All posts by Davi Ottenheimer

Sailing, Security

Wind Predictions for AC45 Races

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An America’s Cup meterologist has posted his weather prediction on the team blog

The strong w-sw sea breeze that caused the damage on Saturday moderated early in the week, but by Thursday – first race day for Dean Barker and crew – it will be back to its boat-breaking best.

Emirates Team New Zealand (ETNZ) meteorologist Roger (Clouds) Badham says that at this time of the year San Francisco weather comes in three to five day cycles. Locals say the best weather is in September/October.

I completely agree with his statement on the best weather months, but I guess I qualify as a local. Spring and Fall offer dry warm weather and moderation while the summer months bring humidity with chilly temperatures and big afternoon breeze.

As “Clouds” rightly suggests the driver of the big summer breeze is a temperature differential between the Bay Area getting cooled at night by the ocean and the heated inland area during the day.

I’ve heard it referred locally (among sailors) as proof how much Sacramento really “sucks”.

A quick look at forecasts shows nearly perfect conditions later this week, yet that’s not what ETNZ is predicting on their blog. So I downloaded a GRIdded Binary (GRIB) file to see if I could verify what “Clouds” sees.

GRIB is a format for meteorological data specified by the World Meteorological Organization’s Commission for Basic Systems. There are many choices of free software that will download, manipulate and display GRIBs. I tend to use zyGrib.

Below is a small subset of the latest images, which shows a solid wall of 30+ winds off-shore (!) but light winds of 10 knts around the Bay Area from 11am to 5pm on Thursday and on Friday. The problem when looking at these charts, however, is trying to factor in the dominant local/shore effects. The Golden Gate, for example, tends to be a funnel or convergence zone and that is where the races will be held.

Thursday morning:

Thursday afternoon:

Friday morning:

Friday afternoon:

A solid yellow can be nasty (25+ knts) to deal with. Turquoise (10 knts) is generally what you want to see. Great day to go for a sail, right? Not quite. The race venue will see some kind of variation from this high-level map. As I mentioned there’s a convergence near the Golden Gate Bridge.

When I sail in the Bay Area I know how dangerous it can be to rely on a GRIB view alone. A single day around the Bay can involve a dozen or more micro-climate areas with extremely variable and dangerous conditions at places like the “Slot” near Alcatraz, or the aptly named Hurricane Gulch and the unpredictable river of Raccoon Strait.

Fortunately there are many localized data sources. Last Saturday the wind sensor near Crissy Field (just inside the Golden Gate Bridge) posted rather high wind readings compared with the overall area. You can review it on SailFlow.com.

The AC45s will definitely be crashing if they see spikes into the 30 knt range like that. No wonder teams saw some major breakage this past weekend.

Since the Team NZ crew of six arrived in California late last week, the Bay has been dishing up 30 knot wind gusts and choppy seas, which have already claimed three of the 11 boats out practising.

Team NZ have come through the practice days unscathed, but not without a few hairy moments. Their training partner, Luna Rossa Swordfish, was not so fortunate – suffering a spectacular end-over-end capsize, destroying their AC45 wing. The Italians will need to use another wing if they are to be on the startline when racing begins in earnest on Wednesday (NZ time).

The strong sea breezes and wind against tide also flipped Artemis and Team Korea, and could cause more carnage in this first event of the 2012-13 World Series.

Photos from the team site show the boat bearing away downwind with hulls flat but the bows under heavy pressure. When you have so much spray in your face that you can’t see the sails, it’s time to reduce sail area.

ETNZ in wind
Source: ETNZ

The same Crissy Pier wind sensor predicts 7-12 knts in the morning on Thursday and 10-20 knts in the afternoon. That typically means it will blow 15 knts by noon and 25 knts by 2pm. As you can see a localized prediction can be quite different from the high-level area map view that indicates 10 knts.

Too Close for Comfort
Source: Team Puma. Look out Jimmy! Keep clear when an AC45 has to steer in 20+ knts. You definitely don’t want to meet a carbon blade doing 30 mph.

On top of wind predictions, racers also have to factor the tide. They should see a 1-2 knt flood tide (slack at noon on Thursday, 1 pm on Friday). Given that the races start when tide is almost slack, it seems someone was planning the event date with an eye on the tide charts (Bay water can flow over 5 knts).

Sailing obviously is a sport where Big Data analysis (e.g. many sensors reading variable data in real-time) has always been an essential part of success. A team simply can’t be a top performer without a mastery of wind and water instruments.

Events this week should be a great time to see the world’s best sailors on the world’s best sailing technology racing in fast conditions, right on the edge of control.

Sailing's New Look
Source: ETNZ. Helmets with radios and camera mounts, dry suits, low-profile life-vests, knives…ready for teamwork in any condition, it’s the look of high-performance sailing.

Security

Stompy: the Future of Rescue?

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In just over 10 days Project Hexapod on Kickstarter was able to raise $65,000. Their goal?

An open-source, 18ft wide, 4,000 pound, 6-legged hydraulic robot that you can ride.

