Round and round.

Maybe one of the hardest parts of waking up each morning here is the cold shower. Electric means of heating water, I think has been outlawed along with the use of chicken eggs. But, that is a different story altogether.
So, as a part of my eagerness to incur the entire wrath of the Kerala experience. I have been following convention and taking cold showers every morning. I realise that as a result I get through the morning so quickly in some kind of freezing turbo mode that I barely remember them. Maybe that is why we all sit around for several hours on the front porch swatting flies and talking politics before it is time to actually go to work. And then really, there is no way to recover a day after a morning like that because friends have turned to political rivals and people that sort of didn't like each other to begin with have now slapped one another on the pretext of almost getting a fly. It is a bloody mess.

But the day wears on and then it is lunch, and in the heat we trudge to the GM restaurant to eat 3000 calories in simple carbohydrates and the sudden lack of all brain function enemies too sleepy to fight and friends too bloated to do anything but sit in a chair swat at flies in the shade. Soon coffee comes and things improve and people walk around planning the achievements of tomorrow.
So it is time to leave and we go home to spend hours arguing about food, eating, forgotten but now remembered political divides spirited now with some alcohol.
Then sleep and then cold showers.

venti

I think I better go and get some work done. I had a review of the
stuff I spent that crazy week on. The only other biped that knows
what we are building, is a 60 year old Bhagvath Geetha scholar with
monocular vision (the metaphoric kind) and binocular vision (the regular kind).
He ofcourse was not available to evaluate anything on account of his
daughter gave birth to a baby which isn't as much a problem as that the daughter lives in a blighted inchoate piece of geography they call
Sweden. (Sorry, I use adjectives bordering profanity when referring to
Sweden these days...I don't think the Swedes are being bothered enough
to stop being Blonde, Blue eyed and beautiful.... I see no reason to
stop.)
So, I got a ".....good so are you ready to go?" from my
boss. Which is sort of like the Penguin saying, " Never matter... I
will get you, yet again, Batman!!" After Batman escapes the
sharks with lasers attached to their heads with Robin and his spandex
ballet stockings all intact.
So, I know next time will be harder. "Go" of course refers to Kerala
and my reply in the form of dance drama silence was to both indicate
that the question was highly rhetorical and should not be answered by
the rules of "Let's learn English grammar; textbook for class 5" and
as a sign of dissent. Kerala may be God's own country, but in the
monsoon God packs up and goes to visit his Chetta in the Gelf.

But bosses are at a unique advantage in that they sign paychecks and
I am at an unique disadvantage in that I like paychecks. I am leaving on
Sunday and will be back in a 5.3125 days if all goes according to
plan.

Show me the monay!!

I had a bit of a conversation today with a communist Malyalli driver of a Bajaj meter-less auto.
You would think a conversation would be rather difficult, what with me not speaking “communist” and all.
But, eight minutes into my ride somewhere near the Vytilla- NH-47 intersection, he turned on his Sonosonic tape player and hit play on the "50-cent Massacre" album.
I have on occasion heard Michael Jackson on autorickshaw tape players and maybe even a tragic Bryan Adams single about his losing battle with being boring.
But, 50 cent?!
So I asked him....tentatively......in malayalam.......and he laughed....and pointed and laughed some more.
So anyway, his name isn’t Shorty and it wasn’t his birthday. I checked.
He is a devout Malayalli orthodox syrian with a passport, a dream and name.
Jobie.
I didn't laugh.

We spoke about life, his brother in Bahrain (the person responsible for the tape) and the trials and tribulations of being an auto driver in the shadow of your brother who is a well-off vending machine cleaner in the gulf.
All of this while 50-cent explained how he pops caps irrespective of one's tendencies to being a playa' or a ho.
Sibling rivalry is probably as old as the "We two ours one" triangle. The "Gulf" stamp being the seeding agent to this particular instance. It is all that Jobie can talk about, to him it is more than a money thing. It is the romance of adventure, the experience of sights and sounds that makes his brother the centre of attraction during his flying two week vacation.
It is the freedom of being known as Jobie alone, disconnected from the burden of patrimony and the obligation to his genes.
It is the irrational sense of accomplishment and success when you walk down the street, just like the one you get in new shoes.
It is the inner strength to make any bed you sleep on as warm and comfy as the one you have at home.
It is the urge to find ones own self and indentity.
It is the reason I came to Kerala.

