To stimulate the solar sport racing and make it easier innovate for new teams, Yacht Club De Monaco & Solar Sport One launched an “Innovation Challenge”. To participate they asked for a motivation and financial plan for the next three years. The price? A free V20 boat!
In close cooperation with the boat committee we considered the option to participate in this contest. After some discussion we decided to give it a shot and see what happens.
The discussion was about building a self-made custom boat and the ready to go V20 boat. We are an engineering society, so is getting a fully functional boat not cheating and lame? We decided it is not.
It is really hard to start a society like Engineers of Innovation from scratch since we do not have any sponsors yet (and thus money) or a workshop. With a V20 boat we are able to start immediately and join races and thus motivating members to participate. If we would build a boat by ourselves it would take months extra to find enough sponsors to start building a boat and the building process will take a lot of time as well.
The V20 boat maybe ready to go, but there are some parts on the boat that aren’t restricted in the regulations. Therefore there is still enough to design and a lot of testing to do, for both the electrical and mechanical parts of the boat. Some examples of these are the hydrofoils and propellers, which are free to design and use during the competition. However there are parts of the restricted areas that can be modified, if accepted by the other teams, afterwards we need to publish our information to those teams.
If we win the V20 boat it does not mean we will never build a boat ourselves. We think this is a good way to kick start our society, attract new potential sponsors and motivate members. After a couple of years when there is more money and members we still plan to develop our own boat from scratch! Also all the knowledge we build up during the design, testing and races with de V20, we can use in the design of our own solar boat.
For better understanding the V20 boat, we arranged a meeting with the V20 designers and producers, Vripack. On Wednesday 10th of May we were invited to come by and discuss some of the many possible innovations they thought were useful and achievable.
Please read our contest submission for Yacht Club De Monaco here
Ps.
If you are interested to join a committee please do not hesitate to send us an email! We are always searching for motivated members to actively think about the society, to make decision about thinks like participating to contests like these, to attract new sponsors, help with designing boat parts and organizing society and alumni events