A SOLAR & HL2 POWERED BOAT

 

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I'd love to be part of the crew of a solar boat setting a new record across the English Channel. There is also the possibility of a World Hydrogen Challenge, after Jules Verne. But a very limited window of opportunity, as the 150th anniversary of his prediction is in 2024.

 

 

 

One thing that has been brought home by Covid19 is how much we depend on shipping for our goods. As a result of the coronavirus, timber and fixings were in short supply in 2019-2020, and that is because they are imported, rather than made in the UK - and typically come in from Asia. But another major problem with imports is pollution from diesel exhausts from heavy bunker fuel oil, also warming the planet as cargo ships add to greenhouse gases.

 

That is why zero carbon shipping is now held to be rather important. Interestingly, the speed record for a solar boat across the Atlantic, southbound is only 5.3 knots. I feel sure that a more advanced boat like the proposed Elizabeth Swann could best that record, to advance the science of clean transport.

 

The present record was set in 2013 by MS Tûranor PlanetSolar, a catamaran conversion that left from Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, Spain, on April 25, 2013, and sailed across the Atlantic Ocean, traveling at a speed of 5.3 knots before the energy autonomous boat reached Marigot, St Martin, in the French West Indies on May 18, 2013.

 

Switzerland’s MS Tûranor PlanetSolar, is currently the world’s largest solar boat according to Gérard d’Aboville, and Raphaël Domjan, both skippers of the MS Tûranor PlanetSolar. The construction and circumnavigation were mostly sponsored by Immo Ströher. Nice one Mr Ströher!

 

  

 

 

My first attempt to bend aluminium as part of the build of the Elizabeth Swann water tank test model.

 

 

 

I enjoy working on unusual projects. They teach me a great deal. In this case quite a lot of science. I'm the youngest team member of the Elizabeth Swann project. You could say I'm the cabin boy, because I do a lot of small tasks, and then I get to make a component part. And better still, fix it into place.

 

One of the first things that was drummed into me in the workshop, was how important a sharp pencil is, and a good quality tape measure, for accurate lofting (full scale marking out of the metals to be cut). In the case of this model, we are working to 1:20th scale. That means the real parts for the real ship are twenty times larger.

 

Even as a model, the vessel in longer than me. It will be quite a handful moving it, to fix it onto a gimbaled mount (that we have to make specially) to be able to film the hull in the water as it moves at different speeds and in different conditions.

 

This should be a lot of fun.

 

 

 

 

The solar boat is a trimaran, a boat having three hulls. This boat has a tubular frame high above the waves to carry solar panels, as moveable wings that are designed to track the sun. You can see the Foundation's water basin in the background.

 

 

 

Me with the Conservative MP for Eastbourne, Caroline Ansell, and Chris Close, the SeaVax project director in January of 2019. Mrs Ansell is doing a lot for the environment in 2020 and Eastbourne generally. She campaigned for better roads to the town during her last term in office.

 

 

 

Me with the former Liberal Democrat MP for Eastbourne, Stephen Lloyd. We are on the stand of another solar powered vessel designed to clean plastic from polluted oceans, called SeaVax. I'm the shorter person. Despite the best efforts of the team who showed this vessel, they could not get the funding they needed to build a larger prototype. What a shame, they could have been cleaning up the oceans and rivers by now, where there is still nothing else like this on the horizon.

 

 

 

I recently found out that the English Channel was crossed in 1909 by Louis Bleriot for the first time in a vehicle heavier that air. Bleriot was inspired by the Wright Brother's flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903, who proved air travel was possible. Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic for the first time in 1927. Another first was Amy Johnson, who flew the engineering equality flag, proving women were just as able as men, as pilots and engineers.

 

These amazing feats confounded the skeptics, paving the way for cheap holiday flights, that also are a major cause of air pollution. The race is on to clean up air traffic with electrics. Now that is another serious challenge.

 

We are living in an age where all of a sudden, innovation is again encouraged. It's almost like we have gone back in time to the golden age of aviation adventures. Innovation grants are designed to lever cash from industry, rather than for young entrepreneurs.

 

These days Governments are doing all they can to entice large companies (with academia) to commit to such research and development with grants like Horizon Europe from January of 2021.

