Tûranor Planet Solar
From an aerial perspective, the Tûranor Planet Solar (with its panels in place) looks like the seating chart of a large stadium. Metaphors aside, the vessel is, in fact, a spectacle worthy of a stadium: 537 m2 of photovoltaic surface make it the largest solar-powered ship in the world. The ship’s colossal size is no impediment to its speed, as Planet Solar’s navigation time has yet to be surpassed. In May 2012, it became the first and only solar-powered boat to circumnavigate the globe.
Tûranor Planet Solar—meaning “the power of the sun” in Lord of the Rings lexicon—is the brainchild of renowned naval architect Craig Loomes of New Zealand. He is a director of LOMOcean Design, which pioneered the 27m Ultimate Lady, winner of the Super Yacht of the Year Award in 1998 and one of the first wavepierceing motor yachts ever made. Fourteen years later, Loomes’s designs have adapted to today’s sustainability needs without compromising style and muscle. “This strange sea bird,” as project initiator Raphaël Domjan calls the ship in a logbook entry, was launched in March 2010 in Kiel, Germany. PlanetSolar started and ended its 584-day journey around the globe in Monaco.
PlanetSolar is a paragon of eco-transportation for more than just its use of solar power: a light carbon structure and electric motorization give it durability and levity. The prophetic Jules Verne once said, “Anything one man can imagine, other men can make real.” Environmental optimists of the past years have dreamt of ways to travel the world without causing further harm to our oceans, and PlanetSolar aspires to capitalize on the success of their world tour to promote energy efficiency. The team has plans to publish a book and film a documentary about PlanetSolar’s journey, to inspire people that an environmentally friendly world is real.
One cannot ignore the fact that the crew circumnavigated the globe in style—PlanetSolar is, after all, a luxury yacht. Its sleek, geometrical look speaks for Loomes’s attention to aesthetic detail. The sharp blue stripes that accentuate the ship’s contours and the wing-like hulls do indeed make PlanetSolar look like a strange sea bird, but while the design may look strange for a bird, it is perfect for a yacht. A slit forms in the middle of the boat to reveal a columned gallery in the back, a gateway to spectacular nautical vistas.
It should come as no shock that the men of PlanetSolar carried an original Jules Verne manuscript in the ship throughout their journey, which they returned to the Maison d’Ailleurs Museum (“House of Elsewhere”) in Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland in June 2012. Years before televised newscasts and Skype became common to us, Jules Verne had imagined them in his writing. The Tûranor Planet Solar has set the stage for revolutionary eco-travel—perhaps one day, the ship that travels around the world in 80 days will be solar-powered.
