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The Microship project began with almost primal
simplicity in 1991 as I pedaled north along Lake Michigan in eastern
Wisconsin... if I could have wrapped a fiberglass hull around BEHEMOTH and pedaled 80 miles
across
the lake instead of going up and around, I would have done so on the
spot. But the bike was too heavy for such silly ideas, not to mention
my
on-board suite of non-seaworthy electronics that would, speaking
optimistically, last about two days in a nautical environment
Shortly thereafter, I was turned on to sea
kayaking by a friend named Christina, giving my unfocused
water-fantasies shape and direction. In early 1992, I announced the new
project on the Net, dubbing the computerized kayak LEVIATHAN to echo the acronymic
moniker of my bike. Over the next year, as I wandered the US via diesel
Mothership, hauling BEHEMOTH
between speaking engagements and TV appearances, my thoughts were
elsewhere... layering communicationand control systems onto a kayak...
or gee, maybe a catamaran built of two...or gosh, possibly even a
trimaran built of three. Hmmm.
By the Spring of 1993, I had located a development site -- the
engineeringbuilding at University of California's San Diego campus. My
early conceptualizations of this vessel (now dubbed the Microship) were
as ambitious as they were primitive, and the first two years saw a wide
range of marine architecture variations, interesting learning curves,
and a huge amount of development work on the embedded control and
monitoring systems with the help of our students. To address the
sprawling list of ambitious design goals, the boat grew... and grew...
to a 28-foot amphibious center hull with detachable double-kayak
outriggers.
But in April 1994, downsizing became the
dominant theme. I suddenly realized that I could satisfy the need for
simplicity while increasing the probability of getting on the water in
my lifetime by buying and modifying a tiny commercial trimaran, the
Fulmar-19. With a boat actually in the lab, the project took an abrupt
turn toward practicality... though a dramatic 2-week adventure with
Faun
(my partner of the epoch) through Puget Sound and the San Juans turned
up some fundamental problems...
The Infamous Hogfish
In well-intentioned overreaction, we fulfilled
the quest for a suitable live-aboard multihull by acquiring a 30-foot
folding trimaran in April 1995 -- giving us room for two people, an
eccentric yet fast boat, and a HUGE project on our hands. No longer
able
to fit in the 3rd-floor lab at UCSD, we leased a Silicon Valley
building with the help of Apple Computer sponsorship and dove in.
Control and front-end systems came online and industry became more
involved than ever, while the TO-DO list grew well beyond human scale.
Maybe it's something in the nature of Springtime. In April 1997, my
life was changed by an international Internet romance... while the
project morphed radically into a mad blend of the Fulmar Interlude and
the emerging wireless era. Natasha flew from London, we sold the big
boat, and began work on a pair of networked canoe-scale micro-trimarans
that integrated all our existing electronic systems while trimming two
tons of nautical fat. There was collective rejoicing from my Internet
Microship Status Reports mailing list, now about 2,500 strong, as we
announced a return to tiny human-scale eccentric vehicles.
In early 1998, with the first
boat almost ready for test sails, we escaped Silicon Valley and
relocated the project to our own 3,000 square-foot lab in the woods on
Camano Island, Washington... where we began pushing hard toward
completion. Five years passed, and with it, yet another romance.
At this edit (May of 2004), I have two matching Microships with 132
miles under their hulls and a plan to launch a summer mini-expedition
in local waters.
