Just wondering if there is any potential for coasting with these smaller ships? Replacing lorries for port to port travel say in med or along Atlantic coast of Europe.
Coasting ships were the main cargo transport before trains and for some time after in the UK. Even as late as 1950s a fair percentage of cargo came in and out of London on relatively small ships from UK ports and Europe mainland. Before containerisation of course but I'm not sure it was containers that killed that traffic off. I suspect it may have been motorways and lorries.
€3200 for France <-> Baltimore, 13 day trip. But with that you get three meals a day, a decent looking cabin, private bathroom, private balcony, and internet service (though how solid the connection is / what surcharges there may be is a question).
~€250/d doesn't sound too bad, and you could get work done along the way. Kind of sounds nice...
As always capped at 12 passengers by SOLAS:
the convention classifies every merchant ship with more than 12 passengers as a passenger ship not merely a cargo ship; AFAIK the worst (to profitability) effect is that the ship suddenly needs to carry a doctor.
Bear in mind that US cars are designed to cope with poor quality fuel with sulphur in it. Bringing an European spec car with engines not designed for use in the US may result in expensive damage.
This is based on what I learned 30 years ago so this may be out of date now.
The easiest way to do it is on a repositioning cruise where at the end of the season the cruise lines take their ships from one market to another. The positives are a cheap cruise, the negatives are that you're right at the end and beginning of ideal seasons so your experience at each end might not be great. Also you'll have a lot more sea days and fewer port days which could be in either column.
Weather at sea can be considerably worse than coastal weather. Cruise ships are pretty stable and it's unlikely to be awful, but plenty of people do get seasick. I used to be a professional sailor and so obviously can't see what the fuss is about, but probably half the passengers I spoke to felt ill on at least one of the days, and a few people spent the entire ocean transit in bed. If you're prone to motion sickness take some medication with you.
The atmosphere is different to regular cruises. Typically less of a party and the clientele skew towards older and more independent travellers.
To answer your actual question - go to cruisemapper and seascanner and you'll find them easily enough. They're all over the world.
I'd recommend a long canoe trip in Algonquin park (or somewhere similar nearby if there is something similar nearby) if offline is your goal (though obviously not entirely similar to an ocean crossing in other ways as well).
Many freighters have space for the 12 passengers they're allowed to carry before they get reclassified to passenger ship with all the post-Titanic SOLAS requirements those incur.
The first 12 however are easy, they self-select to be low-maintenance, they just get their breakfast/lunch/dinner portion from the ship's cook, and have their cabin. A little electricity, reasonable running water, and they're contend.
Essentially a hotel room plus partaking the staff dinner/in-House-catering.
Most people just can't handle the boredom these days, and many don't have that many days to spare, either.
Due to longterm conditioning from reading tech article headlines and discussions, my brain now autocompletes the word "cargo" to "cargo cult" every time it sees it in a tech context.
So I read "Largest cargo cult sailboat completes first Atlantic crossing" and was immediately intrigued...
I love that they're trying this. It appears the more practical goal might be retrofitting existing vessels with large sails to augment the motors, but making a point with a fully wind-powered vessel is a good show. Well, it would have been fully wind powered if not for the damaged sail. Good on them for sticking with the journey, though. I hope they keep running the vessel and get a few more fully wind powered journeys.
Spinning the rotor allows you to generate more power from the wind than what you would have gotten by putting the same energy into spinning a submerged propeller.
From what I understand it's not hugely more efficient, but something like 10-20% fuel savings. Not really equivalent to traditional sails, but also much easier to retrofit and doesn't need additional crew
No mechanical linkage. Basically just installing rotor on top of the deck and some electric connections are needed. Much simpler and much less error prone. Plus keeps all the usable space on decks below.
For the same reason you use electricity for a compressor in a heat pump. It's a lever. You extract more energy from the ambient air than you've spent on the motor.
