Bcomp is very proud to be official partner of the SuMoth challenge that took place this weekend on beautiful Lake Garda during the Foiling Week. Sunny skies, perfect wind conditions and a great atmosphere made for an amazing event.
The SuMoth Challenge
The SuMoth challenge invites student teams from all over the world to design, build, and eventually race a sustainable foiling Moth. The teams bring together students from different backgrounds to work on a common goal and gain valuable experience with sustainable technologies driving the future of sustainable boat building. Teams have to go through all the phases from material selection and design process, to engineering, actually building the Moth and finally getting it on the water. Time and budget constraints add to the complexity of this endeavour. Such a project can only be tackled with the right support and the teams can count on the partners of the SuMoth challenge.
Sharing Knowledge
Bcomp has a long tradition of passing on its knowledge and expertise in natural fibre composite solutions to students who will shape the future of many an industry. Needless to say, we were more than happy to support teams during the challenge. Paolo Dassi, Bcomp’s Marine and Industry Manager, held a masterclass on biobased composites for the participating teams. These masterclasses allow the students to benefit from the concentrated knowledge of the SuMoth partners and to gain valuable insights.
Talking to the teams on location and hearing first-hand how the masterclass has helped them and given them inspiration for new ideas, was simply great. Many of the teams on site mentioned that they are actively exploring the use of natural fibres for anything from updated and improved components to entire new hulls for next year’s event.
Finally Taking Flight
We saw incredible commitment and effort from all the teams over the course of the Foiling Week. They all had their own setbacks and victories, working tirelessly to get their innovative and sustainable Moth to take off, and to make a point for their design and material choices. Especially standing out, were moments such as the Moth from Canadian team Rafale ETS taking flight for the first time ever, or the entire PoliMi Sailing Team working tirelessly late into the evenings to finally take home a shared first place in the design stage and 2nd place in stage 2, just to name a few. We congratulate all the teams on their great boat designs and are already looking forward to seeing more teams and boats with natural fibre components by next year.
Foiling Week
The Foiling Week was a great success with a lot of interesting racing action, many initiatives to help people achieve their first foiling experience and cool side events such as the Foiling Film Festival. There was also a row of panel discussions on all the topics around foiling spread out over the long weekend. Bcomp was represented by Paolo Dassi, its Marine and Industry Manager, who could contribute his expertise during the discussion about Building Sustainability into Foiling. The entire forum sessions were streamed live and are now available on YouTube.