 

 

 

 

Turanor PlanetSolar was the first zero emission boat around the world

 

 

PLANETSOLAR - This was the first boat to circumnavigate the globe using electric propulsion motors and solar panels to power them. The achievement was funded by industry and private enterprise. Government funding does not extend to such challenges. You should see the form filling and details demanded. It's more than enough to dissuade even the hardiest scribe. The red tape is enough to make you expire from boredom. You are better off building a project based on partnerships, than waste time on applications designed only for wealthy corporations, looking for accounting advantage.

 

 

 

 

In the UK we have the Clean Maritime Plan 2050, thanks to Chris Grayling, Nus Ghani and Grant Shapps, the DfT Secretaries of State and Minister for shipping.

 

 

 

   

 

Grant Shapps, Nus Ghani and Chris Grayling

 

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION : 1 - 13

SECTION 1 - TACKLING EMISSIONS : 14 - 50
SECTION 2 - OUR APPROACH: 
51 - 58
SECTION 3 - ECONOMICS:  59 - 95
SECTION 4 - INFRASTRUCTURE:  96 - 120
SECTION 5 INNOVATION:  121 - 129
SECTION 6 - REGULATION:  130 - 138
SECTION 7 - NEXT STEPS:  139 - 140
MAP - THE 2050 PLAN RECOMMENDATIONS

GLOSSARY

END NOTES REFERENCE LINKS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ENERGY OBSERVER - This was the first boat to include hydrogen as part of a hybrid energy storage package. The French team is working with Air Liquide and Toyota, to promote zero emission waterborne transport; ZEWT. The 'Observer' is not a fast boat, in fact slower than when she was a yacht for racing, but the technology developed by the team forms the building blocks for further research.

 

 

 

 

In 1874, Jules Verne set out a prescient vision that has inspired governments and entrepreneurs in the 147 years since. In his book The Mysterious Island, Verne wrote of a world where: "water will one day be employed as fuel, that hydrogen and oxygen which constitute it, used singly or together, will furnish an inexhaustible source of heat and light, of an intensity of which coal is not capable."

 

 

ZEWT hydrogen around the world in 80 days, Jules Verne world challenge 2024

 

 

JULES VERNE 150TH ANNIVERSARY 2024: WORLD HYDROGEN CHALLENGE

 

 

LEG

NAUTICAL MILES

BUNKERING

WAYPOINT

SUNSHINE DAYS

-

-

-

-

-

START

-

-

-

-

-

-

FILL UP

Gibraltar

00.00

1

729

-

Tenerife, Canary Islands

1.90

2

3,154

-

Trinidad, Port of Spain

8.21

3

1,182

1

Panama City

3.00

4

970

-

Galapagos

2.45

5

3,640

-

Tahiti

9.48

6

1,423

-

Tonga, Nukualofa

3.71

7

410

-

Fiji, Suva

1.07

8

1,886

1

Port Moresby PNG

4.91

9

340

-

Thursday Island, Cape York

0.88

10

724

-

Darwin

1.89

11

1,572

-

Jakarta, Indonesia

4.09

12

1,881

-

Colombo, Sri Lanka

4.90

13

2,109

1

Aden, Yemen

5.49

14

698

-

Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

1.82

15

670

-

Port Said, Egypt

1.75

16

1,111

-

Palermo, Sicily

2.89

17

170

-

Naples, Italy

0.44

18

940

FINISH

Gibraltar

3.01

-

-

-

-

-

-

23,609

-

RUNTIME DAYS @ 12.5kts

78.70

-

-

(ADD 3  DAYS)

RUNTIME DAYS @ 13kts

75.67

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

(ADD 4  DAYS)

14 KNOTS AVE INC

70.26

-

-

-

AT 15 KNOTS AVE

65.58

 -

-

-

AT 16 KNOTS AVE

61.48

 

 

IT IS POSSIBLE - The father of science fiction was right. But if we are to begin such an extraordinary journey on time, we need to move on the project immediately. We have begun the process with the above (draft) schedule. We have also undertaken preliminary calculations, that bear out the hypothesis. Please help us to make this happen if you are in a position to do so.

 

 

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LINKS & REFERENCE

 

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This website is Copyright © 2021 Planet Earth Trust.

The design of the Elizabeth Swann is design copyright © January 2021 with all rights reserved.

 

 

 

 

MAN NEEDS TO CLEAN UP INNER SPACE WHERE HE IS DESTROYING PLANET EARTH