Today I was invited to take a look at the Netherlands’ solar powered car that will compete in the famous 3000 kilometres [1865 land miles] World Solar Challenge race from Darwin to Adelaide. I really enjoyed my visit and besides it was a nice break from all the work on Guppy. The car built with carbon is even lighter than I thought it would be. There is a surprising number of parameters that come into play to keep it going as fast as possible and that was very interesting to learn. Guppy’s entire electrical system is running on solar power too, but this is completely different… It is much more high tech and that really impressed me very much. But in the same way that this car was mysterious to me, my own journey was mysterious to the team that built it, and so we had many questions for each other. Now I understand much better what goes into building this car and what the challenges are to be able to compete in a race like this – and the car team knows more about what is involved in doing a round the world journey.

Laura