3:38 AM Mon 20 Apr 2009 GMT
 | | 'Launching Avalon'
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Eight young Swiss sailors - who are also mechanical engineering students - have taken on something big: in the context of their focus project, they are designing a sailing boat to sail autonomously across the Atlantic. They are determined that their creation will be ready to enter the International Microtransat Challenge, which is the first Atlantic crossing race for unmanned yachts, later this year.
Since last September the students from ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) have been working on the project constantly, and hope to have the boat set off across the Atlantic from Ireland to the Caribbean by November, a journey they believe will take about three months. So far, so good. They have now launched the boat, which measures 4 metres and weighs 500 kilos.
Big challenges await the boat, named Avalon. Storms, high seas, intense sunlight and corrosive seawater - all of these are being taken into account by the students in their planning, design and implementation. The sailing boat is going to be a very high-tech product.
The Caribbean is still a long way off. But at least Avalon has already had a taste of the water on Lake Zurich. Admittedly, the first run ended on a sandbank, but that - and everyone agrees - can happen to any sailor.
As yet no robot sailing boat has successfully crossed the Atlantic. The International Microtransat Challenge 2009 is therefore a chance to really make some waves. 'We are in with a real shot of setting a world record', says Gion-Andri B?sser, one of the team. 'That's a real incentive.'
 | Seven of the eight ambitious students with the model in January - .. . |
The eight students designed Avalon using state-of-the-art techniques and, to a great extent, built it themselves during the winter. The only requirement stipulated by the Challenge organisers was the length of the boat, which should not exceed 4 metres.
Tests are to be carried out in more and more testing conditions, and the small yacht will participate in the World Robotic Sailing Championship in Portugal in the summer.
...and then finally, the challenge:
The organisers of the Microtransat Challenge expect that it will take somewhere between two to three months for the boats to reach the tropical waters on the Atlantic crossing and that they will be subjected to enormous strain: an acid test for Avalon itself, and maybe even more so for the nerves of its creators and various sponsors, without whom the project would never have left port.
Avalon is a prime example of what persuasive ETH Zurich students and dedicated industrial partners can achieve together: the project budget will be covered almost entirely by industrial sponsors.
For more information on the Microtransat Challenge, go to their website.
by Science Daily/Sail-World Cruising
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