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Apr 04, 2007: sun21 heading to New York

26°C / 79°F

Position:26° 40' 11" N-80° 4' 6" W

Wind: 10km/h

Today, April 3rd, we started the final part of our journey to New York City on the Intracoastal Waterways.

On a clear, sunny morning we started our journey on the US
waterways to our final destination New York. We are travelling on a channel system that heads north along the East coast of the USA. It is an easy and pleasant traverse through the most exclusive neighbourhoods, where wealth is openly paraded – the hundreds of mansions are more like palaces than houses. The river banks of the channels between Miami and South Palm beach where we anchored this evening are densely populated. Thus, our boat was seen by hundreds of people. In order to capitalise on this and to explain our journey, we ordered banners for our boat with the words “World’s First Solar Atlantic Crossing”.

Yesterday we had the big media event with the Mayor of Miami, Manuel Diaz. We were delighted to encounter in him a highly motivated supporter of our cause. He is one of the almost 500 mayors of big cities in the USA who want to implement the Kyoto protocol in their towns. He took – in his words – our “historic journey” as the starting point to boost renewable energy for Miami. He declared his intention to submit a motion to the Miami City Parliament concerning the acquisition of solar boats for transportation in the Miami Bay area. He gave us a big Miami flag and a solemn, beautifully wrapped proclamation in which he declared Monday the 2nd of April as the “sun21 Day of Miami”. Several  TV teams – one of them worked for the Canadian Discovery Channel –  interviewed  us.  In addition, a video team and a photographer took photos and shot films for our communication work in New York. The following day, a lady shouted from a balcony that she had seen us on TV when we passed by on the channel.

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