Quick on the heels of last week's announcement that 14-year old Laura Dekker would be allowed to make a solo circumnavigation attempt, comes word that she has set sail today, along with her father, for Portugal, where she'll complete the final preparations for her voyage and get properly underway soon.
Laura and her dad, Dick Dekker, sailed out of the Dutch harbor of Den Osse this morning aboard her 26-foot sailing yacht, the Guppy, with about a hundred well wishers on hand to witness the start of the adventure. The father-daughter pair will now spend the next few days sailing to Portugal, at which time Dick will leave the Guppy and Laura will set sail for the Canary Islands and eventually the open waters of the Atlantic.
It is estimated that it could be about four weeks before the voyage officially begins, but Laura has already loaded up her school books and most of her supplies. One of the conditions of her being allowed to make this journey is that she enter into a distance learning program which will allow her to continue her studies while abroad. The circumnavigation attempt could take upwards of two years, and if she completes it by the September of 2012, Laura will become the youngest person ever to sail around the globe.
World's largest solar boat, PlanetSolar, will silently and cleanly carry two men around the globe.
The PlanetSolar team unveiled its massive boat this week.
To grasp the scale of this super yacht, compare it to the
forklift on the far right or to the person working behind
the windshield.
By next year, giant catamaran PlanetSolar will be sailing on sunshine.
This green leviathan is the world's largest solar-powered seacraft. Weighing in at 60 tons, the PlanetSolar measures 102 feet long, about 50 feet wide, and 24 feet tall. For a sense of scale, peek into its front window, pictured above, and try to spot the doll-like man working inside. (You might need to click to enlarge the photo.)
Really, PlanetSolar's jumbo size is simply to accommodate the 5,300 square feet of sun-soaking panels that run along its topside. The solar array pulls in 103 kW, five times more than the boat needs to run at its average speed of 9 m.p.h. but PlanetSolar aims for the long haul. The boat will lift anchor in Europe around April 2011 and attempt to circle the globe, fueled by nothing but solar rays.
Unlike the almost absurdly decadent Oculus and Infinitas super yachts that we told you about, the interior of this boat leans toward the Spartan. Only two men will make the worldwide voyage. Thriller-seeker Raphaël Domjan will skipper the ship. And he picked an excellent adventure buddy: Gerard d'Aboville, the first man to row across the entire Atlantic Ocean.
Along the cruise from New York to San Francisco to Abu Dhabi, the world tour will share a message of environmental stewardship. "Today, the boat is the most used means of transport of goods," the team writes. "It represents single-handedly almost 1.4 billions of tons of carbon dioxide (in 2008), that is 6% of the total carbon dioxide emissions and twice more than the air transport."
