A Breakthrough Boat

Every year as the calendar runs out of pages, a depressing inner voice nags me: Well, there goes another year. You're running out of them, you lazy old bum. When are you going to do something useful?

This year, a small technological breakthrough gave me hope that there's time yet. I read about it in New Scientist, a rather reader-friendly British journal.

The report concerned a record-breaking speed run by an electrically powered boat. Speed isn't something one usually thinks of in connection with electric boat motors. The kind most of us know best are the very quiet but very low-powered electric outboard motors sometimes seen on the sterns of fishermen's watercraft. I'm told they're great for slow trolling in calm water, but somehow Alaskans--me included--are always in a hurry to get to the fishing grounds. Outdrives and jetdrives and multi-horse kickers are more popular in the north. We like speed.

It turns out the British do too, but they also like electric motors. As they'd put it, petrol is dear, it's dirty, and eventually we'll have to learn to do without it. A parliamentary select committee recently advocated incentives for developing marine electric propulsion; even without incentives in place, British designers came up with a fair-sized vessel (more than 15 meters--46 feet--long) capable of cruising for 160 kilometers (nearly 100 miles) without recharging its batteries. Other electric boats have been appearing on the waterways of England and Scotland, but none of them go faster than about 13 kilometers (8 miles) an hour.

That may change, thanks to the record-breaking run by a midget hydroplane named An Stradag--Gaelic for The Spark. Zipping over the measured kilometer of the Olympic rowing course at Nottingham, An Stradag averaged 82 kilometers (51 miles) an hour.

As well as setting a new speed record for electrically propelled motorboats, the little hydroplane served as a test bed for a wealth of new technology. The vessel has a Kevlar-ply composite hull and a computerized control system. Batteries reach full charge in only 20 minutes--the designers borrowed from a recharge system designed for jet aircraft starter batteries.

The four motors use permanent neodymium magnets and a very new kind of armature. Conventional direct-current motors are limited in their power output by the need to dissipate heat through their casings; they use armatures shaped like a barrel. The armatures in An Stradag's motors, designed by a man named Cedric Lynch, are disc-like. This gives them greater surface area and much better cooling efficiency. The Lynch motors run at only slightly above ambient temperature, so they can develop much more power than can conventional motors.

The time trials gave the designers more information on all aspects of the boat. They think they can improve on the Lynch motors' already impressive 85 percent efficiency, and believe An Stradag will achieve its theoretical top speed of 100 kilometers an hour when they're done tinkering.

Now, what has this interesting development got to do with easing feelings of middle-years melancholia? My sense of hope comes from the philanthropist who supported An Stradag's development--not only with money, but by driving the boat on its record-breaking run. She's Fiona, Countess of Arran, and she's 71 years old.

It's just as well I wasn't standing on the shore when she set the record. I suspect it's not considered proper to bellow "Attagirl, Fiona!" at a speeding countess.