Race Day 4

The submarine museum yesterday was really nice. First the team had some time to take a look at the exhibitions in the museum. The team also had the chance to go on a real submarine. After that it was time for some tea and coffee and a Stanley Gray lecture about CO2 storage.

Our first run went amazing today! We finished the lap in just 78.3 seconds with a top speed of 7.32 knots! Improving the track record by 8 seconds and the European speed record by 0.4 knots. Our top speed was only 0.1 knots below the world speed record of the WASUB V last year.

​The WASUB was one of the fastest submarines this year, so we knew we had a great chance at winning. The pilot did our first run exactly as planned, avoiding too many risks. We wanted to be sure that we did a clean run, making sure we would win the agility competition. The run went very well, setting the highest speed and the fastest time of the day.

Unfortunately during the second run the WASUB crashed due to some issues with the servo box. After lunch we were ready for another attempt, but then again there were problems with the servo box and the fins. We really pushed our WASUB hard, resulting in some more repairs in the afternoon.
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The WASUB will be fixed by tomorrow for the agility competition. This is a challenging, longer course with lots of obstacles including a so-called handbrake turn. Only the most reliable boats can compete in this competition, and the WASUB is one of them. Tomorrow we will try to achieve even more impressive results than today on this last day of the races. Stay tuned!