Jesus of Suburbia

I had the real pleasure of being in Kerala during the Christmas season. For me one of the things that makes Kerala, magic, is that being born to her fertile, fussy womb, is like a toothache.
You have to concentrate and will, overcome, pretend, become another ....thing, to be anything other than Malayali.
While religon in parts of the country nay the world, has become a volitional platform to essay the boundless, infinitely inventive art of human hatred. Kerala seems to regard religious polarisation with the amused equanimity of a parent at their child's temporary conversion to the religious order of the "Mighty Morpin' Power Rangers."

I think it is secret knowledge bred into the cranial cavity of Keralite progeny that no religious power or principality can move that head of hair; such is it's cargo of Malayali pride and "Vellichanne"
Anyway, I think what I am trying to say is pretty much summed up in the picture below. I took it on the long walk from my then apartment to a telephone booth, the only one in the municipality, to engage in what then became my epithet - an international call!!!
My epithet incidentally translates to STD-boy. An abbreviation whose internationally accepted exansion is not the least bit flattering. Like the superhero side-kick of VD-man. Veiled in shadow, secrecy, public disdain and LATEX.

Anyway.............

A fiberglass neon coconut christmas tree, would be the natural course of rationale if religion was tailored to fit people rather than the other way around. It is the the suppressed madness in us that makes us want to force Santa Claus bundled up for openair supersonic stratospheric travel into a chimney designed for spicy fish curry vapours.
The same madness that mandates the death of a million surgical cotton enrobed conifers each year, crucified to the bloated muggy heat of the tropics.
So, this tree (and the other one) thrilled the rationalist in me quite a bit! Plus, you have to agree, in 8th standard craft period terms, the gluemanship deserves five smileys!!!




But, the curry-ification of christmas cheer is not restricted to christmas flora.
We decided to drive one night, to the "Arthungal Palli" (Arthungal church) a gothic vestige of the 18th century when Christianity in India still had that fresh "Made in the foreign" sticker on it.
Arthungal is a church of St. Sebastian.
The prelates of today have a serious quandary on their hands in honouring the martyrdom of St. Sebastian who was first tied to a tree and perforated by a death squad of archers - lived - spread the holy (Oh god! horrible pun) word of god, and was then beaten to death - died-.
I am not sure if pontifical consent was procured on this one, but the entertainment the evening we visited was an energetic, dance-aerobics demonstration set to a Tamil song entitled "Chickoo Buckoo, Chickoo Buckoo Railae"
















I guess the point I am trying to make is that Kerala's take on "God" and the possible plural thereof is something really refreshing.






Oh! and it was only a matter of time right.....
Communism already claims responsibility for so many things we consider sacrosanct,
like Siberian prison camps and Cuban cigars!
The precept of Christianity is but another star on it's tunic.
I can quite easily imagine the scrupulous comrade in the P.R. department at C.P.I [M] world headquarters getting a double quota of state sponsored Brandy and a "Mao's little helper" badge for this idea. Many people like icons of religious scripture, many people also are not communists. Whoa!! hold on a minute!!! What if we........!?

Who knew.....the star that the three wise men were using as a beacon was actually the enigmatic refulgence of Marxism!!

Star streck

It is a rather pleasant evening here at Kochi.
I think I saw a monarch butterfly earlier. It was splattered against the windshield of the bus I was traveling in so it might have been anything from a largish dragon-fly to a smallish albatross, it is hard to be sure.
The bus by the way was my first VOLVO experience, I positioned myself at a wonderful vantage spot behind the driver and watched him with rapt attention for several hours. I must say, I was pretty impressed with the little studio apartment the driver has.
For trekkers such as myself, the similarity to the helm of the USS Enterprise, in ST:TNG; is more than obvious and infinitely thrilling! Also, as a spatial reference I was sitting roughly where Counsellor Deanna Troy would be (I also sat for a brief period in Lt. Cmdr. Riker’s seat and before you point it out, I did sit as slanty as I could and as is customary employed only one butt cheek. But, most awesome is the fact that the pneumatic door actuator sounds almost like the bridge door on USS Voyager. How cool is that!!!!! “Captain on the bridge!!!!” “Bridge is yours number 1”

Gear changes are at 2000 rpm. Something, I never knew before, I wonder if it is approximately the range on all buses. DIESEL TORQUE ROCKS! or more accurately TWISTS! I love diesel engines, they are never whiny, never high strung, take all the torture in the world with a manly grunt and run happily with with no fancy electrical bits, they are the bull-mastiffs of the automotive world, where formula 1 engines are the Chihuahuas.

