessed before we weighed it). The higher weight is not ideal, but we’re still on track to deliver a completed boat that weighs less than 400kg. We also weighed K2 with the hatch covers in a box on top of the boat–that added 25 kg, for a total of 253 kg. We also weighed the trampoline net, which was 3 kg.

For comparison, we also […more]

Kitefoiler Tow Test – Feb 2

2/2/11

Another tow test today after Joe and Damon repaired and modified the J-foils. We experimented with different crew weights and different positions for that weight, at various speeds. The adjustments seemed effective–the boat was stable under all parameters.

We put different GPS and tow tension sensors on both the Kitefoiler and Protector this time so that we could compare several sensor options. The load cells on each boat were in general agreement. The GPS receivers often reported different speeds, but this reflects the relative motion of the two boats. The peaks in line tension appear when the speed of the Kitefoiler drops enough for it to drop down from the foils. The segment in the attached graph shows the boats’ […more]