Washington College's Electric Boat Team is arguably the #1 ranked collegiate team in this year's Promoting Electric Propulsion (PEP) hosted annually by the American Society of Naval Engineers (ASNE). We say "arguably" because there are three categories in which teams compete at PEP. Not only did the team take 1st place in the Manned Displacement category, but we were the only college to also rank in a second category (taking 3rd place in the Manned Planing category).
If you are just joining our journey in the development and racing of electric boats, here's a quick recap that helps explain what makes this accomplishment so remarkable.
2022
Having discovered the PEP competition only about 6 weeks before the event itself, our student team rushed to prepare our existing boat. We'd been competing in the Wye Island CHALLENGE Electric Boat Marathon for a few years, and doing well, but PEP is a very different race. The Wye Island course is a 24-mile marathon of a race requiring the team to budget power during the race, not quite running at full speed. PEP is an all-out 5-mile sprint, which we found might overheat our 48v in-house developed outboard motor. In the final weeks before the race, we converted the air-cooled brushed DC motor to also include water cooling.
When we arrived on race day, we nervously discovered our boat's motor was the second least powerful, with many teams running at more than double our voltage. With 16 teams representing, we saw teams of every size and budget level. As the racing began, one by one, each of the competitors ran into some sort of problem. Motors overheated, controllers burned out, batteries prematurly were depleated... Evan McCarthy '22 put our boat through its paces and it worked flawlessly, taking 1st place in the Manned division. With lots of battery capacity to spare, we went on to serve as chase boat in later heats, towing in most of the other teams!
2023
With a target now painted on our backs, we knew 2023 would be a challenge. Teams like Princeton and Michigan were MUCH better funded, and we had to assume they'd work out the bugs and bring their A-game. In the off-season, we built an all new trimaran boat nearly from scratch. Using pieces of a sailing catamaran hull, a rowing shell, Coosa composite panels, fiberglass and carbon fiber, our 23ft displacement hull proved to be very efficient and stable. We built a 43kWh 144v nominal LiFePO4 battery from individual cells. To propel the boat, we converted an old 50HP Tohatsu outboard motor with a 42kW 3-phase brushless AC motor.
Arriving at Norfolk to compete with 29 collegiate teams, we raced our 18ft wooden monohull as well as the newly built (and not quite completed) 23ft trimaran. Early in the day Princeton, our biggest competition, ran multiple boats, all of which broke down on the course and required a tow back to the dock. We ran our two boats in separate heats and took 1st with our new trimaran and 3rd with our existing monohull. After the last scheduled heat, we heard Princeton was going to be allowed to take their "Big Bird" hydroplane back out for another attempt, after scrambling through the day to make repairs and recharge the batteries. We were confused, since no other team was allowed a second attempt with a boat that previously raced. Princeton's boat performed extraordinarily well this time, easily beating our exiting record. In a controversial decision, the judges allowed Princeton's second and unscheduled attempt to count, placing them in 1st, and bumping Washington College into 2nd and 4th place in the manned category.
2024
Moving into the 2024 season, our team refined the trimaran hull to prevent cavitation problems. We also rebuilt our 18ft wooden monohull from the inside out to allow for a significantly more powerful propulsion system. After strengthening the hull, we built a new custom battery that charges to 184v and produces nearly 60HP through an 80's Mercury outboard motor we converted to electric.
At PEP in Virginia Beach, competitors rasied the bar once again, now with 29 teams attending, with 34 vessels to race. During day one of competition, our trimaran boat's motor suffered catastrophic failure in the lower unit and needed to be towed in. After qualifying our newly built monohull in the Manned Planing category, we managed to swap the monohull outboard onto our trimaran and squeeze in the required qualifying run for the Manned Displacement category as well.
On day two, we ran the trimaran first in the Manned Displacement category, then quickly worked to swap our single functional motor back onto the wooden monohull in the Manned Planing category. Our efforts payed off and we not only took 1st place in the Manned Displacement category, but also clenched 3rd place in the Manned Planing category!
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