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Solar-powered boat transits in Jakarta
Race for Water expeditions began amid concerns that oceans, as a major source of life, had been contaminated by plastics.
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The Race for Water Breguet, a vessel belonging to the Race for Water Foundation, docks on Friday, June 21, 2019 at Batavia Marina Port, North Jakarta. The ship, which uses a combination of solar, hydrogen and kite power, has stopped in Indonesia as part of the Odyssey 2017-2021, a five-year marine expedition to conserve the world's oceans that has been established in partnership with the Swiss luxury watchmaker, Breguet. (JP/Donny Fernando )
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solar-powered vessel belonging to the Race for Water Foundation is in the country with the primary goal of raising awareness about plastic pollution in the oceans.
The foundation sailing the sun-powered catamaran, in the fifth year of its global campaign, anchored in Jakarta on Wednesday, having traveled from Bali. The vessel will remain in the country until July 30.
During its two-month stopover in Bali and Jakarta, the Switzerland-based foundation will collaborate with local NGOs and communities to propose local solutions to the global problem.
A crew member of the boat, Annabelle Boudinot, shared her experience during the journey. “If we talk about navigation, it has been pretty well. [the boat] is solar-powered, therefore, it depends on how sufficient the sunlight is,” she told The Jakarta Post in an interview on Friday.
Boudinot said they had to stay in the tropical area to get enough energy to keep the boat sailing because if they went too far from the equator, the energy was harder to get.
Claimed to be the first and the biggest catamaran to not use diesel as a means of propulsion, the 100-percent no-emissions Race for Water vessel is equipped with 783 solar panels with a total width of 512 square meters, planted on the upper deck.
It also collects energy from a 40-square-meter towing kite deployed at an altitude of 150 m, and 200 kilograms of hydrogen at 350 bars stored in 25 bottles that is created from pumping the saltwater. Since the boat has no diesel as propulsion, it can only sail at a maximum speed of four to eight knots.
