William Atkins
Saturday, 13 September 2008 22:51
Science -
Energy
Page 1 of 2
A pair of pioneering Britons hoped to break the world land speed record for wind-powered vehicles with their Greenbird, but their attempt failed due to a lack of wind and too much rain in the traditionally windy and dry Lake LeFroy in Western Australia.
After the September 2008 attempt failed in Western Australia, the
Greenbird website states,
“Well, we needed the perfect weather ... what we got was far from it. Uncharacteristic rainfall has flooded the Lake Lefroy leaving hopes of a world record high-and-dry.”
Lake LeFroy is a large salt lake of 193 square mile (500 square kilometer). It is located in southern Western Australia, north of Lake Cowan and near Boulder—a part of the City of Kalgoolie-Boulder, which is in the Goldfields-Esperance region, about 340 miles (550 kilometers) east of Perth.
The salt lake is normally dry this time of the year, which is why Richard Jenkins and Dale Vince choose the spot to exceed the current land speed record for wind-powered vehicles: 116 miles per hour (187 kilometers per hour).
As stated on the Jenkins blog (
“Rain stops play….”), September 4, 2008,
“After dinner around the campfire end of last week, with a group of landsailors from Perth, I went to bed around midnight, with the sound of rain still falling on the tin roof of the old mining exploration caravan we are staying in. In the morning the rain had stopped, but we found the camp area had turned into a bit of a quagmire, which indicated a lot of rain had fallen over the last 12 hours.”
Vince added,
“We skidded down the muddy hill to the foil trays we had left on the lake surface to measure the amount of rain, only to find one of them had floated away, which gives you some idea of what we were looking at. The other tray indicated that between 15-20mm had fallen in the night, and the sky was still not clear. Later that morning more thunder clouds dropped another 5-10mm.”
And, he concluded,
“This had flooded the entire surface of the lake and has rendered it unusable for possibly another month, which sadly means an end to this year’s land record challenge, which is a very disappointing blow to us all. The Greenbird was in fantastic shape to shatter the record and it is very frustrating not to get any high speeds in whatsoever.”
What do Jenkins and Vince say caused the failure of their land ship from even making one attempt to break the record? Please read on.
