Mariner Waterproof Drone - Maiden flight at Lady Musgrave

A while back we purchased a waterproof FPV Mariner Drone (now also know as the FPV Splash Drone) from Rise Above in Sydney to capture our adventure on Lucey Blue from above. We love to muck around with our cameras underwater and the idea of capturing our surroundings from a different perspective was attractive.

Our first few flights on land were rather exciting as we had no experience with this type of kit, but Rafi from Rise Above helped us out when we hit trouble.

We decided to conduct our maiden over-water flight at Lady Musgrave. To be safe we did a test run without the GoPro camera attached. The crew of Lucey Blue were pleased that the Mariner Drone took off smoothly (despite a gentle ten knot wind) from our makeshift launch area (the rear solar panel array) and were further amazed when we managed to land on the rear steps at the stern of the boat. A trial run and we had not even got the Mariner Drone wet despite some wind and a moving landing pad (patting ourselves on the back here)!

With a full battery we bravely strapped on the GoPro camera, set the timer to capture images evey 5 seconds and took off to see what would happen.

We had a successful flight, with a planned wet touchdown (we didn't want to crash the GoPro into the deck if it got wobbly on descent). Some neighbouring yachties zoomed over in their dinghy to return it to us, which was great. As a side benefit, it was a nice way to meet new people, as they ended up visiting us in the afternoon for drinks and snacks aboard Lucey Blue too. We still have a lot to learn, about drone flying, but our intitial flight and photos brought big smiles to all aboard...