Best served......Launched!

Flotation is a curious thing, somethings about it well just don't ...sink in.
Things that don't float for example; my G I JOE SIGMA 6 Mission Ocean Attack Figure, several brands of rubber slippers that fraudulently claim to be "floaters", and Jack from that movie with the ship and the lady's heart that insists on going on.
Things that do; my large orange swimming trunks (especially when liberated from my person a result of an attempted one-half somersault dive), and as luck would have it ELDEMER!
Yup, with one final collective heave and a toddy enriched grunt on the 15th of January 2006, our 3 tonne backyard ornament became as weightless as a rubber duckie.
From an out of context piece of architecture to a sublime form willed upon by sea and wind, anything but inanimate even in the placid waters, meeting each crest and gust with a feline eagerness to break moorings and spread-eagle.
I know now why every one claps furiously when the space shuttle is launched, there is little else to do when the mind orders you to fly!!

Anyway, garlanded by public demand to inspire solemn thoughts; as, the Dalai Lama of Tibet; the Moogum of M'bwango; the temple of Apes in Ceylon; the Crocodile, the Cat and the Onion of ancient Egypt; the Mufti of Moosh; the hair of the dog that bit Noah, etc, Eldemer, survived her first test of structural integrity with coconuts loosing the battle between ship's bow and coconut.
Coconuts replacing the traditional bottle of Champagne, because we are in Kerala and Champagne costs money and money does not grow on trees, but coconuts do.

Ship christenings in the days of the Vikings were marked by the spilling of blood, human sacrifices and incantations by high priests to appease the gods.
During the Middle Ages, papal representatives having found more pressing uses for human sacrifice agreed that a libation of wine – offered as the vessel hit the water – is just about as good a substitute for the earlier blood sacrifice. And coconut milk being one of the many liquids that serve the Keralites in place of state religion is a worthy replacement as well.

For more than a century, the tradition throughout the world has been that women christen ships. A resource that our project has marked dearth of. The job hence falling to the able humerus-es of Mrs. Dominique Radhakrishnan and Mrs. Karen Nejedly; what with our boat having 200% of the usual manifest of hulls and all.

All in all a day that couldn't have gone better and a day that couldn't have been been hotter, a shipload of people that could not be happier or sweatier and the excitement is only just beginning.

Punni-mal!

The city of Ernakulam is beginning to look up. A casual survey while driving from one place, the name I can't remember to another I can't pronounce. Revealed puns that would make any connoisseur of really really bad jokes, such as myself proud!























The picture below required calesthenics on the foot board of a Kerala private bus that any body with a windage or inertia greater than my own is ill advised from attempting. But, it had to be taken, for a particular friend, you know who you are!

There was a another one a few weeks later which said," Rang de buns and tea" which you would appreciate as well.

I know this is something I have been holding back. It is information that I can’t withhold forever, it is bound to come out sooner or later and it might as well come from me. Yes….
VH1 is channel 42 on the television here.
It was the first thing I checked and as a frontier reporter I can assure fellow VH1-o-philes that in the deepest darkest parts of Kerala; steeped in ritual, coconut oil and practically every know form of banana based comestible. You will find the briny warm nimbus of pre-packaged 14 minute segments of really awesome music!

On the same subject, the show I was watching was “VH1 classic” and while I was wondering if the only way to get oneself out of seventies polyester pants was by squeezing yourself out of them like toothpaste. There was a commercial break and then the show returned with unmistakable Casio keyboard on steroids beginning of a “Spice Girls” song. I think it is called “Spice up your life!”

I remember losing my appetite as a food-eating machine of a teenager to that song. So, I will leave you with a selected portion near paragraph 1 and the definition of “classic” from the dictionary that comes free with every 5 Kg bag of Surf Excel and leave you desperately clutching at an analogy that fits.

Spice Girls - Spice Up Your Life Lyrics
La La La La La La La La La
La La La La La La La
La La La La La La La La La
La La La La La La La

Yellow Man In Timbucktoo
Colour For Both Me And You
Kung Fu Fighting Dancing Queen
Tribal Spaceman And All That's Inbetween

Colours Of The World
Spice Up Your Life
Every Boy And Every Girl
Spice Up Your Life
People Of The World
Spice Up Your Life
Aahh

La La La La La La La La La
La La La La La La La
La La La La La La La La La
La La La La La La La

clas·sic (kl s k)
adj.

