Endeavour makes good progress on the Stuart Highway. 26th October 2009. Credit: CUER
Day 2 of the Global Green Challenge has certainly had its ups and downs. We find ourselves tonight in the lap of luxury, in a real campsite at Dunmarra. We’ve had big problems today with our battery pack – unfortunately one of the worst parts to go wrong, since we generally can’t even use the array to charge the battery whilst any repairs are done. Time penalties are also imposed for replacing battery cells which we had no choice but to do. Chao, our battery guru, did an absolutely brilliant job of replacing the dead cells firstly, at dawn in the campsite, and then in the back of a broiling truck in the Outback. He succeeded in getting us back on the road and back in the race.
Even with a 2.5 hour stop to replace battery cells and the 36 minutes of time penalty that this involved, we still managed to cover 268km at an average speed of 53kph which is an increase of yesterday’s average of 49kph. This is a very good sign and it is only unfortunate that although the battery pack was functioning exactly as it was designed to do; it suffered from unforeseeable cell death.
We arrived this afternoon at Dunmarra Control Stop, an hour after it officially closed at 3pm and were obliged to stop the night here because of further time penalties relating to the battery, still 353km from the next Control Stop at Tennant Creek, which we must reach by 11am tomorrow. According to race regulations, two missed control stops in a row would mean that we were obliged to trailer the car to catch up. We are confident that we can complete the race fully on solar power it we maintain a constant speed, if we have to rush to reach the Control Point tomorrow morning we would severely reduce this possibility. The aim of CUER throughout this process has been to finish the race, in the best position that we are capable of course, but ultimately to finish. After a discussion with the GGC officials they have agreed to count this Control Point (Dunmarra) as completed to recognise the fact that we are capable of completing the race and it is only due to a serious technical problem that we are not further along. Whilst we know that we will miss the Tennant Creek control stop tomorrow morning, we are confident that we can reach the afternoon Control Stop at Barrow Creek at 5pm close of play. If we do not reach this point, then we will have to trailer the car to catch up or withdraw from the race.
Tomorrow then, is the crunch point. Tomorrow is the day that we see whether the goal that we have all spent the last two years working towards is achievable. We still believe we can do it and there is nothing but determination amongst the team members to make this happen. Every effort is focused towards that final goal. If it should so happen that it does not work out tomorrow and that something prevents us from reaching Barrow Creek in time forcing us to trailer, then this has still been an incredible journey and an amazing experience. Cambridge University Eco Racing may not win the race, we may not even finish, but we are going to do our utmost to make that happen.