I have a dim recollection of exactly this as a VC proposal likely put to YC in the past 24 months or so.
I think the notion was to fit masts to existing container ship and stacks, and I gsve it scant attention as my intuition (I once studied actual civil/mech engineering prior to jumping ship for applied math) suggested masts are better as integral parts of ships rather than bolt on after thoughts.
EDIT: Wingsails to reduce cargo ship fuel consumption (April 2023)
I’m Joseph, and along with Arpan and Bailey we are the founders of OutSail Shipping. We’re building a sail the size of a 747 that rolls up into a shipping container.
When deployed, it will generate thrust from the wind to reduce the fuel consumption of a cargo ship. An array of these devices will reduce fuel consumption on ships by up to 20%. These sails are easily stowed and removed to cause no interference with cargo operations.
Here’s a short video showing our prototype:
Not quite as I remembered .. kite sails, et al. are a good idea, I'm still a bit torn by the physics of a container deployed boom extension sail and the thrust transmission to the ship. Still, I haven't modeled it, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt.
EDIT2: Both links appear dead, so I guess that was a swing and a miss. Still, good to see such ideas pursued.
EDIT3: Also related
350 tons of of chocolate and wine arrive on world’s largest cargo sailboat (April 2024)
This is an area I have some peripheral involvement with. For retrofitted sails on bulkers, the figure of 10% saving in fuel is the usual one mentioned rather than 20%. However given the long life of ships, there is much more interest in retrofit than in new build.
You mention container ships. I haven't seen anything explicit on these, and I think the reason is probably that they cruise much faster than bulkers and tankers, which means the potential savings from sail is smaller. I would have thought 20% optimistic even for a new-build.
Retro fit is clearly a preferred path for a new approach given ship life spans and size of existing global transport fleet.
My gut objection to the container approach taken above in the first link was existing container locking mechanisms for ships can struggle in severe weather to keep the boxes on the boat .. additional forces from a sail (in good weather) might well mimic the forces that break stacks in bad weather.
Your point is well taken, I might suggest that container ships could be segregated into fast and slow cargo and that might help somewhat with total fleet fuel consumption. (pure spitball notion).
I'm sure there's plenty of businesses out there who'd love to advertise near zero or zero emissions transport for their goods, with the caveat that they have to plan a few more months ahead.
"suggested masts are better as integral parts of ships rather than bolt on after thoughts."
It seems quite mad that we even need to debate this. Wind is free power and we have at least 2000 years of engineering to draw on how to use it.
Any propulsion unit needs to be effectively attached to a ship. Screws are attached longitudinally, low down and push. Sails are a bit more tricksy. A triangular sail mounted along the long axis will generally work best because it can handle more wind angles but a square sail mounted across the long axis will provide more power on a "reach" to a "run" (the wind is mostly from behind, so pushing).
The cutting edge of sailing ships that carried stuff are the tea clippers. Think "Cutty Sark" which is now a visitor attraction in London, Greenwich. Note the stay sails - the triangular sails at the front. Then note the three masts. Each mast has several main sails that are huge rectangles for "reaches" and additional extensions. There are even more triangular infill sails above the main sails.
It's quite hard to explain how wind and sails work but you need to understand that a sailing ship can sail "into the wind". Those triangles are better at it than those rectangles but those rectangles can get more power by being bigger. Even better, you can use the front triangular sails (stay sails) to moderate the wind to feed the other sails with less turbulent wind.
Wind is free power and it is so well understood. How on earth is this news?
For the sails to be an effective means of propulsion they need to transfer a lot of force through the mast and stays to the hull. This require the attachment points to be very solid. Not something you can easily do as a retrofit. You'd need to reinforc the hull aroud the mast and stay attachments.
They likely can but with reduced changes for being optimal. Sails, keel and rudder should be balanced so that adjusted sails cause minimal pivoting force to mitigate with the rudder. Also the supports below the mast and plates for the stays likely need planning to allow sufficient structure without limiting the working angles of boom too much.