Belonging to the highest rank or class.
Having lasting significance or worth; enduring. :a classic piece of research.
Of or characteristic of the literature, art, and culture of ancient Greece and Rome; classical.

All rise!... and a little bit Sambar.

Much like most South Indian families, all of us including the German Shepherd were brought up on rice.

I understand it's wondrous versatility. A meal that did not have an allotropic modification of good clean white rice was certainly not satisfactory and generally proscribed. I remember a particular "very tamilian" friend of mine who after finishing off 200% of a KFC zinger burger meal, four slices of pizza and two softee ice-cream units. (A bangalorean will recognise that we were on Brigade road, walking downhill from MG road. )

Went home that evening to elicit genuine pity from his mother that he had survived all afternoon on nothing but bread.
Rice is bankable currency. It's value dearer than mere nutrition.

The group that I live with takes their eating seriously. A genuine reason for gripe amongst most of the crew at the end of the first week was that motivation was impossible to muster when they were being subjected to the punitive encumbrance of dealing with the rice available in Kerala.

"Sir, What kind of rice it is here! Full quarter inch outer-dia.!"

By the miracle of modern day lorry technology an emergency ration of high quality rice worthy of a Bengalooroo-ean was imported from back home. When I say emergency ration I don't mean survival packets like the Cadburys, Fruit and Nut gift pack I got shipped to myself by Fabmall.com; but those gigantic bags of food that find themselves hurtling out of B-52 bombers at small impoverished famine stricken African nations.

I am informed that the the first consignment of 30 kilograms; the approximate weight of the treasury of the small impoverished famine stricken African nation, was consumed in all of ten days at one meal a day. So if one were to work out the energetics of our consumption, assuming the thermodynamic calorific value of cooked rice at, 611Kcal/100gm, then the crew is burning an astounding 8125 watt-hours a day just to survive! Now I am not sure but fairly certain that is more than the power generation capacity of any small impoverished famine stricken African nation.
You know you are leading a life of decadence when a East Somalian wall socket can't sustain you.

Well anyway, I am also mildly amused by the tacit feudal order that seems to have established itself at the dinner table. You have the imperial bourgeois class of one, V. Dhamodaran, executor of the funding requirements of all and sundry. Whose monetary munificence determines if one gets 7 parottas or 12 for breakfast, or if one is scheduled to the kerala "quarter inch" rice or treated to the "“sona masoori". The rest of the crew is nested around his omnipotence in a hive like system. It is efficient and it ensures everybody gets some sambar when they need it.
And is - some would argue- exactly what is needed in most small impoverished famine stricken African nations.

Home bon homie

So I am sharing accommodation with a droll bunch of tradesmen, a list inclusive of, but not exclusive to V Dhamodaran, S/O K. Venugopal Naidu, Suresh Kumar, S/O Divakaran Nair, C.K. Mohanan, S/O C. Kunjunni
N. Gopal, S/O Nanjunda Swamy, I. Charles Paul, S/O Irudhaya Nadhan, T, Puttaswamy, S/O D. Thimmiah
Narayana Swamy, S/O Munni Thimmiah, V. Kannan, S/O Venkatraman, L. Muthu, S/O Lakshmana Achary and
K. O. Francis, S/O K. O. Ouseph

Which makes me the only "homie" whose nightly undress does not include mundu snapping, (possibly to eject bandicoots that might have been trapped within.) I am also; it turns out a source of infinite hilarity. Everything from my classification of the chocobar as a revered food group, interoperable with any square meal. To the fact that I claim ownership to a pair of pyjamas with very dignified business suit like pockets sewn onto them.

But, it isn’t just me. The group is a techni-coloured melee of characters, demeanours, motivations and burping sounds.

I think the very fact that a group this disparate is able to survive living together is testament to how all encompassing this project has become to us, not to mention how woven in to the enigma of its figure-head we are. It is what binds us unites us. It is always the reason we all wake up, the reason altercations have to be mollified and the stuff that fills the awkward silences.

