Congratulations to our Applied Engineering Club (AEC), who has just won the California Solar Regatta, a competition organized by the Sacramento Municipal Utility District! Our Apaches won Best Technical Design, Best Artistic Design, and Overall Championship this year!

What really is the Solar Regatta? One of the members of the AEC, junior Saisaran Kidambi explained, “The California Solar Regatta is a competition in Northern California that involves using solar and battery power to race a boat through a sprint, endurance, and slalom course. We also have to focus on making a presentation and the overall design of our boat. Competitions [are] two days, and on the first day, we set up our boat near the lake and [have] multiple design checks on the boat for the design award.”

What were some challenges that the team had to face? Saisaran noted that, “During our safety check, we thought we received the lowest score, and thought that our hopes of winning were gone, so for the rest of the competition, we just tried our best to get second place. On the second day, we had the actual races, and we went first out of the 20 teams in the endurance race, a 30-minute time trial to see how many laps each of the boats could do. Since we had the most laps, we were nervous about holding our lead and winning first in that race. Overall, we were nervous throughout the competition, but we had a great time.”

When asked about what the competition was like, Saisaran said, “On the second day of competition, our steering system in the boat (the most important system in the boat other than the electrical) stopped working in the middle of a race. We thought that we were going to lose, but everyone came together, and we fixed the steering system in under an hour, when it previously took us a couple of days to assemble it. We were given another run at the race, and our boat seemed to go faster than it had before with the new steering system in place.”

What really made our team’s boat stand out from the rest of the competition? “Our design, vibrant colors, very large propeller, and especially the name of our boat made us stand out. Our propeller was at least three times larger than any other team’s, and on the side of the boat we wrote the word “Titanic” as a reference to the ‘unsinkable’ ship,” Saisaran indicated. “Because of our unusual name, the other teams as well as the announcers started calling us Titanic instead of Arcadia, and ironically, we won.”

Lastly, when asked how the event helped him grow as an individual, he responded with, “I strengthened my bond with my fellow teammates and was able to learn a lot about how the boat works. Most of us only know about one specific part of the boat, but competitions allowed me to expand my knowledge on electrical and boating systems.”

Are you interested in doing fun projects like these? Then AEC may be something you should consider! “Our team is made up of talented and entertaining individuals, and we have lots of fun together,” Saisaran said. “Over the year, the team has bonding events, and it feels more like a family than a group of friends. I would highly recommend joining the team because of all the opportunities there are to learning the basics to engineering and electrical and mechanical systems. Furthermore, you can work with expensive solar panels, a chance you do not receive in other teams.”

Until then, congratulations once more to our victorious Apaches — keep making us proud!