Newsletter

6th of July

Manoeuvrability Challenge

After Aurora arrived on Monday, we had a technical inspection on Tuesday which we passed with flying colours. We had time to test the boat in the harbour for the Manoeuvrability Challenge and we sailed on Open Sea where we almost immediatly foiled!

Today we started the race day with a parade. All the boats participating in the various competition classes could be admired sailing in the harbour. It was an impressive and cheerful parade of solar, hydrogen and battery boats. We are happy to set an example for the maritime industry together. After the parade it was time for our first challenge; the Manoeuvrability Challenge. In this challenge we were tested on our ability to make specific manoeuvres in the harbour.  The manoeuvres we had to perform were sailing around a buoy, slalom around buoys and complete a 360 degrees turn backwards around a buoy and end with sailing backwards and docking the boat. We had to complete te course as fast as possible at a speed of max 4 knots. After talking through our strategy for the challenge we could start our first attempt and we finished with a time of 3 minutes and 9 seconds. This resulted in us winning the second place in the Manoeuvrability Challenge, but this is just beginning.

Upcoming Challenges

On the 7th of July we will have our second and most important challenge: the Endurance Challenge. Here we will demonstrate the true potential of hydrogen.
For this challenge we sail for 4 hours straight. The boat completing the most laps wins! The difficulty here is to balance speed with energy consumption. You want to sail as fast as possible, but by doing so you consume more energy and the amount of energy is not infinite. Hydrogen has a huge advantage over other energy sources as it has a high energy density and can therefore provide a lot of energy with less weight.

On the 8th of July we will have the last challenge; the Speed Challenge. For the Speed Challenge we sail to the Italian city of Ventimiglia, which is 16 nautical miles away, a distance of almost 26 kilometres. The fastest boat wins! Our foils make our boat more efficient by reducing the amount of drag by flying over the water. With the same power we can go from 35 km/h to 50 km/h just by foiling.

Stay tuned

Keep an eye out for the next newsletter to be kept up to date. The next newsletter will be arriving tomorrow after we sailed the Endurance Challenge. Do you know someone who is not yet receiving this newsletter but would like to? Send an email to exposure@hydromotionteam.nl or click on the link below. Via the link, you can enter an email address and will be asked to confirm via Mailchimp’s email. Feel free to send any comments or questions to exposure@hydromotionteam.nl

See you next time!