> I’m Joseph, and along with Arpan and Bailey we are the founders of OutSail Shipping. We’re building a sail the size of a 747 that rolls up into a shipping container.
Wasn't the main issue with this that fuel is paid for by cargo ship customers (the container owners), not the shipping company? So the shipping company doesn't want to spend a ton of capital to get a 10% discount to all their customers, and there was no way for thousands of random customers to exert pressure on the shipping company to do so. Basically the economics didn't make sense.
The economies of this make sense if there's more than one shipping company (they'll be cheaper and get more business) or if they just change how they charge, neither seems that hard.
Use it for luxury goods! "Why _my_ iphone arrived in Baltimore on a clean cargo ship, so yeah, ..."
I am only half joking. Anything luxury of vanity related, just add the fact they've gotten to the consumer on a clean ship and you'll find some people to pay extra for it. The more expensive the better. They can brag about it to each other.
Or an experiment? Maybe eventually finding its niche, even if it doesn't solve climate change, but why would the impact be zero? If it does not use oil, then this is CO2 not released.
> The 136-metre-long vessel had to rely partly on its auxiliary motor and its remaining sail after the aft sail was damaged in a storm shortly after departure.
Last summer we motored ~10% of the miles.That includes full day leg when there was practically no wind and few hours occasionally with combined powering. Working towards less or fractional oil based power can have significant benefits.
What would be the point? Ships are complex machines and the ocean is an incredibly harsh and unforgiving environment. You would need crew to simply maintain the ship while underway and fix things that break (which pretty much always happens).
Next, these ships can be downright dangerous for other, smaller ships. It has happened before that large cargo ships have killed people on sailboats when they didn't keep an adequate lookout. I wouldn't trust an autonomous system to have enough accuracy to avoid running over other boats.
A "normal" ocean-going Ro Ro ship would be over 200m long and quite a bit higher. Typically only the lowest deck can carry trucks and heavy loads and the upper decks carry cars. Their solution of only having the heavy load deck is sensible since they need a low center of gravity to counteract the sails and any added deck height hurts the sailing characteristics.
With all that said, there is not much to scale it up. They could make it a bit longer but probably mostly easily: risk in bad weather, structural integrity demands from the added sails and all that may quickly add up.
Looks cool! What's the latest innovation in 'sails' (shape/tech) development? And what would it take to scale a cargo sailboat to take >100k tonnes load?
In the meantime, China is constructing nuclear cargo ships ([1], [2]) that will be able to transport 14,000 containers at full throttle (200MW) without a need to refuel for years.
Obviously, it's still not done, and yet to prove to be profitable, but their reactor design does suggest that they have a chance to make it work and replace a lot of CO2 emissions.
Nuclear ship propulsion is not a new technology so I have no doubt they will succeed. But where this will and all previous attempts have (see: N.S. Savannah) failed is that ports do not want to accept such ships, because of environmental and insurance issues.
The Neoliner Origin cruises at 11 kts (20Km/h). "Straight line" on Google Earth from Saint-Nazaire to NY is about 5300 Km, so it crosses the Atlantic in 18 days.
The Emma Maersk (which I am aware plies a different route, but just for comparison's sake) cruises at 25kts (46Km/h) and therefore takes about 5 days.
Another interesting comparison: the Emma Maersk can carry ~154,000 tons of cargo, vs. this vessel's ~5,800 tons (if i'm juggling my tons and long tonnes and tonnes correctly).
I wonder what the savings is on fuel cost. I mean there are a lot of things that would be interesting if shipping costs were slashed — two more weeks is not important.
It is when you're shipping perishables. And market trends could fade away during crossing time. The cargo could be worthless before it arrives at port.
If it isn’t cheaper it isn’t on the board for the next decade or two outside niche routes. The hard part is in making it economically viable. We already know sailboats work.
