A 78 foot yacht covered in solar panels that

This yacht could sail around the world using only the sun.

February 4, 2019March 3, 2019 Jeff Butler 3296 Views 0 Comments solar, The Gussies

I’m not going to spend an awful lot of time writing about this yacht, the Solar Impact, because I can only imagine that once you take a look at a couple of the pictures, you’ll want to do what I did – go straight to their website and look at more.

But before you go, I ‘m going to give you some of the ‘mundane’ stuff, like the fact that it can literally go around the world without using one drop of oil. Of course that is dependent on where it finds itself in the world at what time of year…but then that is dependent on the planning.

According to the website, “To ensure the perfect functioning of all systems, the required energy quantity of the solar system should be up to 500 kilowatt hours per day. How much energy can the solar system generate? This depends primarily on the geographical location of your yacht and the current weather conditions. However, the solar system could produce more than enough energy in the world’s most popular sailing areas.“

Some details before you go to the website (I’ll give you the link in a minute):

78-feet long (24m), beam of 35 ft. (10.9 m)
220 square metres of living space
1 master cabin, 4 double cabins, 1 crew cabin
300 square metres of solar panel area
2 500 kW liquid-cooled brushless permanent magnet (PM) electric motors
10 hour cruising speed
maximum speed of 22 knots
Designed by Marlena Ratajska
and built by Schaaf Yachtbau GmbH & Co KG

One other exceptionally neat thing about the Solar Impact is that it uses something called the SWATH technology construction principle (Small Waterplane Area Twin Hull). Basically two mini hulls are outfitted with below water pontoons that make for an exceptionally smooth ride, even in rough conditions.