Corpus Alienum

For me moving to Kerala was a start I was eager to make. I was eager to assimilate and be assimilated. But, it is the ridiculous stuff that really lets you know you’re still an outsider. A damn khaki shorts wearin’ picture takin’ tourist.
Like the other day, we had prawn curry on the menu for lunch.
Now like most kids know, it is a well-established fact that every action has a culinary consequence. You decide to Cherry Blossom, every thing within a four foot radius of the shoe rack including the dog for the sake of colour coordination- you know dinner is going to involve steamed pond scum and other things that salute the colour green and textureless mushiness.
The geography teacher gives you an “A” mostly because your volcano unlike the others' puny baking soda-vinegar fizzy fountains, is capable of obliterating class 7A- and Voila! Viva la Deep frying!
Something in the rank of Prawn curry at home would be warranted by ….a coronation of some sort!?! So naturally I ask our galley chief what the occasion was.
To which, he looks at me with the expression that one makes when he realizes that the person he has been talking with is being cheeky with him and says, “Prawn was there ?!”















Now I KNOW I am not in Shivajinagar anymore.

I remember a friend telling me about vegetarians in the Bengal justifying their consumption of fish, calling them water lilies.
Well in Kerala; the backwaters are your carpool lane, your tub, your toilet and your grocery store.

Providence

Home is a place called Aroor. Which, like many places in this part of the country is essentially an amalgamation of several back-alleys and mundu clad Chaettas.
It has a butcher and a baker and a man that can source literally anything and is self-appointed ombudsman for all disputes. (On account of wisdom gained during his several months in the ”gelf”)
The internet hasn’t been invented here yet and the local “Hypermarket” swears there is no such thing as a triple A battery.

But, small towns have a strange civility to them. I think this is true of most of them. Reduced anonymity means you have to take time to be courteous to survive. The rules of “personal space” and “personal information” are a little different mostly because the value of community interference in ones life is (at least in the scale of small town living) generally beneficial and the obtrusion is something of a lesser (and hence tolerable) evil.

Aroor is a tiny piece of land that occupies the several hundred square feet between south Kochi and north Alapuzzha. Which has rather interesting corollaries such as my cell phone’s insistence that my walk from the bedroom to the kitchen spanned two cities
Which incidentally is not the first time
a bathroom slipper clad me,
has arrived at a whole new city.
for an Assam tea with honey.

Apart from its cellular coverage ambivalence, Aroor has little else to distinguish it. Apart from the fact that it is dead bang in the middle of Kerala, which in it self is so full of corollaries that attempting to delineate them is like looking for the end in an idiappam. Before you even get half way there the Kadle curry arrives and then you’re just too hungry to bother.

Cat on a hot tin roof.

On the 21st of December 8 nos. cardboard box and 1 nos. Dhananjay, loaded on the veritable corrugated mid steel piece de resistance of the Tempo Trax Toofan Classic, bumped, ground and fought hard to keep our internal contents as internal as possible. Though I think I was more successful at it than 3 nos. cardboard box.

I must admit by the end of the 14 hour ride to Aroor that Balram (seen below doing a Sasquatch imitation, assuming of course that Sasquatchs are generally known to be found grating coconuts) has a spinal cord of Titanium crossbraced Carbon Fiber and buttocks of soft spongy muscular tissue.

Always will be home.

So many great memories crammed into a 72 sq-Ft. office.


Sure it's walls were paper thin and it's roof was mechanically designed to catastrophically collapse at 4 grams more than self weight.... but it was my fortress.
The fantastically welcoming disorder, the funky smell from behind the aluminum roofing sheets and the view!
Coming back to your chair; perfectly tucked away in your cranny and getting a reassuring creak of affection when you lean back in
it ..............just the most awesome feeling.

Security lapse.

..

Apparently, at 5 AM this morning, a morning walker ran up to the security office and burst in panting, severely shocked and hence highly agitated. "The boat!" He had noticed, was gone!!





"What did he think, we had let it get stolen!" said the security guard, after relating the morning's events to me as I entered the campus.
While this was cause for much guffawing amongst our men in chrome and khaki, I am quite sure the vacuum, hit a lot of people the morning after.

I walked into the boat hangar myself this morning and realised that without the boat in it, the hangar is just an out of place bit of blue cavernous pointlessness.

On the rainy night of the 7th of December, a vessel designed for the sea,
that spent all it's life on solid ground.

For just a little while, was airbourne.









In a haze of adrenalin, light drizzle and Raju's spot light, 2 dis-membered hulls and assorted thingamajiks were un-ceremoniously loaded on to two flat bed trucks.