That’s a decision we, as a civilization, need to make. I personally hope we manage to enact transnational policies that effectively price environmental and social externalities in my lifetime. Or else witness “free market” capitalism continue to degrade our planet and the lives of millions of less privileged people.
> That’s a decision we, as a civilization, need to make. I personally hope we manage to enact transnational policies that effectively price environmental and social externalities in my lifetime. Or else witness “free market” capitalism continue to degrade our planet and the lives of millions of less privileged people.
Name one decision that the entire human civilization has ever consciously made
That really big question for society is how to force GHG emissions externalities to the polluters. In the current political climate it doesn't appear possible...
> how to force GHG emissions externalities to the polluters
Not happening for decades. Not until America’s boomers, Xi and his wolf warriors and Putin and his circle are dead.
Solar is a success because it’s economically viable. We need more solutions like that. Not conference presentations wrapping a regressive carbon tax as a sailboat.
If you take climate change externalities into account, it just might be. Sure, your chocolate might be a bit more expensive, but at least your descendants will have some chocolate at all.
> The 136-metre-long vessel had to rely partly on its auxiliary motor and its remaining sail after the aft sail was damaged in a storm shortly after departure.
Well, that's a bummer. That said, this does seem the way of the future. We just need to either figure out maintenance robots and/or find a way to keep human crew happy on long, slow voyages across the Pacific.
Not sure if you ever been at full sea. I was once, well I wasn’t working just visiting but it was kind of outer world feeling.
I lived by the sea my whole life so sea on its own was not much special for me but being on the ship anchored in the middle of water with no land in sight was just different.
Apparently late 19th to 20th century wind cargo ships had their crew essentially subsidized by the fact that some countries (IIRC in Scandinavia?) required commercial sailing experience to get a pilot's license. For bulk cargo (e.g. grain or guano) the economies worked out.
You've got to be kidding. Using a fully sail powered cargo vessel is a PR stunt, not the way of the future. Regular motorized cargo vessels will probably use some form of sails to slightly reduce fuel burn on downwind legs but it's physically impossible to move huge volumes of cargo purely by sail power in an economical way. There just isn't enough energy in the wind.
There’s more than enough energy in the wind, and modern sailing technology has come a long ways. Some modern recreational sailboats can cross an ocean as fast as a cargo ship on just wind power, and speed isn’t even much of a factor for a lot of shipping. With the right tech I think fuel free shipping can disrupt fossil fuel shipping just by being cheaper.
Back when engines first replaced sailing fuel was nearly free, and sailboats were incredibly slow, dangerous, unreliable, and didn’t sail upwind well, and all that has changed- time to take another look.
Bullshit. We're not talking about recreational yachts here. There is not enough energy in wind alone to move huge merchant vessels at economically viable speeds across oceans.
You're really missing the point. The volume of cargo carried by sailing vessels in the old days was orders of magnitude lower. Not even remotely comparable to the current global trading system.
Customers care about total cost, not just fuel. There is also crew wages, maintenance, insurance, capital depreciation, etc. Sailing vessels that carry useful amounts of cargo are much slower than equivalent motor vessels so all other costs go up. Fuel is cheap.
> The volume of cargo carried by sailing vessels in the old days was orders of magnitude lower.
Surprisingly, no, it wasn't. I'll slightly fudge the numbers and talk in terms of proportion of world trade that was carried by ocean-going vessels (because if you double the population then it's reasonable to talk about doubling the number of ships).
The world economy was very globalised in 1913. That level of globalisation in trade wasn't matched again until the 1990s.
We're only a little more global now than we were in the age of sail.
The British navy and merchant fleet was a wonder of its era.
