Team Tarka

There’s more – “give it the beans” has become the sprint catchphrase for Team Tarka – hearing this being called from the pontoon by I think someone from Kansas State before the heat was hilarious. I reckon Karim would have loved it!

Jake has already posted a summary of the results, and in addition I’d like to state my appreciation of all the hard work and sheer determination of the whole team, not just the race team, in Arkansas. There are plenty of people who contribute to making this happen, including all you contributors to our blog, and sending email support all week. It meant a lot to everyone, and I’m very glad we stayed safe, and raced well.

Despite the lack of sleep, frustrations of shipping, heat, sometimes dehydration, the team worked well, with everyone having fun, and racing hard together. Whenever anyone got a bit down, someone else was there to pick them up and dust them down. For me the teamwork award was a no brainer, but as we picked up so many others, I’m OK with that!

To the guys heading home – safe trip home! To the guys staying on for a few days – enjoy the USA, have a great time, stay safe, and look forward to seeing you when you get home.

We’ll have a “homecoming” event sometime in July when the boat is back, and we’ll let you all know when that is.

Many thanks to the folks in Arkansas – it is a great undiscovered place, and the people are brilliant. Wooo Pig Soooie!!!! (if you don’t know what that means – ask someone from the race team!).

Peter Wilson

Wow. What a week! Its finally all over, although it feels like we just begun. We had some problems, both big and small, but we overcame them all.

We got second place overall in the sprint. Tom managed to tame the big monster prop. At the start of the race it was pulling about 28kW! Thats 37.5 horse powers in old money.

Team Tarka came 2nd overall! Excellent work guys, excellent work! We picked up a whole host of trophies and awards, so here they are in a list!

• 3rd Place Qualifying Event
• 3rd Place Solar Endurance
• 2nd Place 300 Meter Sprint
• 3rd Place Visual Display
• 1st Place Solar Slalom
• 2nd Place Overall
• Outstanding Hull Design Award
• Outstanding Workmanship Award
• Perseverance Award
• Most Improved Team Award

We are all very proud of ourselves and now we have to pack up all the trophies into the crate and see if there is any room for the boat to squeeze in too!

Thanks to everyone for your amazing support, reading your comments and good luck wishes made us smile and really helped to spur us on! I hope you enjoyed keeping up with us on the blog.

Here is an onboard video of our second sprint heat which we ran in this morning. The boat looks real good! (I hope y’all appreciate the American language!)

Second Sprint Heat, Onboard from Team Tarka on Vimeo.

Trialling a midday update here in Arkansas!

This morning the awards for workmanship and visual display were given out. We got third place in the visual display and won the best workmanship award. You should have seen the grin on Tom’s face!

We also ran the second sprint heat this morning getting another sub 30 second time, of 29.4 seconds. Still a little way of New Orleans, but good enough to ensure we get second place in the sprint event. It is looking good for second place overall! Will let you know in about 3 hours, so y’all better be staying up!

Ok well we haven’t pimped the boat, but we have pimped out our DIY trolley! It now sports snazzy side panels with the university of Southampton logos!

So we had two pretty long hot endurance races today. Tom and Ted did an excellent job steering a very tippy boat. Wind easily catches under the solar panels and can roll the boat and the solar panels can hit the water. Ted’s excuse was that he was cooling the solar panels down…

Reuben’s telemetry system was the envy of every other team and it worked perfectly giving us the ability to run the batteries flat within 10 seconds of the finishing hooter – amazing!

Both heats were extremely close with the top three teams finishing within 2 laps of each other. New Orleans were the winners at a total of 51.25 laps with Cedarville finishing just 3/4 of a lap ahead of us overall. Laps for Cedarville and Team Tarka were 47.5 and 46.75 respectively.

Later we got awarded trophies for the Endurance, Qualifying and the Slalom.

Here are a few pictures of the competition so far.

Well what a brilliant day. Qualification was a little exciting as Teddy gave the new prop the full beans on toast – almost resulting in a trip into the lake – but an excellent time nonetheless.

Closely followed by winning the slalom event, with an excellent strategy, and precise execution by Tom – spot on!

A bit of fettling on the boat, and the boys headed off for a BBQ and a bit of R & R – well deserved.

Seeing Southampton at the top of the big screen made me very happy – the stress just melted away – thanks guys!!!!

We just got back from a BBQ with the Cedarville team – Thanks guys! Had a friendly game of football soccer, and unfortunately we lost…

Lets hope our boys beat USA at the World Cup tomorrow!