ALL AHEAD DEAD SLOW


A solar-powered first:

The solar-powered catamaran arrived in Miami after setting off from the Spanish port of Chipiona, near Seville, last December.

The 14-metre-long vessel with a solar panelled roof can keep up a speed of 10 kilometres per hour around the clock, thanks to on-board batteries.

Daniel Viner is a spokesman for the group behind the project.

"The idea was to show that just as Colombus changed a mind shift of his time that the earth was round and not flat, we want to show that the energy future looks different than the past," he said.

Another pointless stunt: Columbus made the trip considerably faster, leaving Spain on August 3rd and making landfall on October 12th. The catamaran Orange II holds the trans-Atlantic record for a wind-powered vessel: four days, eight hours, 23 minutes and 54 seconds, averaging better than 31 knots. Sort of makes the 10 kilometre per hour solar-powered trip look stupid, now doesn't it?