That's both wrong and right at the same time. There is plenty of energy in the wind, but when it isn't blowing in a favorable direction for your journey it will cause you to have to considerably lengthen your trip or end up in places where you don't want to go. It also isn't as constant and/or reliable as a motor. But until a few hundred years ago wind was all we had, and there is no reason why you could not make a containership that is wind powered just like it used to be. It's going to be interesting to see what kind of hull that would be. When the wind is blowing, favorable direction or not and it exceeds your expectations you're going to find out that there is more energy in the wind than you are prepared to deal with. If you've ever been on a sailboat in a storm that is the last thing you would write.
Nonsense. Even if the wind is blowing the right direction it doesn't have enough energy to move a huge merchant vessel at economically viable speeds. Do you have any clue about the mass and drag involved with something like a 20000 TEU container ship? There is no magic hull shape which can ever make sail propulsion alone make sense. This is basic physics.
Those same 20000 TEU container ships are famously susceptible to being blown about by winds when they loose power.
The stronger argument is that wind is not consistent or reliable enough for logistics. At least, not without doing a lot of extra math.
So I agree that sail propulsion alone won't happen at large, but it's an interesting question of how far in that direction commercial shipping can go with modern technology.
Modern sailing technology is amazing, and you may want to check it out. Speeds are, literally, 10 times faster (or more) today than the recent past. It’s absolutely astonishing.
The even better news is that the technology is becoming available to the general population and also commercially viable for projects like this.
I am familiar with modern sailing technology. Very little of it is applicable to huge merchant vessels. This project is a cute little stunt but it's never going to be economical for moving bulk cargo. Sails will be a minor supplement at best. Seriously, do the math.
How much sail area would it take to move a 20000 TEU ship at, let's say, even 12 kts? How tall would the masts have to be? Would they fit under bridges? You guys are talking about total fantasies here.
But you don't need 12kts, right? The ocean logistics is ~only about costs, as evidenced by the reduction in travel speed. That being said, cost is currently not dominated by fuel cost either. That means unless you reduce crewing requirements or build cost, there is probably not much savings that will pencil out. Plus you'd need more ships and the physical capacity to build more is limited
The power required would be the same as that provided by the bunker fuel engines in common use. Modern, computer controlled sails are efficient and very powerful. It’s obviously working for this ship, which is a conservative build.
You do realize that none of those ships could get into any port, right? We've made modifications to accommodate that.
I tend to agree with you that putting a fixed sail on top of a container vessel won't fly.
Maybe ships would need to be smaller. I think the size of ships was mostly increased because it makes it more efficient. But if fuel is free, you could have smaller ships take direct routes instead of the layovers we do now. That might compensate for time lost as well due to lower speed.
That's such a disappointment, I always had higher faith in the kites than the sails. Just seems easier to retrofit on existing ships witouth taking too much of the cargo capacity.
But are you sure they are bankrupt? The Internet claims "The company says the purpose of the acquisition, for which the price was not reported, is to strengthen the development and commercialization of “Seawing,” the automated kite system". That might be bs of course.
In a word, probably (but without documented speed runs who knows?).
Circumnavigation is a longer voyage than those craft would travel in one go, and the stops would increase their transit time. Even without that it would be a close competition with the latest class of racing sailboats that are able able to maintain very similar speeds, and the next generation will be decidedly faster.
American submarines and aircraft carriers are nuclear-powered. They can sustain over 30 knots without stopping effectively indefinitely. They make their own water and, where needed, breathing air. The only thing they need to stop for is food, and they have enough aboard to circumnavigate the globe easily.
It would be really hard to sustain an average speed of 30 knots in a sailing vessel for the entire journey. Certainly you'd need the assistance of the wind deities of your choice. Central to commercial travel by wind is the predictability or lack thereof with wind power. It would be tough to run a tight supply chain when you don't know when one's ship will arrive within a reasonable window. For that reason, I think the future can't really be purely wind-powered for most commodities, it's just not predictable enough to build schedules around.
