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do many great sailing-related
ventures, the Navocean proj-
ect began over a bottle of wine.
The year was 2000, and Ethan Arutunian
and Scott Duncan, two friends who met
at Whitman College, were pondering a
model sailboat, wondering how far such a
craft could travel on the open ocean, sans
active remote control or human input. The
idea of building an autonomous sailboat
sounded better and better as the wine bot-
tle emptied, and later that year, Arutunian,
a talented software developer, and Duncan,a skilled boatbuilder, launched a rough
remote-controlled prototype, dubbed
MiniNav, which the team used to test hull
shape and sail confi gurations.
Beyond their mutual interest in the
design challenge of building an ASV,
Arutunian and Duncan also share a strong
interest in marine science. Arutunian had
spent time at sea monitoring sperm whales
of of Norway, and had sailed with Duncan
from Maine to the Caribbean to make
passive acoustic recordings of these char-
ismatic creatures. He had experienced
fi rsthand the physical and psychologicalravages of seasickness while trying to write
computer code belowdecks in a heaving
seaway. In addition, he understood the
pecuniary limitations of manned research
vessels. “It’s so expensive today to send
a team on a research boat and deploy
your instrument for a week, once a year,
to get that little snapshot of data,” says
Arutunian, who adds that just chartering a
research vessel for a scientifi c expedition
can exceed $50,000 per day.
This dual interest in ASV technology
and scientifi c research ultimately gavethe team their design brief. “The over-
all concept was to build an advanced
form of an ocean buoy,” says Duncan,
Navocean’s chief designer. Instead of
focusing on high-speed sailing perfor-
mance (Nav2’s top speed is 3 to 4 knots),
the team focused on stability, operational
silence, and the ability to negotiate a
wide range of of shore conditions.
Like many startup ventures, Navocean
experienced some starts and stops as
Arutunian and Duncan balanced their
professional and family lives with their
nascent company. Thanks to a small grantfrom the Maine Technology Institute in
2004, the pair built a second- generation
boat in 2004 that incorporated a special-
ized computer, a more developed hull
form, and more advanced autonomous-
sailing capabilities, but Arutunian and
Duncan still were not satisfi ed. Some
years passed, but in this case, the extra
time brought with it signifi cant advances
in technology, such as miniaturized sen-
sors and touchscreen-enabled mobile
devices, as well as app-based software and
graphically rich and intuitive user inter-
faces. Couple this with the advent of the
Automatic Identifi cation System and new
scientifi c instruments, and the team had
some powerful new tools at their disposal.
While the original MiniNav showed
promise, Arutunian knew that future ves-
sels would have to be fully autonomous
and capable of carrying a sizable scientifi c
payload to attract the attention of scien-
tists and research universities. While the
team’s second-generation ASV marked an
evolution over its prototype, a purchase
order from the University of Maine in 2014
allowed Arutunian and Duncan to build
a larger, third-generation vessel, Nav3,
with sensors for data collection as part of
NOAA’s Northeast Regional Association
of Coastal Ocean Observing Systems.2015, Arutunian and Duncan
designed and built a brand-
new fourth-generation ASV,
which they named Nav2 in reference to
its 2-meter LOA. They set out to use the
2016 R2AK, which had swept up the sail-
ing community with its media-friendly
2015 debut, to demonstrate its capabilities
on an international stage. While Duncan
tackled the hull form, appendages and sail
plan, Arutunian wrote all of the vessel-
operations software and developed an app
for controlling the ASV that can be run
on smartphones, tablets or computers,
giving the team a huge amount of opera-
tional fl exibility. He also custom-built the
ASV’s “brain,” which consists of a com-
puter, server, scientifi c instrumentation
and communications infrastructure. This
equipment is contained in a watertight
box — complete with temperature and
moisture sensors — inside the hull, which
is also watertight.
To navigate and sail, Nav2 carries a GPS
receiver, Airmar wind sensor, listen-only
AIS receiver, electronic compass and
pitch-heading-roll sensor, which is used to
make compass corrections. An autopilot
maintains course, an unstayed carbon-
fi ber mast supports the mainsail-and-jib
sail plan, and a small, anti-jamming winch
controls Nav2’s two-line sheeting sys-
tem. In case Nav2 gets stuck in irons or is
dealt a windless day, the boat is fi tted withEthan Arutunian and Stuart Lochner pose with Nav2 after a test sail at Seattle’s
Shilshole Marina (above). The brain behind Nav2’s operations consists of a com-
puter, scientifi c instrumentation and communications equipment (opposite).DAVID SCHMIDT