This winter in Thailand I built a 1/4 scale model of the folding solar powered foil assist electric auxiliary proa design I am working on. To test it I pushed it down the road to the beach on the trailer of my sons Optimist dingy, launched it, and unfolded it on the water. It occurred to me that a full sized version could be kept at our house and left on an expanding trailer partially unfolded and provide us with an autonomous off grid two bedroom guest house that could be towed to the beech and launched any time . We could also tow it to my wife’s village and stay in it on the trailer.  I could cook my own food ,avoid my in-laws and take the dingy fishing on the lake. Not only that we could put it and the trailer in a 20’ container and ship it anywhere for extended touring and cruising.
My wife is a farmer at heart and has been growing vegetables and herbs on a tiny plot behind our house. She wants to move to where she can plant some fruit tress and keep chickens.
While I was working on some revisions to my design that I determined were needed based on the results of the model tests, I thought why not try and put everything together in an integrated package for my family or for that matter anyone who has ever imagined life as an impecunious sailor , fisherman ,gentleman farmer ,and road gypsy.
Electric SUV(maybe Telsa will make one),solar carport, automatic tractor chicken coop, hydroponic garden composting toilets, ,folding micro-home base,? Anyone with any ideas. What else would you throw into the mix.
I posted on boatdesign net and got one response. I am hoping that some of you here might be more interested in concepts that integrate living on the land and sea in a green and sustainable way and will share your ideas.  Feel free to be critical of mine.
I am going to attach some renderings that Illustrate the concept.Bear in mind I am just brainstorming. I think I will need two posts to download all the renderings.

moe pictures

Timothy,

Fascinating concept and a lot to like about the proa design itself. A few preliminary spontaneous thoughts…..

1) If you have a car and a trailer, you have to have a permanent land base somewhere, with the risk of vandalism or theft whist away for extended periods. You are also taking up parking space which has to be bought or rented. Then there are the insurance premiums and rates and taxes. All of this is additional cost and worry…....So you should go the whole hog and make it amphibious as well???? Take your wheels with you.

http://www.gizmag.com/sealegs-amphibious-rib-completes-malaysian-circumnavigation/13553/

2) I would flip the cockpit and the cabin over. This gives much more protection to the cockpit and better access to the mast and all controls. It also gives you a better solar generating platform of more regular shape with less sail shading and less traffic on cabin top solar panels.

Rob

Thank you for posting here, Timothy. It’s a fantastic design, though perhaps that is the problem - I see so many innovative elements that it is difficult to focus! For instance, it has a lot of solar panels, and I wonder why, given that it has an excellent sail. So for one, what are the energy needs and is solar really the best way to accomplish that, or is the design flexible?

The Transformer folding is amazing, and of course all the usual engineering questions come up with that.

However, I love the folding camp trailer over slender pontoon hulls concept, and even if it didn’t fold away like George Jetson’s flying car, I’d still love it. The basic design would make for a very enjoyable platform on the sea, and on land. Perhaps the only way I could see to really improve/innovate/ruin the concept would be to make the hulls inflatable, so they could roll up to almost nothing while in land mode. See Teh Pookie for thoughts on that, and Dave Culp’s forum topic Faster is Funner.

The scale model I made had a clam shell cover over the cabin with a paulonia deck to facilitate sail handling . When I made the revisions to the plans to simplify the operation and manufacture of the folding top I omitted to provide for a non skid platform for sail handling. I worked on the problem for the last couple of days and concluded the simplest fix is to replace the solar panels near the mast with a paulonia deck. I tried various ways of reversing the cockpit and cabin but could find no way to do it without compromising the ability of the boat to fit in a 20`container ( I like the idea though).  Yes it is expensive to maintain a car and own a piece of land but the whole idea behind the concept is to make it possible by combining technologies old and new to make a life style only enjoyed by the privileged few available to those of us with a more egalitarian mind set,  with less discretionary income, and who value our time and the well being of the planet more than the pursuit of wealth and privilege.
I built the scale model, one of several , primarily to make sure the folding method was structurally sound . It worked fine on the water. I deliberately used the cheapest materials I could buy . The total cost of the 15`model was less than $200.00 . Testing has made me fairly confident that a full sized prototype made from cheap polycore panel skins and pulltruded carbon reinforcing where needed can be made light enough ,  structurally sound and at a reasonable cost.
The boat is totally electric. Electric propulsion has only been found to be viable when the house loads are great and the propulsion needs are small. I calculated the size of the solar panel array based on the ability to run the electric Torqeedo engine on the dingy,( that is the main boats auxiliary power), all day and for 8 hours at night under battery power alone. The panels have to power the refrigerator, the freezer, the water maker ,and the varius actuators and step motors as well as the drum winch,  that control the folding of the hulls, the extension of the beams and the raising and telescoping of the mast.
I made the vaka 20 to 1 and the amma 25 to 1 ( length to beam) and the amma volume is about 110 % of displacement. At rest the amma handles 25% of displacement . The deployed angled foil on the safety amma is forward of the centre of gravity and is intended to reduce displacement by 70%.
Attached are photos of the as yet at the time completed model I built to test the concept.