Photo by CUER, Stuart Highway near Katherine, 25/10/09
Day One has turned out to be an event full of eventful eventualities. The start itself was remarkably smooth and well-attended for a Sunday morning. Forty cars lined up gleaming for the last time. Forty teams did something remarkably similar. Small pcokets of national pride prevailed and as each car started off from Parliament Square (to the theme tune from ?)
While Endeavour trundled trustily towards Katherine at around 60kph, the scout vehicle and truck remained behind to do some last minute shopping, which then allowed them to beast it down the Stuart Highway to catch up to the convoy. We were all surprised to see so many solar cars at the side of the road, presumably stopping due to problems, so very early on – we spotted the Eclipse VI team stopped just outside of Darwin. It was a journey almost as exciting as that of Endeavour. We had no idea how far the convoy had travelled and who they had overtaken. For every solar car convoy we overtook, we felt a little bit of glee that Endeavour was ahead of another car. This glee rapidly turned to downright surprise as we passed both Bochum entries – SolarWorld No 1 and BoCruiser – with still no sign of Endeavour.
Eventually we caught up to the convoy travelling at a good speed, just outside of Katherine and finally the scout car was able to scout ahead of the convoy for the first time. It turns out that reporting on the weather patterns once the car has passed through an area isn’t immensely helpful.
As we reached the first control stop, the standings were as follows:
1. Tokai (JPN)
2. Umicore (BEL)
3. Michigan (USA)
4. Nuna5 (NDL)
5. Twente (NDL)
6. MIT (USA)
7. Principia (USA)
8. Stanford (USA)
9. Sunswift (AUS)
10. Nanyang (SIN)
11. Saguar (TUR)
12. Belenos (FRA)
13. Endeavour (GBR)
Leaving Katherine, we were not overtaken by any other teams, so our guess is that at the end of Day 1, we have jumped a phenomenal 7 places from 20th to 13th.
However, due to circumstances that we would rather not have happened, we soon jumped up another place. Today has been a day of extremely serious incidents. Both Aurora cars suffered tyre blowouts and electrical failures and had to be trailered to Katherine – not even making it to the first control stop. Michigan lost four tyres (although this in a controlled failure, and not all at once!), Nuna lost an MPPT, and, worst of all Umicore lost their car. A severe gust of wind blew them into a tree and destroyed UmiCar entirely. This placed Endeavour 12th in the field.
This series of incidents and the first day of travelling have suddenly brought it home to us just how tough this race is going to be. We have overcome all obstacles so far – from the Big Hill outside of Darwin (which some teams struggle to climb) to problems with the array that have led to a 45-minute stop at the roadside. We attempted to get one up on the road trains early by having a drag race against one at a traffic light. This turned out to be an epic fail.
Overtaking and being overtaken by other teams is difficult enough. A 35-minute trek at 40kph behind BoCruiser before we could safely overtake is a case in point, and there was an incident early on involving the Goko car, whose truck pulled out sharpy in front of Endeavour. The first road train to overtake the convoy was positively terrifying.
However, we survived our first WSC race day pretty much intact, and, although we lost a few team members along the way, we have reached our first campsite outside of Katherine with both a full complement of people and car parts. Expect great things…
