Why am I doing this?

Project Whisky
Nov 8 · 2 min read

It’s March 2019 and together with my girlfriend and our 2 year old son I’m travelling along the coast of Vietnam. It’s an inspiring trip. I hadn’t been to Asia in a couple years. It’s still as beautiful as ever, but it’s now filled with new found energy and self confidence.

Since I’m a freelance software engineer I was still working along the way. I often worked evenings so that I could accommodate the working hours of the clients I have in my home town Amsterdam. Plus, it gives me time to enjoy Vietnam by day with my girl and our little boy.

After working late at night I often went for a walk along the beach. Listening to the waves converts your brain from working mode to wander mode. Sometimes I even jumped in for a little swim. It cools your body down and gives new perspectives.

On one of those nights I was looking at big ships moving towards a nearby port. My thoughts roamed across the technical advances of recent years; drones, electric cars, and even electric trucks. I had heard before about the horrible pollution that ships produce. Apparently, ships are responsible for more than 18% of some air pollutants and the International Maritime Organization (IMO) estimates that carbon dioxide emissions from shipping were equal to 2.2% of the global human-made emissions in 2012 (source).

I was suddenly so surprised by this. Why on earth are ships not driven by electric motors based on the enormous amounts of energy that are readily available on the worlds oceans: sun, wind and waves?

I asked a bit around and the reason seems to be that the energy produced by solar cells is not enough. Even if you would only sail the seas in the summer and you had double the amount of boat surface, the solar cells covering every corner of the ship would still not be able to generate the energy that those ships use. Not even close.

Ok, ok, fair enough. But I think that’s a rather simplistic way of thinking. Maybe the ships should be formed differently; more flat. Or maybe they should be extendible by day to suck up more sun rays. Maybe the wind should be used, with kites or wired airplanes. Maybe energy should be generated from the waves or even from the temperature difference between the air and the water. And yeah, maybe I just found myself an awesome new project to work on. Something I was actually looking out for.

So let’s set myself a goal. Seeing that I enjoy Whiskey, or in this case Whisky, I set myself the goal of building a boat that sails autonomously from Amsterdam across the North Sea to Scotland and return me a bottle of fine Scotch Whisky.

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