BARCELONA — He recently circumnavigated the globe in his solar-powered boat, but Raphaël Domjan’s mission is far from over.
“The goal was not to go around the world, but to spread the message that we can change, that it is not too late,” he said in an interview in Barcelona, where he participated in the Global Clean Energy Forum.
During the 585-day, 60,000-kilometer journey, described by my colleague Bettina Wassener in May, Mr. Domjan and his crew were subjected to all the rigors of an around-the-world sailing trip, except that lack of sun was the most daunting problem — not lack of wind.
Mr. Domjan conceived of the €15 million, or $19 million, project not to conquer the oceans, but to make a global audience aware of a global problem. On dry land, Mr. Domjan is continuing his advocacy work for his SolarPlanet Foundation.
“Now we have to spread the message, it is much easier to communicate with the people when you have this kind of project,” he said about his support for renewable and clean energy sources.
“Before we arrived in Monaco, it was all just talk,” he said, referring to his port of departure.
Because the boat is light and close to the water, minimizing the effects of wind, the 31-meter, or 102-foot, vessel could be powered with little more horsepower than a common scooter has, Mr. Domjan said. A specialized navigation system taking tides, currents, wind and waves into account helped him and his crew chart a path that would tax the engines as little as possible.
Mr. Domjan said the craft’s solar panels, storage batteries and computer systems gave him no trouble, but more conventional technologies — like onboard showers, toilets and the ship’s propellers — repeatedly broke down during the 19-month journey.
“The clean tech today is working better than the grandfather technology,” he said.
At one point, he said, he made a 500-kilometer, or 310-mile, detour to help a fishing vessel in distress. “With our solar boat we rescued a regular boat,” he said.
His vessel, named Turanor PlanetSolar after a Tolkien-invented word for “power of the sun,” is now sitting in the French Mediterranean port city of La Ciotat waiting for its next mission. The ship’s owner is hoping that it will have a second, more commercial life, Mr. Domjan said.
A book and a documentary film chronicling the journey are set to be released by the end of the year.
Currently, Mr. Domjan and his foundation are working on bringing a solar-powered boat to Lake Titicaca, on the border of Peru and Bolivia. He says that boat — a much smaller version of the one he sailed the oceans with — will be the first solar-powered vessel to ply the waters of the famed high-altitude lake.
“You can achieve amazing things with solar and renewable energies,” he said.