We met the RoG microcruiser by JF Bedard at the Cedar Key Small Boat Meet on Florida’s Gulf Coast. First seen, she was scooting confidently east toward the bright white beach of Atsena Otie Key. The wind was variable over the southwest quadrant and puffing up between 25 and 30 knots. Whitecaps appeared, died, then hackled up again. The RoG tore along, heeled to the puffs, but its pilot started the mainsail sheet and it stopped instantly, waiting upright and stock still like a gun dog for a command, mannerly and calm. The mainsheet came in and the RoG rushed for the beach again.

When inclement weather threatens, the cabin can be enclosed and protected by a fabric covering.Lucie Laliberte

When inclement weather threatens, the cabin can be enclosed and protected with a fabric covering.

JF Bedard (Jean-François—he’s formerly of Montréal) created the RoG as a graduation project for Westlawn Institute of Marine Technology. An abbreviation for “River of Grass,” RoG is a nod to the Florida Everglades and the Everglades Challenge that JF endured aboard the prototype. His microcruiser shows its digital heritage as a complete, compact solution to a set of intelligent parameters, which were imaged, examined, balanced, and revised in the abstract of an advanced computer’s algorithms before a single stick was cut.

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