Stompy

When they say open source, they mean it. They are willing to build and then give away all the details of the project to help encourage others to build the same or better.

Once we finish this robot, we’re releasing our plans, our CAD, our diagrams, the presentations from all the lectures we gave in class, our lists of materials and parts, everything. The construction and control techniques we’re using will drop the cost of controlled hydraulics by an order of magnitude or two from where they are now, and will make giant robots affordable to small groups of enthusiasts everywhere.

Today they are a little over $80,000 and headed towards the next phase of funding before the September 2nd deadline.

At $95,000, we’ll drop in what we call the “Performance Upgrade”. We’ll integrate a number of new sensors that will let us more accurately detect and respond to rough terrain, allowing for a smooth ride over a much greater variety of terrain. We’ll upgrade our hydraulic powerplant to allow for a higher ground speed. We’ll also add sensors that will allow for some amount of autonomy, for future robot development.

The project owners provide a nice video about the passion and curiosity behind their project.

They talk a little about utility but here is the part of the project proposal that really caught my attention:

Stompy (and the technology it represents) could easily reach people who can’t be reached by any other means in a natural disaster.

Bingo! This fits perfectly with big news of recent emergency operations in Colorado. As you may have noticed there is a growing “14er” trend in Colorado where people try to walk to the top of mountains that have peaks above 14,000 ft. The popularity of the mountains combined with some incredibly rough terrain means it is inevitable that authorities will get a call for rescue.

Here’s just one example: On August 5th a dog was brought by its owner up a 14er rated as Class 3 (e.g. “steepness and extreme terrain” too difficult for dogs) on a day with storms (e.g. high danger for human ascent). The dog became incapacitated at 13,000 ft from injuries, as should have been predicted, but then the owner made the unbelievable decision to abandon it. A 100 lb german shepard lay bleeding near the rocky summit of the mountain, hungry and alone.

Seven days later, around August 11th, other hikers discovered the abandoned dog and immediately set about planing a rescue attempt. The authorities were contacted and assistance was requested; those requests were turned down.

“We can’t specifically send a rescue effort for a dog,” [Clear Creek County Sheriff’s Sgt. Rick] Safe said. “We have a designated rescue team. In the last two weeks we have had six rescues, one a day on the weekends, for people. It is tough terrain out there.”

Sgt. Safe is obviously resource constrained in his current setup. I am certain he would have helped if he could afford to add dogs to the list of rescue operations (nevermind the fact that he could have taken the initiative to use social network technology to organize a community rescue effort). This is where Stompy comes in.

6legs

Reducing cost and time for rescue operations has a clear benefit. Current technology such as automobiles and aircraft are often unable to assist in rough terrain and unstable weather. Even the most expensive options are limited. Rescue teams with an inexpensive/commodity robot in comparison could scale the 14er faster and handle far more load than humans. And then a hybrid effort (e.g. use a helicopter or vehicle to place the robot at 11,000 ft) would be even faster and still reduce overall cost of operation. Save money, save time and save lives…Stompy makes a lot of sense.

The project owners mention giant natural disasters as a use-case as I pointed out above, but my amendment to this point is that they don’t have to wait for another hurricane or earthquake to test their robot and work on improvements. Stompy every week could be used to make a difference between life and death in many parts of the world. The state of Colorado may want to consider sponsorship and taking a robot on trial-runs ASAP.

Alas, back to the story, there is not yet a Stompy option. The hikers who found the dog gave up on authorities and turned to social networking (the 14ers site). They posted a notice to summon a community rescue team. Moving on their own initiative a group of seven strangers then teamed up and risked their lives to ascend the mountain and save the dog. The seven spent nine hours, including hiking through blizzard conditions, to climb up and carry her down from 13,000ft.

Missy Rescue
Source: Getty Image from Examiner

The dog survived and the owner now has been charged by officials with a class 1 misdemeanor (6-18 months in county jail and/or $500-5,000 fine) under Colorado’s cruelty to animals statutes.

18-9-202(1)(b) Any person who intentionally abandons a dog or cat commits the offense of cruelty to animals.

A volunteer rescue operation is an awesome testament to humans but think about the cost and complexity to notify, assemble, debrief and plan, equip and deploy six people…versus firing up a robot with two people (from notify to deploy in one step). If you want to find out more and help fund Stompy, go to their Kickstarter page.

Updated to add (8/21): “New role for drones — wildlife, eco conservation”

Food, History, Security

Paul Ryan and the Great Irish Potato Famine

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John Kelly, author of “The Graves Are Walking: The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People“, has posted a fascinating look at VP candidate Paul Ryan’s policy on public welfare by looking back at the Irish Famine.

It started in 1845 and before it was over more than one million men, women, and children would die and another two million would flee the country. Measured in terms of mortality, the Great Irish Potato Famine was the worst disasters in the nineteenth century—it claimed twice as many lives as the American Civil War.

Kelly points out that Ryan claims a direct Irish heritage, yet the VP candidate’s views are diametrically opposed to his own family’s story of survival. Ryan is compared with British who wanted to decimate the poor during famine.

