a brief history of the Aurora, originally the R/V Phuma
Back in 1990, James Gast, a professor of oceanography at Humboldt State University in Eureka California, decided he wanted to build a boat. From my understanding, his thinking was he wanted a boat he could retire on and also still do classes and do research trips. The ship was designed with the help of naval architect Phil Bolger, who has designed more than 700 boats and has 7 books out on boat design out there. This boat is design #410. The boat was called the R/V (research vessel) Phuma. There were several iterations of the design along the years. It's a double steel hulled so it can go where there is ice. Mr. Gast did the welding himself. It has a very shallow draft, of about 5ft, so it can go into shallow water for research. It was designed to have leeboards that would provide stability when sailing. The steel hull also allows for the boat to be run aground during tides in case the rudder or something needs to be worked on and then it'll float back into the w