Douglas Hewes ’18 returned to Radcliffe Creek School with the Washington College Electric Boat Team—their winning boat in tow—to share the team's inspiring record-breaking story with current students. Teammates Mac Sansbury and Tiyaba Jamil, along with Team Advisor Brian Palmer, accompanied Hewes on Friday, September 20, 2024, to speak to the RCS community about their recent successes bringing home first place awards in races against elite colleges, as well as breaking a Guinness World Record for the Longest Distance by an Electric Boat on a Single Charge without Solar.
Hewes, a junior at Washington College majoring in Computer Science, became involved with the team because of his passion working on antique cars and his interest in learning to electrify them. As the club's president, Hewes' role is to help build the boats used in competition and fix technical issues as they occur. Hewes explained, "We’re a small team, and we’re competing against much larger teams with much bigger budgets. Getting these boats to work for the first time is my favorite part. We’ve had great success putting them in the water—they just immediately work. A lot of the other teams struggle to get five miles around the course. We show up and our boats just work."
As the primary driver for the team's electric trimaran boat, Hewes kicked off the record-breaking attempt at the helm Friday, August 30, 2024, on the Chester River. He remained onsite to help as technical issues arose over the course of the Labor Day Weekend when, at 2:32 AM on Monday, Sept 2, 2024, the team beat the previous record set in 2001 by the Thames Electric Launch Company in England. Hewes believes it is his experience with this team, seeing these projects through, that has taught him the power of determination: "I've learned to just be persistent. Get it to the finish line. You can always fine tune it later on."
Hewes credits his RCS teachers, who taught him to read and build healthy study habits, for propelling him to where he is today. He said, "It look me forever to start enjoying reading. I feel that Orton-Gillingham is what has helped me the most. Learning the strategies that actually helped me study in general, and what worked best for me, was important. It helped me learn the best habits to be successful today."
His best piece of advice for current students who are struggling is to find something they enjoy and pair that with their learning. "Take what you’re interested in and figure out how to incorporate that into activities that are difficult. That will make you want to learn it more," Hewes suggested.
While the team has overcome its fair share of challenges in recent years, Hewes was quick to explain that their hard work is far from over. "The national competition we compete in changed the rules, and neither of the boats that we currently have fit within those rules anymore. So, we’ll be putting together another boat. That will make three years in a row that we’ve had to completely reconstruct a boat," he explained.
To learn more about the Washington College Electric Boat Team's successes and what's next, visit WACelectricboat.com.
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