We are working on a seastead design.

Above the water there will be a big triangle frame.  The
left and right sides will be 70 feet long and the back part of the triangle will be 35 feet wide.
The point opposite the 35 ft side is the front.
The triangle frame will be a truss structure that is 7 feet high (floor to ceiling).
It will be enclosed and the whole inside the living area.  Lots of glass to see out.

There are 3 legs/floats/foils/wings that provide the buoyancy, so it is a bit like a trimaran but with a very soft ride.
Each leg/wing will 19 feet long and have a NACA 0030 foil shape with 10 foot chord and 3 foot width.
Each of the 3 legs will be attached to the underside of the big triangle near one of the 3 points (but the total top of the
leg will be inside the triangle) and going down so that the lower half is in the water.
This makes for a "small waterline area" similar like a small oil platform but one that can move through the water easier because of the foil shape.
The 3 legs will all be parallel with the blunt or "leading edge of the wing" side facing forward so it is low drag for the seastead to move forward.
Each leg will be 50% under the water (so 0.5 * 19 feet) and the top 50% out of the water.
On the top half of the front of each leg, so the top half that is out of the water, will be a built in ladder.

There will be 6 RIM drive thrusters of 1.5 foot diameter, one on each side of the 3 legs/wings about 3 feet up from the bottom.
These RIM drives will have the flat sides toward the front and back of the seastead.

On top of the roof there will be solar all over.

Behind the back near the center will be two supports going out and 2 ropes going down to a dinghy.
The dinghy is a 14 foot RIB boat with an electric Yamaha HARMO outboard.  It is sideways against the center of the backside of the living area.
When the seastead is moving forward the dingy is shielded from the wind by the living area.
Also behind the back on the left and right of the dinghy will be a deck that is 5 feet wide extending beyond the back of the triangle.

There are 3 stabilizers that look like a little airplanes, one attached near the back of each main seastead leg.  
The little airplane has a 12 foot wing-span, 1.5 foot chord, the body 6 feet long, and the elevator has a 2 foot wing-span and 6 inch chord. 
A small actuator makes the elevator angle up or down so it can adjust the angle of 
attack of the main wing of this stabilizer without needing a large actuator.
This is really the "servo tab" idea.
While the thick part of the leg is 3 feet wide the back where the airplane will attach is very thin.  And to get the airplane's
center of lift to balance on the pivot a notch into the front/center of the wing only has to go about 25% of the chord of the wing.

When the seastead is going to be staying in one place for awhile, we can put down 3 helical mooring screws and give the seastead tension legs 
so it becomes nearly stationary when parked.

Two seasteads will be able to connect together with a walkway, one behind the other, so that while underway 
people can move between seasteads, enabling a real community.   




Now I want to look at having a "convoy mode".  The idea is that a group of seasteads can
move staying at fixed positions relative to each other, say on a grid.  If a new
seastead wants to join the computer gives a recommended grid position, he goes
near that position, approaching from outside the convoy, and then when he gets to
within half a grid spacing (or something) it says "convoy mode activated" and 
the autopilot keeps it at that position from then on.

In convoy mode all the seasteads can all be looking for other traffic and tell each other
of anything.  So "night watch" has a whole bunch of people, computers, and AI all looking out.

Can have some set of people who are "on watch" and have some way that they are confirming
that they are on watch to the group.  

We can assume that all seasteads have Starlink, AIS, and are running the same software.

We will use "moving base RTK GPS" so all seasteads will know exactly where they 
should be relative to the others.

If a ship is seen in the distance then using parallax from several different 
seastead cameras at different but precisely known positions the distance to the sighting will be computed
and the object listed in a database of tracked object which can be constantly updated.

What sort of local data communications mesh network hardware and software makes sense for such a convoy?
If we are on a grid each seastead could have 4 directional antennas to be sure to 
be able to communicate with neighbors.  Seems like WiFi 5/6 on 5 Ghz is cheap, long range enough, and fast enough.
What does it cost and what sort of range and data rate would we get?  What do you recommend?   
The seasteads are still in the design phase so we can easily add some communications hardware but we 
would like to keep costs down when possible.


Can you flesh out this "convoy mode" idea?  What all would be needed?