Original story

CompumediaSport 29.4.2016

First Desert Sunsailor World Championship goes to Chinese veteran

Chiang Chiu, 32, has won the gold medal in the distance event at the 1st Desert Sunsailor World Championships. She is so far the only competitor to have crossed the finishing line.

The venue for the event, the Namib Desert in Namibia, has long been a favourite among sunsailor enthusiasts. The 1000-kilometre course in the distance event crossed the desert from north to south along Namibia’s Atlantic coastline. Chiang Chiu’s time of 16:51.08 sliced 14 minutes and 6 seconds off the old record, set in an invitation event last year.

A delighted Chiang attributed her stunning victory to the improved cut of her cart’s solar sail: “The solar panel jib is of a completely new design. It was developed jointly by the Chinese Energy Institute and a Hungarian company, SemiLab. In the first place it is a great deal thinner and lighter than earlier sails, and it can store 46.6% of the available solar energy, which gives us a 4% edge on earlier solar rigging.”

Some idea of the great strides taken in solar panel technology can be gained from the fact that Chiang’s panel is more than twice as efficient as the panels developed by Semilab in the late 1990s for satellite applications.

Another unique feature of the winning cart’s sail is an automatic solar rudder, which keeps the panels pointing at an optimal angle, regardless of the direction of travel or time of day. In this way it is possible to squeeze the maximum use out of the very last rays of a setting sun, and it also minimizes temporary cut-outs, for example during undulating sand-dune sections of the Namib course. The use of lightweight materials in the cart’s chassis and cockpit has meant that it was possible to keep the overall weight of the craft down, even with the additional ballast of the solar rudder.

For all the technological improvements, however, it must be said that a lot of the credit for Chiang’s win is due to her immense sunsailing experience and her skill in overcoming the difficulties of the desert track.

Kuo Mei puts maternal instincts before title

Kuo Mei, the winner of the unofficial world championships held two years ago, was not in Walvis Bay to try for the title this time. She is three months into a virtual pregnancy. Although today’s top athletes can no longer conceive and bear children as a result of their genetic recoding, their instincts and desires are still intact. Successful female athletes in China and India in particular are thus permitted - and even encouraged in some case - to use hospital units where they can undergo pregnancy and delivery virtually. Kuo Mei will almost certainly be back at the helm of her sunsailor next year, by which time her virtual offspring will have reached the age of ten, and will no longer require round-the-clock attention.

As with most of the competitors, both Kuo Mei and Chiang Chiu started their desert sunsailing on the water, where solar regattas have been popular for more than a decade. The very first solar yachts emerged a few years after a group of Australian schoolkids built the world’s first totally solar-powered riverboat in the late 1990s.

Toteuma-arvio 2026

Toteuma lyhyesti

  • Ilmiön toteuma: 3/5
  • Toteuma viiden vuoden tarkkuudella: kyllä; arviointi-ikkuna on 2011–2021
  • Toteuma väljemmällä aikahorisontilla: kyllä, mutta rajatusti
  • Ilmiön ydin: uusiutuvaa aurinkoenergiaa käyttävistä kevyistä kulkuvälineistä syntyy kilpailuja ja harrastuskulttuuria.

Aurinkoautoilla, aurinkoveneillä ja muilla kokeellisilla ajoneuvoilla järjestetään kansainvälisiä kilpailuja, ja maapurjehdus on oma urheilunsa. Tarinan aurinkopaneelipurjeella kulkevaa aavikkolajia ei ole syntynyt laajaksi lajiksi.

Johtopäätös: ydin aurinkoenergian muuttumisesta liikkumisen kilpailualustaksi toteutui osittain.