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This morning saw heavy cloud blanketing Melbourne following yesterday's bright sunshine. Although we had driven in mainly using array power we still tried to trickle a bit more energy into our battery packs while team members guarded the array from shading by curious bystanders. We were to start from the Melbourne Museum Plaza where we had finished yesterday.
We were waved off at the start by Victorian environment minister John Thwaites, then a police escort led us through the streets of the city and on towards the Westgate Bridge. From here it was a long slow crawl out of the city since we didn't want to drain too much energy from our batteries before the start of timing. The heavy cloud made this difficult, and eventually all teams were directed to transport their cars to the first control stop at Seymour. We were left waiting quite a while for our trailer as it ran into navigational difficulties leaving Melbourne.
From here is was a slow crawl for both solarcar teams since the heavy cloud continued for the entire leg. UNSW Sunswift II's drivers showed their consistently by driving to an average of 60.8 km/h over both of the legs. It was quite late by the time we rolled slowly into Albury, with just half an hour to spare for both of today's legs to count. Once at the finish we attempted to get a bit of charge in the batteries, but it was a futile process as the cloud cover was thick and the sun was slowly setting.
At the evening's presentation the team had a special surprise waiting for Lauren, one of our team members. Since it was her 20th birthday a cake had been secretly smuggled in and all teams were encouraged to sing her happy birthday. We then retired to our array tilter to eat cake while we sat beside our car.
Willy The Whale
Willy!
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