Team SEWEC is pleased to announce that Dr. Paul McEvoy has just joined our team. Paul is Technical Director at TFI Marine, a global leader in marine mooring systems and tethers and will bring us hard core knowhow in this area. We will use Paul’s expertise to both minimize mooring loads in survival conditions and to cross check our numerical simulations as we continue to optimize our adaptive control algorithms prior to (fingers crossed) 1/20thscale testing.

In planning our 1/20th scale design/build we have been fortunate to secure the services of Peter Jeal www.PeterJeal.com – a versatile metalsmith based in San Francisco. Peter is not just a highly skilled craftsman with an artistic bent, but also eight times winner of the Folkboat Class Championship sailing USA-113 in San Francisco Bay.

We are upgrading our simulation techniques throughout February,even as the deadline for the selection of the WEP finalists looms. A really simple 2D approach is proving to be useful in optimizing some of the design parameters of the 1/20th scale model. The printout below shows a reasonably accurate simulation of our December 1/50th scale test at the U of M wave tank, with a one second period wave. It works - finally!

And for wave inspiration, Team SEWEC is fortunate to be based in Redwood City, just across the San Francisco Peninsula from Half Moon Bay. February 12th sees the start of the 2016 Mavericks Surf Competition – see this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXjb1wAfQPo for the action in 2014 at one of the West Coast’s best surf breaks.