28 student teams from 15 countries competed in St Tropez, France this September to design, build and pilot the most energy efficient boat possible in the annual HydroContest.
Total Lubmarine was proud to sponsor a team from the Ecole National Supérieure Maritime (ENSM) – Marseille. The team of eight were hoping to improve on the previous year which saw an electronic fire spoil their chances of victory.
ENSM Marseille entered two boats into the competition’s light and heavy weight categories. The light weight vessels are designed to simulate passenger pleasure boats and are expected to carry 20kg of ballast. The heavy weight boats are designed to simulate the movement of a freighter and are required to be capable of handling 200kg of cargo. Whilst ENSM’s heavy weight torpedo carrying semi-submersible was not a success, the light weight boat reached the second phase of the eight finals.
The competition was started in 2014 by the Swiss foundation ‘Hydros’ which aims to encourage technological innovation to meet the energy and environmental challenges facing the nautical and maritime industry.
The team from ENSM Marseille said: “HydroContest is truly inspirational thanks to the technical input, the spirit and the atmosphere with the other teams. Given our formation at the ENSM, HydroContest is linked with it, knowing that the prototypes developed during this contest could be the future generation of ships used for our job, in order to care more about the environment.”
