Yesterday, my book Solar Electric Boats: Plan, Build & Benefit was released at the Sharjah International Book Fair.
Sharjah is the world’s largest book fair for publishing rights, six years running. This year it brought together more than 3,000 publishers from 126 countries and 1.7 million titles. Among them was one book about boats that run on the sun.
Brigadier General Saeed Obaid Rashid Al Suwaidi, Director of the Sharjah Civil Defence Authority, released the book. Mr. Ahmed Saif Al Muhairi, Director of the Ajman Municipality and Planning Department, received it. Shameer PV, Managing Director of Gulfiniti, gave the special address. I am grateful to each of them for their time.
Both of them spoke about the boats, not just the book. The Brigadier General said it was good to learn that electric works on boats too. People here know electric cars. Electric boats are new. Mr. Al Muhairi went a step further. He congratulated me, then said he wants to see our boats running here. A book is a good start. A boat on the water is better.
Sharjah runs free boats from Al Qasba and the Sharjah Aquarium to the Expo Centre during the fair. It was a fitting place to release a book about how those boats could run.
I did not set out to write a book. I set out in 2013 with one question. If the sun shines on the water every day, why do our boats burn diesel?
In 2017 we launched Aditya, India’s first solar-electric ferry, in Kerala. Many people said it would not work. It has carried passengers every day since. Today NAVALT has 87 vessel projects, built and under way, across 12 Indian states, with boats exported to Canada, Cyprus, Israel and the Seychelles.
We made mistakes along the way. We learned what works and what does not. Mostly we learned that a solar-electric boat is not a dream. It is an engineering decision and an economic one. In the right application, it costs less to run than a diesel boat. It is quieter. It is cleaner.
The book is that learning, written down. It is for anyone who wants to plan, build or operate a solar-electric boat. Operators, governments, designers, investors. It is called Plan, Build & Benefit because that is the order in which it happens.
Releasing it in the UAE felt right. The country has the sun. It has the water. It has the ambition. Ferries, abras, tourism boats, patrol craft. Many of them can run on the sun. I hope this book helps someone here take the first step.
Thank you to everyone who came to the release. Your time meant a lot. Thank you to Gulfiniti for making the release happen. Thank you to my team at NAVALT, who built everything this book describes. And thank you to my family.
Oceans was my choice. Go find yours.
