A first Desafio Solar Brasil

When a colleague of ours came up with the idea to take part in the Frisian Solar Challenge, we all thought it was a bit of a crazy idea, but a nice one at that. None of us knew about photovoltaic energy and solar panels. We knew a lot about boats. At the Pólo Náutico, the naval architecture lab where we work, we produce about 25 boats per year. So building a boat has never scared us. But dealing with solar energy was another story.

We built our boat, a slender mono-hull, in a little more than three months, the Copacabana. Our boat surprised us. Despite the fact that we hadn’t tested the solar panels, had no idea what the insolation in The Netherlands is actually like, and had no experience navigating in canals, we did pretty well during the Frisian Solar Challenge and came fourth of our class, class A. But more importantly, we realized one thing: that using solar panels to produce energy to power small boats is not that complicated, and that it has huge potential in our country, Brazil, which gets on average 5,2 kWh/m2 of solar energy per day…. So we came back from The Netherlands with a new idea: to organize our own solar boat race.

The first Desafio Solar Brasil started end october! After the prologue the next six days were to be full of emotions. Twelve teams, nine catamarans and three mono-hulls, fought fiercely for a place on the podium. Because there are very few universities that offer naval engineering courses and few places that have facilities for building boats in Brazil, the Pólo Náutico had provided catamarans to the teams that couldn’t built their own hull – the majority of them. Designing the rest of the boat and building the electric system, however, was left up to them.

The six stages of the Desafio Solar Brasil took place in the bays around Paraty. This part of Brazil, of outstanding beauty, is called ‘the green coast’ because mountains covered with deep green Atlantic Rainforest fall straight into the sea.

After an intense week of competition, the boats were finally racing through the last stage, in the bay of Paraty. The technical committee and the judges of the competition declared Vento Sul, the boat from the Federal University of Santa Catarina first overall, in the catamaran class, followed by Peixe Galo of the Grael Institute, and Agua Viva, of the Instituto Nautico, from Paraty. There was a place for everyone on the podium in the mono-hull class. Carcará and Gabriela, two boats from the COPPE lab of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro stole the first and second places, and Ipanema, Copacabana’s cousin, named after the equally famous beach, but made out of carbon fiber, came third.

According to everyone who participated, the first Desafio Solar Brasil was a success. Despite a sometimes uncooperative weather, and a couple of technical problems (the transmitter that we bought to transmit the race live still hasn’t arrived!), everything went smoothly. A committee has already been created for the organization of the second Desafio Solar Brasil, and registration is open for the Desafio Solar Brasil 2010!