Biodiesel Boat Race Faces Glitch

March 12, 2007 — A speed boat running on recycled vegetable oil set out on Saturday to break the record for circumnavigating the globe. Now the boat is limping toward its first port of call with propeller blades so badly deteriorated the race may be called off.

"I'm really worried we might not actually make Panama now," wrote Pete Bethune, captain of the biodiesel boat Earthrace, in the project's Weblog on Sunday. "The fantastic efficiency of these props (propellers) was supposed to give us an edge, but instead their reliability has cost us dearly."

Bethune and a crew of two left Barbados on Saturday for what they hoped would be a 65-day cruise into the record books. The point of the project is to raise awareness for renewable energy sources.

The current speed record for an around-the-world cruise by boat is 75 days. Earthrace is the first boat running off non-petroleum fuel to make a bid for the record.

Problems began about 16 hours after Earthrace's journey began. The boat had just been refitted with a new kind of carbon propellers designed to increase efficiency and reduce vibration.

But Earthrace's speed and weight proved too much for the blades, which have deteriorated to a point Bethune called "staggering."

"All the blades have sections where the carbon is peeling away, and the entire leading edge of one blade is coming to bits," Bethune said after a night-time dive to inspect the damage.

After a more detailed inspection on Sunday, he told his ground crew that "sections the size of dollar bills are mission from the props."

The crew has found replacement blades and hopes to have them in Panama by Wednesday, when Earthrace is scheduled to arrive.

The boat set off at a brisk clip from Barbados, zipping along at about 25 mph and heading toward Panama, about 1,440 miles away.

At the end of the first day, Bethune said Earthrace had traveled 621 statute miles, about 235 miles ahead of where a boat named Cable & Wireless was in 1998 at the start of its successful record bid.

On Monday, Bethune and his crew were nursing Earthrace along at less than half that speed, hoping the propellers would stay together long enough to get to Panama.

"We're going so slowly that in another couple of days we'll be well behind the old record time," Bethune said. "Right now, the priority is to just get safely in to port. We are concerned these blades will come to bits before we make it."

The boat's all-volunteer ground crew is scrambling to get equipment in place in Panama to change out Earthrace's propellers, said marine engineer Scott Fratcher.

"If we can have the entire prop changing equipment on hand when Earthrace arrives we can possibly change the props in four hours while we fuel," he wrote in the project's Weblog. "Earthrace could be on her way straight away."