…between 1845 and 1850, repeated crop failures reduced the population of Ireland by a third. But crop failure wasn’t what caused the worst of it: a government economic philosophy called “Moralism” and speeches made in Parliament that are almost word-for-word like Ryan’s own speeches about his Republican budget are what made the famine catastrophic, causing needless deaths.

Kelly later manages to drive the comparison home by bringing up widely and easily discredited Ayn Rand, Ryan’s choice of favorite author.

Back in mid-19th century Parliament, [Charles Trevelyan, the British official who oversaw famine relief] wasn’t alone, just as Ryan and Romney aren’t now. Sir Randoph Routh, the head of the Irish Relief Commission, was such a fervent crusader for the free market that not even mass starvation and mass death failed to shake his belief. When a starving delegation from famine-struck County Mayo visited Routh’s office, he presented his guests not with food, but instead with a copy of Edmund Burke’s pamphlet Details on Scarcity, in which Burke explains how market forces deliver food more efficiently than the government. In Routh’s enthusiastic gifting of Burke’s book are shades of Ryan’s fervent profferings, for years, of the works of Ayn Rand. (To be fair, Ryan didn’t give copies of Atlas Shrugged to any starving peasants.)

Just as well that Ryan didn’t hand out Ayn Rand’s work since it turns out her views actually contradict his stated religious beliefs.

Memorial in Dublin, Ireland to victims of the Famine:

Famine Memorial
Photo Source: Society of Environmental Journalists, 3rd Place, Outstanding Photography — National Geographic, Jim Richardson

Sailing, Security

AC45 World Series Comes to SF

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Recently the NYT described some of the reasons the America’s Cup has changed.

Two years ago the officials who run the America’s Cup made an important decision: they were going to change professional sailing into a sport that was actually fun to watch.

That has meant bringing Big Data, surveillance and real-time analysis into the picture.

Honey’s team has to measure the position of every boat to within an inch at all times, while also measuring the position and angle of every helicopter-mounted television camera. The team is also collecting data on wind and water conditions, which play heavily into sailing strategy, and looking for ways to incorporate that into the television display.

By collecting this data, Honey’s team has ended up changing how the races operate. Race officials now watch the sailing on monitors from a control room on the shore, and any decision that relies on the objective knowledge of a boat’s position is made using the same positional data used to create the graphics.

[…]

The America’s Cup is designing an augmented reality smartphone app, which will allow spectators on shore to hold their phones up to the water and get the type of information available on television.

Obviously another change to the sport has been to bring the thrill of racing within view of people on shore. The big boats used to disappear and sail in light wind and steady seas, where only a few could see, but now everyone can enjoy watching in city-front weather conditions.

We’ve had some windy days recently and the forecast is starting to look like 10-20 mph through next week. Inside Bay Area gives an exciting prediction of the event.

“Hold on for dear life!”

That’s the warning from sailors aboard the 45-foot racing catamarans that you’ll see slicing through whitecaps next week, when the America’s Cup World Series brings the thrills and spills of the world’s most exciting racing to San Francisco Bay.

Imagine a white-knuckle drag race on the back of a bucking bronco — with winds whipping up at nearly 20 mph and a fire hose of salt water battering over the bow. The signature America’s Cup races are still a year away, but 11 catamarans from eight countries will be on the bay next week offering a taste of the drama that’s to come.

[…]

Four Olympic medalists fresh from London will compete next week, including four-time gold medalist Ben Ainslie, who carried the British flag into closing ceremonies. His credentials are impressive, but his experience on the temperamental AC45 is limited.

“I think he’ll be a little bit scared,” said Kimball Livingston, an editor-at-large for Sail Magazine. “I think all these guys as they get into it are a little bit scared — and for good reason. You can hurt yourself.”

They’re not just scared of being hurt, they’re scared of losing control. Ainslie won his gold medals by sailing a 1949 design called the Finn that plods along at about 7 mph. The AC45 will give him a state-of-the-art racing machine that tops out around 30 mph.

It’s like the difference between driving a 1950s Studebaker at 50 mph versus racing a 2012 LeMans race car at 200 mph. You can get hurt in either. Doing everything four times faster than ever before is the real issue, which is why they’re scared. After racing for a while at higher speed they become used to it and stop feeling scared, despite the risk of being hurt.

Does 30 mph sound slow to you? It actually is about the fastest a sailboat can go using current technology. The AC72, which will be far more powerful than the AC45, is expected to go only about 40 mph. For reference, driving a car over 30 mph usually requires a very smooth surface. These boats are bigger than a bus, navigating a very rough and unpredictable surface (waves), with no brakes and balancing one hull up in the air. Personally, I think it’s the best feeling in the world.


Photo:(c)2011 Gilles Martin-Raget, americascup.com

With only a few days before things start there have been numerous helicopters flying overhead, presumably to help prepare the races and to take photos like those found on SF Gate.

As you can see the races will be held in front of the Marina Green, giving land spectators an easy and free view of everything. The America’s Cup Village opens Tuesday the 21st at 10am.