If we thought at the production phase that it would be the busiest one, we were wrong. During testing, the most unpredictable things arose and could sometimes end up taking the entire night (or longer). I would be lying if I said that I did not mind. Sometimes you’ve been stuck with a small problem for way too long. However, the satisfaction of eventually solving it does help. Also, discussing solutions within the same department or different departments put things more into perspective. One big disadvantage however, is that there is often one obstacle that only a select few people can work on at the time. Creating a more steep variance of working hours per person.
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Hot testing days outside.
After testing the individual components, it gets more exciting by testing the boat for the first time on water! This happened during warm weather, which makes it more realistic to the Monaco heat but also more enjoyable to be outside. In all honesty: the first times getting into the boat were a bit scary. But seeing the boat being assembled before lifting it into the water was absolutely majestic.
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Getting into the boat just after hoisting.
We also had a Partner Day. It was very interesting to be able to talk to people from different companies and listen to their view on typical problems that we encountered. Unfortunately we did not have working foils at this stage, but these representatives were still happy to see the boat sail on hydrogen.
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At a quiz about the boat with the representatives of the companies participating.
One more step to get to the complete boat, hydrofoils! Whereas previous years had most of the problems on the water, we were struggling to get the hydrofoils to work on land. This was compensated however in the first moment that the boat began to rise out of the water. Instead of immediately falling in water again it stayed up relatively smooth and gave the opportunity of making beautiful shots.
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At the beginning it was not too stable, but that makes for beautiful pictures.
