Sun21 – The First Solar Boat Across the Atlantic

Years before Tûranor PlanetSolar sailed around the world, a much smaller Swiss catamaran made history. Sun21 and her crew of five left Seville on 3 December 2006 and arrived in Le Marin, Martinique, on 2 February 2007. It was the first motorised boat to cross the Atlantic on solar power, without a drop of diesel or petrol.

The boat was built by MW-Line in Yvonand, Switzerland, a yard founded by Mark Wüst that had already built more than 30 solar boats for public transport and private customers. Sun21 is based on its C60 catamaran: about 14 m (46 ft) long and 6.4 m (21 ft) wide. 48 solar modules of 214 W on the roof, about 10.3 kW, feed a battery bank and two 8 kW electric motors. She cruised at 5 to 6 knots.

The crossing took 63 days including stops in Casablanca and the Canary Islands; the 5,000 km from Las Palmas to Martinique took just 30 days. Sun21 then continued along the US east coast to New York, a total of about 13,000 km in six months. The voyage was organised by the Transatlantic21 association.

Today MW-Line’s work continues in Grove Boats, which builds solar “Aquabus” passenger boats. Swiss solar boats on our site include the MobiCat.

Technical data

Sources

• Ocean Navigator
• Transatlantic21: boat fact sheet (PDF)
• Wikipedia (DE): Liste von Solarfahrzeugen