Many new developments, and few blog posts and website updates to explain them.

First of all, we’d like to sincerely thank Mike Desousa, who’s made an incredible financial contribution to the project and has offered sincere and steadfast support for the project since its conception.

Secondly, we’ve found where the boat’s going to end up [hopefully]. The last waypoint will be one of the points from which Columbus left Spain more than three hundred years ago, Sanlucar de Barrameda. This has to be finalized by the guy doing the plotting, but we think that it’s a fitting target so we’re going for it. Also, there are nice beaches there, and as picking up the craft might take a week or more (can’t rush things like that) if it gets to Spain and we go to pick it up, we want it to be somewhere nice.

People have been asking if we’re going to pick it up ourselves and at what point we buy a ticket. At a speed of four or five knots, we’d probably get tickets when the boat gets within three hundred miles (90% of the trip completed). Yeah, those would be incredibly expensive tickets, but getting this boat back after a successful trip would be worth every cent.

Aside from that, David’s working on the software, we’ve bought all of the things on his list- current sensors, water sensors, some new boards, and a digital compass.

The Kickstarter backers have had access to this video for the last two weeks, time to release it to everyone. We’ve been working on a second-generation test platform (six feet long, picture on the facebook page) that’s much more stable (and longer, and properly built) than the dinky little one in the video. Pictures to follow.

We fixed the oscillation problem rather quickly by fastening the keel to the boat properly, instead of using duct tape which let it fall off and sink. Go figure.