Oct/090
WSC Day 1
We’ve been driving for the past several hours and just exited our first control stop in Katherine.
We are currently in tenth place overall and are roughly an hour behind MIT (they also share a silicon array).
I’ll post pictures and more info about scrutineering shortly
Oct/091
Apogee has arrived!
After a delay of a couple days due to the container ship captain being afraid of a tsunami…we finally got our solar car!
We drove our rental van and rental truck to DB Schenker to unload our container and get our Solar Car and our Ford E350 Van. Sasha, Matt, Nathan, and I went into the warehouse to unload the container while the rest of the team prepared the other vehicles for accepting a greatly increased load of cargo.
DB Schenker
The team waits
Once inside the enormous warehouse, which processes everything from our solar car to Dell computers, we had to put on extra-dorky “visibility vests” to prevent us from getting hit by forklifts going 25MPH.
Behind the scenes at the warehouse
Container!
We open the doors to the container (which were sealed by this kind of interesting, “tamperproof,” metal strap) to find ourselves an intact Solar Car and Van!
The Solar Car and the Van after we open the container for the first time in months
We had to carefully unload the container, which was extra fun due to the wooden beam put in place behind the van’s rear wheel that required a combination of a crowbar and a circular saw to remove.
After transporting the Solar Car outside, we loaded it into the truck by picking it up (easy!). It fit by about an inch. In the largest truck we could get in Australia without a special license. Wow.
Then we needed Nathan’s spiderman skills to strap the car down.
Packing the Truck
An extremely awesome local automotive training school gave us some space to work on our car for tomorrow, so we transported the mess in the Solar Car shop directly to them.
Solar Car!
Oct/090
Waiting Game
So we’ve been hanging out in the hostel for the past several days, not doing too much since the car shipment got delayed by a tsunami… We have had the chance to check out the nightlife in Melbourne, including a brief visit to the Crown Casino and some other interesting locations. I haven’t lost any money and have so far only enjoyed the idiot-subsidized food and other perks associated with these sorts of places.
We’re going to customs tomorrow to see if we can get our car, provided that the boat gets into port. We also need to stock up on supplies (which will take place while the van is hopefully getting steam-cleaned as part of the quarantine process).
Additionally, having high speed internet has been helpful for keeping tabs on other teams. The winner of the 2007 World Solar Challenge, the Nuon Solar Team from the Netherlands, suffered a severe accident after a tire blowout near Darwin. Video of the wreck can be found here:
http://www.autojunk.nl/2009/10/nuna5-crash-scene-investigation
Pictures Here:
https://www.tudelft.nl/live/pagina.jsp?id=168da798-7187-4083-884b-c8a769631501&lang=en
The accident doesn’t look, at least by inspection, any different from the accident Stanford had during WSC 2007. Without a concrete drainage structure to hit, however, Nuna5 did not flip and instead apparently hit some trees. The damage looks more severe than with Equinox in 2007. The top-shell wraparound components have completely delaminated and the carbon fiber around one of the front wheel areas looks almost completely destroyed. If we had suffered a similar level of damage, we would be packing up and heading home right now. If Nuna can fix/patch up their car in time for the race, that would be impressive.
Having a broken car already in Darwin may still be better than having your car stuck at sea…
Oct/092
Exploring Melbourne
The last couple days we’ve been touring around Melbourne and checking out the scenery. After getting a number of local meats and cheeses at the market we had a nice meal on the riverbank where we had a pretty awesome view of the Melbourne skyline.
Following the tip of a fellow SJP class of 2008 alumnus, we had a good time at a club in chinatown where we danced to some legit techno.
Today we went to St. Kilda where we checked out the beach. It was very windy and somewhat cold (especially for someone who forgot their jacket), but I did get to put my feet in the water (nowhere near as cold as Beverly in the springtime). I also found a jellyfish…it was somewhat large.
We had a good meal of fish and chips from a local shop and also got various cakes/pastries which we ate while on the beach.
Now we’re playing the waiting game as our solar car and van pass through customs. It’s only a few short days before we begin the long drive to Darwin.
Oct/090
Landed in Melbourne
Downtown Melbourne
So this is the first post of hopefully many about my trip to Australia for the 2009 World Solar Challenge. I landed in Melbourne on Sunday and promptly fell asleep immediately after arriving at the hostel that the team is staying at.
My flights were relatively non-eventful, I ended up sleeping for a good portion of the roughly 24 hours I spent in the air. I flew from Boston->San Francisco->Auckland->Melbourne. Air New Zealand had an awesome in-flight entertainment system and I got to watch a lot of movies, most of which I had to rewind often due to me falling asleep.
The last two days we’ve been exploring the city and enjoying the interesting food options – including an all-you-can eat dumpling restaurant, which was amazing on so many levels. I’m trying to avoid the McDonalds and the Hungry Jack’s (aka, Burger King), despite their temptations of free WiFi, to sample some more interesting fare.
We also went to the large public market in Melbourne and bought some high-quality food products, which we enjoyed eating on the waterfront.