Voyager 2.5 Two Day Ocean Voyage
Dawn on Monday morning July 11, 2022, Voyager 2.5 was launched from Torquay Beach for a mission through to Western Port, on the eastern side of Melbourne, Victoria.
It is a journey into Bass Strait with distance of around 50nm or around 80km. The mission was made up of around 8 waypoints, expect to take just under 48 hours.
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| Voyager 2.5 undergoing lake trials in 15 to 20 knots. |
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| Planned course from Torquay heading east to Cape Schanck and into Western Port |
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| Voyager 2.5 on Torquay beach just prior to launch 7:30am 11/7/2022 |
She sailed well for the first day and a half, but near the 39th hour Voyager stopped sailing. She drifted back out to sea with the tide, and then drifted along the coast of Philip Island for about 20 hours, and drifted ashore on the rocks.
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| Sailing well past the Cape Schanck waypoint heading into Western Port at 6:30pm 12/7/2022 - 35 hours |
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| Voyager stopped sailing just before reaching the the West Head waypoint 10:59pm 12/7/2022 - 39 hours, then drifted back out to sea. |
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| Voyager drifted east for another day coming ashore on rocks at Redcliff Head, Philip Island at 9pm 13/7/2022 |
Fortunately we were able to recover the boat from the rocks the next day. This was valuable, and has helped us work out what went wrong.
The onboard SD Card that logs many of the boats operating parameters is intact and can be analysed.
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| View from Pyramid Rock looking west toward Flinders, showing Redcliff Head, at around the time of coming ashore. |
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| Voyager 2.5 as found on Thursday morning at low tide, perched on a rock. |
The preliminary review of the evidence suggests that the boat stopped sailing because water leaked into the main equipment compartment and damaged the controller.
The evidence suggests that the water leaked through the Wing Angle Sensor housing. This is a 3D printed component. It appears to be watertight, but over a period of two days, a small amount of water can leak through the walls of the printed component. In future, this component will be assembled using different methods to avoid the leaking problem.
Voyager 2.5 suffered a lot of damage on the rocks. It is likely that she will patched up yo be able make another ocean voyage to further test the systems.
The next article will discuss some of the overall results from the voyage.
A further detailed article will cover the evidence and events surrounding the failure.
Link for plot of positions reported via satellite:
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