This seems to be a tiny vessel ... just 5000 tons of cargo. Most container ships carry more like 200,000 tons of cargo. Can sails scale to carry that much cargo? If not, I fear the economics will not work out for sails alone. Perhaps sails plus something else makes more sense?
You can put a helluva lot of sails on a ship. The Preußen (1902) had 73,200 sqft of sail area on a ship 482 ft long. The Very Large Container (VLC) ships that hold 200,000 tons are over 1,300 ft long. And wind is a very, very strong force (it damaged these mechanical sails!). You could definitely make a VLC ship that could be powered by sails, in theory.
But wind's biggest downside, besides it sometimes being too strong, is it can completely stop. That and the complexity of sails, and its potential for failure, would probably not make it economically viable. Even if it was technically cheaper, the inconsistency and potentially poor performance would lead customers to continue chartering motorized vessels. There's a reason everyone switched from sail to steam.
It's a Ro Ro ship for rolling cargo. Not a big one and without the additional car decks an ocean going Ro Ro ship typically has, but for what it is the cargo capacity is reasonable.
It's not like the issue is with the windspeed. I'd imagine you'd only need stronger materials if the windspeed goes up, it's not like the sails break if the ship is too heavy. It just would get accelerated less by the amount of force captured by the sails. At least in my mental model of things. The only case in which you'd need to make the sails themselves stronger should be if the wind speed is somehow scaled.
Indeed, it's a very impressive speed. I have been on few ships of similar size as this sailboat. With their huge, extremely loud, hot, and diesel hunger engine they usually cruise at less than 15 knots.
Container ships are outliers. Not sure how much more fuel they burn when sailing at 25 knots vs 15 knots. But they use cheaper heavy oil so perhaps are less sensitive to fuel cost.
Also the same speed feels faster at sea than on the land because waves make sailing like drive off-road. A small boat can feel like fly at 30 knots. 11 knots makes a joyful ride.
This is just an unresearched idea so no for of feasibility, but what about helical windmills to generate electricity to augment power to a motor, ala hybrid gasoline/electric cars?
E-Ship 1 exists:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Ship_1
They report fuel savings up to 25%, so it may be viable for some ships types and voyages. But a long way from propelling the whole ship.
As someone whose goal in life is to be blown about the oceans by the wind, I have mixed feelings about this. With the "traditional" freighter I would have the right of way, my being a sailboat under the wisdom of the wind, they have to make allowances for me and change course, but things are different when that freighter is also under the wisdom of the wind. The same goes for things like offshore wind power, my life is made more difficult because most people expect their home to be 70F when it is 60F outside and 60F when it is 70F outside, anything else would incur undue hardship.
It is a complex situation, should I be penalized for wanting to live a life that has little or no environmental impact at cost of those who want to live in reasonable comfort while being a part of/contributing to, society? Probably not but I can't help but wonder about what happened to the first 'R' of the three R's (reduce, reuse and recycle), no one seems to reduce anymore unless technology gives them a way to do it without any inconvenience no matter how small that inconvenience is.
> The same goes for things like offshore wind power, my life is made more difficult because most people expect their home to be 70F when it is 60F outside and 60F when it is 70F outside, anything else would incur undue hardship.
This is an overly simplistic view of demands on energy, but it might be one of the easiest for people decry. (As it happens, comfort is nice though.)
> should I be penalized for wanting to live a life that has little or no environmental impact at cost of those who want to live in reasonable comfort while being a part of/contributing to, society?
No, but it's also unrealistic to expect to be sheltered from all externalities of society.
After all, switching to sail cargo ships is itself reducing an externality incurred by others.
> what happened to the first 'R' of the three R's (reduce, reuse and recycle)
This is a good principle, but it's not universally accepted, and it still permits things that involve cargo via ocean.
As more and more people are pulled from poverty, they too will begin to use more energy to improve their lives, perhaps to the point that they can choose to follow their dreams upon retirement.