I also realised that nothing can faze a crane operator. Sure he is lifting a two tonne hull, from a hangar in Sadashivanagar on to a truck, but not for moment did his face display anything more than the bored sweatiness of... well a crane operator. I guess nothing is really impressive when you've got it at the end of your hook. Dangling, in total helplessness... sort of pathetic really.

Thank you for chipping in

Chips make fun snacks, firstly because they taste really good and secondly because they crumble with such tectonic fanfare when chomped upon it makes you feel like your mouth is a pulverizing ball mill.

It has been finally decided by the powers that be, that it is about time that the boat moved to Kochi.(Which is incidentally where the sea decided to move to as well; a long time ago.)
A mock assembly of the “trimmings” was installed; to indicate that we could afford to get cocky with the level of completion we have actually reached.
Pillows and mattresses are really good at concealing what are under pillows and mattresses.

Anyway in true RRI tradition, chips and tea, were the comestibles of choice, while well wishers, people who have been associated with the project and well wishers of free food joined in to bid the boat goodbye from it’s now legendary blue tarp hangar.

The hangar has over the last two years has become something of a cleche to RRI’s diverse research flavour. It has un-officially become part of the institute tour mostly because of the gravitational pull of it’s occupant. But this day was inevitable and marks the start of a very exciting time for the project at least for those of us that continue to be involved with it.

Anyhow, the send off had a bit of a fete like feel to it, with photo opportunities in the captain’s chair, in the head and at the galley. With thrilled kids tugging at their mothers pallu, pointing at elements of familiarity in an otherwise very alien carnival ride. “Look, amma …… fridge!!!”And a late evening impromptu wingsail colloquium delivered by a satiated Rad, from the bridge, perched at “his” rightful place at the control cubicle.

.......And you can hold me to that

For casual readers who randomly landed on this page with no clue about what we are doing and why.
And for those of us who have been deeply involved with the project from it's very inception and know every facet like the back of our collective hands.
Here is the "official" project synopsis. A mythical entity until today.

So now atleast, we know as much as that random guy about what exactly we are doing.

A WINGSAIL PROPELLED OCEAN-GOING CATAMARAN

Introduction and Motivation

The only sustainable types of ocean transport - not dependent on depletable fossil fuel – are those powered by solar energy in one or more of its many forms.

The oldest and most widespread such transport are sailing craft, which use the power in the wind to propel them to any intended destination, irrespective of the direction of the actual wind.

An understanding of the physics involved in this ability acquired over centuries of experimenting, trial and error became possible only a hundred years ago, at exactly the time when human heavier-than-air flight was achieved. And the apparent coincidence was simply because of the recognition of a new and counterintuitive force called lift, generated perpendicular to a fluid flow, and precisely what was required to hold an airplane up in the air by virtue of the forward motion of its wing. It then did not take long to appreciate that it was the same force that made sailing to windward possible, and the English aeronautical genius, Lanchester, propounded a theorem in 1907 which quantified the performance of all sailing vessels in aeronautical terms, and that is still valid today.

An immediate consequence of the above was that the best sail one can have is a proper, rigid, 3-dimensional airfoil instead of the usual 2-dimensional fabric sail.

One may ask, why then do expensive yachts continue to be built in the old way? There are several reasons, the main ones being ignorance, conservatism, unfamiliarity with airfoil theory and practice, and a big vested interest in the yacht industry, which profits in millions by selling expensive equipment to do things in the old difficult way.

THE PROJECT.

Control principles and practice:

The yacht described hereunder, and illustrated in the accompanying drawings, is an attempt using all the knowledge and technology available in this space age, to produce a clean, green, safe, efficient and effortlessly controllable ocean going machine. Solar panels and wind generators provide electricity to the batteries that power electric motors for easy maneuvering in harbour, with joysticks that permit independent ahead/astern drive in each hull, and similarly independent electric control of the two rudders. Radio control from anywhere on deck, or even from the quay is an option.

The real drive at sea is provided by a vertical, symmetric airfoil, which also can be effortlessly controlled, manually, electro-mechanically, or remotely by radio, as convenient. The operational equivalent of the strenuous and often dangerous exercise of quickly shortening sail ahead of an approaching squall, is now a few seconds of button pressing for controlled reduction of drive. In more severe conditions, the drive can be instantly neutralised by the push of a PANIC button. This reduces the windage of the wingsail to less than that of a bare mast and rigging in a conventional sailing yacht, providing the desired safety in strorm conditions. Drive can, of course, be restored at any instant as desired.

