I got the Substack app and got access to the article. Seeing the picture of the low freeboard is compelling. I’d be curious to know why the drone couldn’t avoid the collision. Was that a failure or was the sailboat just going too fast or in too unpredictable of a course to avoid?
The irony is that if both vessels were automated they probably would’ve seen each others’ AIS and avoided the collision.
As low as the freeboard is I don’t think it’d be any harder to see than a kayaker or small bass boat. And I wasn’t compelled by the 2 foot seas obscuring visibility. I think this is actually pretty analogous to the question of AI forum posts - the drone wasn’t any harder to deal with than a regular manned vessel, but maybe there will be more of them so you need to deal with it at a larger scale than traditional human-controlled obstacles.