This is the morning of day 6. Our strategy, contingent on good weather, had us rolling into Adelaide this morning. Unfortunately, the weather is absolutely terrible. For the next day and a half, nearly all of South Australia is under a huge front of clouds - which means we're producing very little power from our array. Our array is more efficient at producing power than anyone else in the race, but at this point it makes little difference.
The top three teams, Tokai, Nuon, and Michigan, have finished the race in that order, coming in under the last rays of sunshine. No one else was successful in outrunning the cloud front that has settled over the area. This leaves many teams, including us, with the dismal outlook of having nearly empty battery packs, while our solar arrays produce only minimal power. Whether any more teams will actually manage to finish the race is still a matter of debate.
We may be able to pull enough power out of our excellent array closer to midday today to get the car on the road and start chugging along at 30kph or less. This might be enough to finish the race in time for the hard deadline about 28 hours from now, but it's going to be close.
We'll keep you posted as best we can on our progress. Wish us luck with the weather.
On a brigter note, here's some sweet pictures I've taken over the past two days. Even in the face of terrible luck and disappointing in the performance of our car, Australia is a beautiful country.
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