All composite construction.

The lightness of an ocean-going craft makes for both safety and speed, and so keeping the weight to a minimum has been a guiding principle in our choice of materials and construction practices.

The 15 metre long fibreglass hulls designed by Tate (UK), and built by Praga Marine have been used before in many backwater applications to carry a large number of passengers, and displacing up to 22 tons when fully loaded. As the goal in the present exercise was a displacement of one third of that value (~7tons), one had to resort to high tech materials. They were;

Aluminium honeycomb sandwich two inches thick. All the decks are made of this material which weighs only about 8 kilograms/square meter.

Beams of length 8.2meterrs of carbon fibre. The 15 metre long central support for the wing section is also of carbon fibre.

Metal-foam sandwich.

After considerable experimentation we found that a sandwich made of half inch foam between half millimeter aluminium sheets could be shaped into curves in a wooden mould, and came out to be very strong at only 6.8kgms/square metre. This then provided just what was needed both for the canopy as well as the wing sections.

Other unusual materials used below decks for bunks, seats etc., were

Sintex plastic board sold for bathroom doors, and

Aluminium mesh of heavy gauge for the bunks to support the mattresses.

OTHER FEATURES

Of the four bulkheads in each hull, the first and last were made watertight so each hull has three watertight compartments. In terms of a collision at sea, the end compartments are the most vulnerable, but the loss of one or two of these will not affect the overall buoyancy and safety of the craft. Each one of these six volumes has an electric bilge pump installed, as also a float switch which will instantly alert the bridge by beeper as well as a light if any water gets in.

SAFETY EQUIPMENT

A lifebuoy with a light, lifelines, life jackets, flares, a safety harness to move around the deck in severe conditions, fog horn, fire extinguishers, a watermaker, and a generator working on LPG. The entire deck area is surrounded by stainless steer railings.

NAVIGATION EQUIPMENT

A chart plotter with GPS, two other GPS receivers for redundancy, two depth finders one with an external and one with an in-hull transducer, VHF radio, Radar, Sextant, TV cameras looking both ahead and astern and one on the mast head looking down, and a lightning arrester. Also an INMARSAT communication system.

SUPPORT FOR THE PROJECT

Generous support and assistance was provided, by DRDO, VSSC, ISRO, NAL, BEL, RRI, RAJ HAMSA,

AKZO-NOBEL and The Indian Navy, among others.

Prologue.

So a little background maybe in order.

Over the last two years, in a verdant little island of seventies hep, tucked into the concrete wilderness of north bangalore, a bunch of folk have been working, some hard and some hardly at trying to build a vision of one, almost vituperatively motivated person.



400 kilometres from the nearest sea and 1000 metres above it we have been building a sail-boat. Temporary bewilderment is warranted, mine has lasted 2 years.

But, this is no ordinary sailboat. You don’t have to take my word for it, over my two years with it I have seen my share of awestruck sailors.

Hell! I have seen awestruck accountants, judges, self-righteous aunties, rather attractive young women, all sorts. Because, awe inspiring it certainly is! There are very few things that can excite people any more, most of those things either taste really good or are glittery.
This is neither!

This is exciting, sort of like the first time I saw a road-roller. Where you sort of know what its for and how it should principally work. But, it is exciting as hell trying to imagine something that is sooo unlike our green Premier Padmini, doing typically green premier padmini like things.


Telling people that we use 15 metre high wing to get our propulsive force out of the wind, only adds to the wonder. I have actually seen someone’s jaw drop. Now that is cool!
But, it is not just casual visitors, I am hit by a feeling of awe everytime I sit back and try to take it all in. We are building a sail-boat with materials that are more comfortable in suitings and shirtings, aluminum foil, woven carbon and that powdery stuff in refrigerator insulation.
We will sail this boat about the size of a 16 metre ball of cotton candy half way around the planet and do it in the silent grace of a dandelion in the breeze.
Awe is the juice that gets me out of bed every morning. Even on a particularly rough day, the sublime thrill of it is enough to give me a high, like nothing I have ever known.

But, I digress.
So we have been working on this in the comfort of our little island paradise now for the last 2 years and it has finally come time for it to leave.
And boldly go where most sail boats have gone before.
This blog will hopefully, account the climax of my two year romance.