SV INFINITY
Infinity is a tough boat
While it is true that infinity was not designed to travel through ice, Infinity is an incredibly tough boat. Infinity was constructed in 1975 in Alameda California by J Monroe, and is believed to be the largest ferrocement yacht ever built. Monroe had big plans for her, and envisioned selling rooms as a timeshare plan, a way of financing around the world voyages. She was supposed to circle the globe and visit far away islands, but the plan did not meet with success and few rooms were sold. Monroe went bankrupt a few years later and was forced to sell her. She ended up in a junkyard in San Diego, being used as a live aboard houseboat, this is where Capt Clemens found her in the early 1990's.
Infinity is made of metal reinforced concrete and is basically a bunker that floats. Ferrocement, a well tested and long practiced form of boat construction, no longer in fashion due to its downsides of being extremely labor intensive during construction and heavy compared to fiberglass or aluminum, does have properties that make it exceptional for a polar vessel, such as incredible toughness, impact resistance and strength in any temperature. In the Ross Sea Infinity made impact with a large number of icebergs without so much as a scratch. Infinity is also an environmentally friendly boat, as she is not only propelled by the power of the wind, but gets her electricity from a very large solar panel array on her roof, which is stored in batteries for power at night.
She is many things, but she is not modern. Infinity is of the old school, no auto pilot, and no hydraulic winches. It takes a minimum of 3 people to raise her mainsail, and she requires many more to operate at a minimum level. She is fueled by the sweat on your brow, the ache in your back, the calluses on your hands and the wind in her sails. She is an old school beauty from a bygone era.
Always something to work on
This girl requires constant maintenance. The salty air and briny sea exact a serious toll, so she needs an army of hands to keep her shipshape. Seem like most of the time spent onboard is fixing stuff. Also doesn't help going from one temperature extreme to another, that's what brought down the mast, needed to adjust the stanchions every day on the way to Antarctica, as the sun heated up the metal from the cold night, not doing it as much as needed stressed out the metal. Clem and crew try their best to keep her going though.
