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Our good luck with the weather finally failed. We woke up to partially clear skies, but the time we departed in the morning, the clouds were threatening. The whole team was praying for perfect weather - so that we could make it to Adelaide on the same day as most of the leaders (and to get into some descent accommodation). We set off at 90 km per hour, hoping to reach better skies. Some of us were a bit sceptical of such an aggressive start, as the sky to the south didn't so good and were getting worse. By the time we reached Glendambo, things were starting to look pretty gloomy -- but we managed to get probably the last 30 minutes of sunshine. The University of Toronto arrived just as we departed, as did the rain...
The deteriorating weather forced us to slow to around 60-70 km per hour around midday. Somehow, luck was on our side and we found a pocket of sunshine that just happened to be moving south at around 65 km per hour. We fit ourselves into that pocket for almost an hour - from the back of the fleet, we could watch the edge of the pocket moving along with the lead vehicles when travelling downhill. Later, when we reached Port Augusta, however, the clouds moved in - by now we were resigned to not reaching Adelaide. We ended the day about 150 km from Adelaide.
If tomorrow morning's skies are clear, we expect to arrive into Adelaide at about 11 am local time. If not, then it's anybody's guess. If we can hold off the University of Toronto, we will finish in 11th place...
And, by the way, a special thanks goes out to our two "unofficial" Sunswift members, Matt and Dave (University of Queensland's Sunshark alumni), who came to help us with their new motor controller and ended up helping us in a hundred other ways, especially with our more-than-disappointing Biel MPPTs!
Willy The Whale
Willy!
Mail Bag
If you have a question for the team, or would like to wish them well, write to our mail bag, care of Ask Willy. | | | |
