Solar Powered

Anything solar powered is onto a bit of a winner at the moment :).

I’m on the mailing list for Chichester Harbour Conservancy and they have loads of cool events happening year round but we never seem to be around to get to many of them. This weekend other than me working yesterday morning we had nothing planned though so when an email came through earlier in the week about the solar powered boat trips I rang up and booked it for today.

Everyone struggled to get up this morning but we did manage to get out the house for our planned time of 930am and found the car park and were at the jetty at the appointed time despite hitting some serious traffic as most of West Sussex seemed to be heading to the Witterings for the day.

The Solar Heritage boat was one of three built in Switzerland for an Alternative Technology event and then sold off. One is in New York in a museum and one is here in Chichester and is used for education, harbour trips and to raise awareness of alternative technologies. It was sailed across the Atlantic from New York to the UK and has been modified back since to hold 60 people on a half-open sided deck. The engine is all but silent, the roof is covered with solar panels and it is incredibly manouverable. Due to design of the boat not only does it not use fuel to run it also creates very few waves which is good for wildlife and does not contribute to coastal erosion by creating waves.

Various events are run using the boat and today we did a Harbour tour to Chichester Marina and then a 3 mile walk back to Itchinor again. Davies and Scarlett were the only children on boat (and actually I was the next youngest person after them) and the commentary from the skipper was very much geared to his audience so covered lots of pointing out historical interest facts about the harbour and coast. There was some talk about wildlife but there is a specific wildlife tour too which might have been more interesting although this was certainly not boring and we all enjoyed it.

I had thought the walk back was more ‘guided’ than it actually was and that we’d have more pointed out to us but it turned out to be one leader at the front of the group keeping pace with the fastest walkers, one at the back with the slowest and the main idea being that they ensured we found our way back to our cars. As it happened this was perfect and the four of us found our pace somewhere in the middle of the group and walked along chatting and spotting things as we went. It was public footpath all the way, mostly hugging the coast, past some very gorgeous, very expensive houses, through some fields (one of which we saw a red deer in) and finally along through the marina. We did the walk in under an hour and given I’d been expecting a bit of moaning for 3 miles in such heat (it was by now 1pm) it was very nice and noone complained at all :). We bought ice creams and sat watching the boats coming and going. It was a really nice trip and one of the things on my personal list of ‘we really must do that one day…’ things so I’m really pleased to have ticked it off :).

Back home again some people watched football, some played with chickens and ducks, some played with geomags and some made popcorn. I read my book (finished it tonight, the new Lionel Shriver, Very Good), we tried a rather unsuccessful roast dinner on the barbecue in an attempt to keep the kitchen cooler by not using the oven. The potatoes ended up rather well done and the beef was too rare for everyone but Ady. Then Ady got distracted by something, is crap at multitasking so had got me to start cooking vegetables and getting everything ready to serve up before he was ready with his bits. Grr.

We all ate together and watched Willy Wonka (the original, think it might be Charlie and the chocolate factoy actually, that one) which was nice and mellow. More chicken & duck stuff, the kids and I added to our sourdough which is looking good – even better they caught the bit of River Cottage on tv tonight where they make it and heard about someone having the same sourdough starter for 13 years.

We spent some time talking about our trip to Scotland and researching dolphin watching trips, Loch Ness and other local attractions.