Race Day 2

The engineers were really amazing today, they worked really hard to make sure WASUB was the first boat to go racing. Due to the problems of yesterday there was still some work to do on the hatch when we arrived at the Ocean Basin, however WASUB was the first boat to go in the water and the first boat to start racing!

The first lap was a success. It took only 81 seconds to finish the race with a recorded speed of 5.4 knots. Improving our time of yesterday, without any faults this time. The last part of the course (the slalom) will become more challenging every day. Today we still could pass the slalom in a straight line. But we already got to experience how narrow the slalom is going to be tomorrow. 

​The team was a bit disappointed after the second run, because the WASUB crashed just before the timing gate. The team was a little bit stressed, because we didn’t really know what went wrong during this crash. We managed to figure out that there was a problem with the servo box, after having checked the sub everything seemed to work fine.

Luckily, WASUB had a third chance in the morning and this time it went amazing. We finished the lap in just 71.4 seconds with a speed of 6.1 knots. The engineers told the pilot, Bram Bronswijk, to go slowly so it wouldn’t be a huge disaster if he crashed to the bottom. So Bram tried to go slowly, but the WASUB and Bram were in great shape today so they couldn’t go much slower than 6.1 knots.
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After lunch it was time for some test runs as these did not count for the race. This time Robin van der Sande had the honour to be the pilot of the WASUB VI. This run was also a great success, we finished the lap in 69.6 seconds with a speed of 5.5 knots. This would set the track record of this day. 

Tonight the team will visit the diving museum. Here the team can learn everything about the history of diving. Tomorrow there will be another race day with an even more narrow slalom. So tomorrow will be a new challenge.