UBC SailBot

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UBC SailBot UBC Sailbot is an Engineering Design Team at UBC focussing on the design, construction, and testing of fully autonomous sailboats.

Check out our website to learn more!

🚨WE'RE HIRING!!!🚨We are looking for creative minds to join our Marketing Team 📸If you think you are the one...Send you r...
09/26/2026

🚨WE'RE HIRING!!!🚨

We are looking for creative minds to join our Marketing Team 📸

If you think you are the one...Send you resume to

🚨WE'RE HIRING!!!🚨We are looking for creative minds to join our Marketing Team 📸
09/26/2026

🚨WE'RE HIRING!!!🚨

We are looking for creative minds to join our Marketing Team 📸

School is back, so are we!
09/20/2026

School is back, so are we!

09/13/2026

What makes our boat autonomous?

Meet the Mechanical team behind POLARIS.
From sail to rudder, every decision that shaped how our boat performs on the water.

Here is a quick summary of what we did this summer 🌊
09/11/2026

Here is a quick summary of what we did this summer 🌊

Applications are being accepted on a rolling basis (recruitment form will close once positions are filled)! Link here: u...
09/04/2026

Applications are being accepted on a rolling basis (recruitment form will close once positions are filled)! Link here: ubcsailbot.org/recruitment

95 NM (176 km) in just under 81 hours: POLARIS went on quite the maiden voyage last month (starting out at 9:56 AM on Au...
09/03/2026

95 NM (176 km) in just under 81 hours: POLARIS went on quite the maiden voyage last month (starting out at 9:56 AM on August 20th from Bamfield and finishing at 6:45 PM on August 23rd in Ucluelet)!

3 years ago, POLARIS was just a concept. The team was still working through design considerations and trying to balance requirements to ensure the vessel could actually be made. The first full CAD of POLARIS came together at the start of 2024, and by the summer of 2025, construction was complete and we had our first launch out of Jericho.

The speed at which this project has come together is something we're truly proud of, especially given this is all volunteer work done outside of already full course loads! The team has really stepped up time and time again to make this all a reality!

Our software team is hard at work polishing up our dedicated website for POLARIS (sailbotpolaris.com). In classic "software always works" fashion, as of August (impeccable timing), the platform we use for map visualization began enforcing API keys. Please give us some time as we resolve this issue, after which the data we collected will be ready to view and download!

We learned a lot about how POLARIS behaves out in the open ocean, far more than what we've been able to observe in our testing in English Bay. Given our past experience (Ada, a previous vessel, got hit by multiple hurricanes), we designed our current vessel with high wind conditions in mind. However, given launch timing and the associated conditions, the average wind speed POLARIS experienced was around 10 kts. Optimal sailing conditions (as designed) are between 10-20 kts, so POLARIS happened to be stalled for the majority of the time. As such, controllability was a challenge and led to significantly more drift than we had planned for. This is something we will be focusing on before our next launch to ensure POLARIS has greater control during sailing.

A big thank you to Jon Mikkelsen who's been a Faculty Advisor with the team since its inception back in 2005 (over 20 years strong)! Another huge thank you to Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre for hosting the team and towing POLARIS out for launch! Lastly, a massive thank you to Scott Nijman from Oceans West Adventures (oceanswestadventures.com) for organizing the retrieval of POLARIS!

Surprise surprise: you can win more than bragging rights! Sign up before spots fill up (https://forms.gle/5yqenwaJMpbiiH...
02/10/2026

Surprise surprise: you can win more than bragging rights! Sign up before spots fill up (https://forms.gle/5yqenwaJMpbiiH789)!

EDT Design Competition is a one-day event where members of any engineering design team at UBC can showcase their engineering skills through a friendly inter-design-team competition similar to the format of a hackathon, but with streams for electrical, mechanical, and software design projects!

A big thank you to IEEE Canadian Foundation (ICF) for sponsoring our team! The IEEE Canadian Foundation cultivates resou...
12/10/2025

A big thank you to IEEE Canadian Foundation (ICF) for sponsoring our team! The IEEE Canadian Foundation cultivates resources and relationships to advance IEEE's core purpose to foster technological innovation and excellence to benefit humanity. They generously funded numerous purchases such as our slip ring, encoder, and components to develop our custom waterproof battery enclosures, ensuring greater precision and reliability of our vessel.

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