I admitted or strongly implied everything you used as rebuttal with the exception of your final point, I don't believe using more energy improves ones life. Also, this is not a retirement dream, this is going to happen in the next year and I will be pulling over to work for ~6 months every couple years.
Not OP, but in general, while some things do improve my life (climate control, hot water, cooking), I'd say there are also plenty of things that don't.
I don't think my device usage habits or media consumption actually improve my life. I'm not sure the energy that's been dumped into producing the many gadgets I've bought over the years really improved me life.
I'd say that a lot of energy goes into distracting me in a way that I can't genuinely say is an improvement.
I think the point is larger than any individual. It involves the environment in which you're located. Infrastructure changes require energy, lots of energy. Increasing quality of life for most things we've built in our world requires investing lots of energy at the state level. You reap the benefits of this by living in the state.
Yeah, but even looking beyond individuals, my personal take is I'm no longer convinced, for example, all the massive amounts of electronics, fast fashion, and other consumerism-oriented production (which definitely do all use energy) are actually improving life. Same goes for a lot of online businesses that are occupying data centers and using electricity.
eg I'm unconvinced smart phones are truly improving life, let alone getting yearly incremental updates from every manufacturer.
So yes, to some extent, most life improvements are going to use some energy, but I wouldn't argue that most increases in spent energy lead to quality of life increases for a majority of people.
Why do my beliefs require anything to prove them? My beliefs are not fact and I never represented them as such, I said plainly that I have mixed feeling and that society should not bow to me. The exchange in response to my post are a good example of why my goal in life is to retreat from society, everyone ignored what I said to be "right." Admittedly I did not actually say that society should not bow to me, I said probably not, but that is simply because I don't actually know and I don't believe I ever implied that I did, putting on a sweater seems a small sacrifice to me.
I find it somewhat inconsistent that you feel people's choice of indoor temperature is an imposition on you, but also that your choice of sailboat should entitle you to having something that is literally hundreds of times larger and less nimble than you have to make the effort to go around you.
> that your choice of sailboat should entitle you to having something that is literally hundreds of times larger and less nimble than you have to make the effort to go around you.
That's how the rules of the road work. See: COLREGs.
We also travel by a small sailboat, and it is always reassuring to see huge tankers make small course changes tens of nautical miles away. That way everybody stays safe and nobody is majorly inconvenienced.
I know it's the rule of the road, but that's not the point.
The point is the inconsistency in tone between "your life choices make me go around your wind farm, that makes my life difficult", and "my life choices make your giant freighter go around me, I have right of way".
Small sail boats do not need to go around wind farms, they can just sail right through them assuming the weather is agreeable. The problem is more that if you are caught up in a storm anywhere near a windfarm (within range of the storm carrying you into it) it makes everything very dangerous for you; instead of dropping sail and letting the boat find its way through the storm from the safety of below decks you have to stay on deck and fight the storm. To put this into metropolitan terms, it would be like routing the main pedestrian path through the most dangerous part of town for the sake of a highway.
Either way, to repeat myself again, I did not say I was right or better and plainly stated my mixed feelings.
I didn't say that I am entitled or that it was an imposition, just that it was complex and I have mixed feelings about it, literally said that I don't think society should make allowances for me.
Yeah idk. Maybe it's the tone of stuff like "it would incur undue hardship" (re indoor temps) that comes across to me as a bit holier than thou and makes the rest of your first paragraph seem more self-centered.
I plainly stated that society should not bow to my needs and that those who contribute to society and are a part of society are more important than me, what more do you want?
That's true only in constrained waters. But obviously they need to see you from afar to be able to make that course change. That's where AIS transponders help a lot.
We've crossed some of the busier shipping lanes of the world, and have had to call the bridge of a freighter on radio just a couple of times. And usually the watchstander immediately confirmed seeing us and clarified their intentions.
> "With the "traditional" freighter I would have the right of way"
In theory, perhaps. In praxis, might makes right, bigger wins, and if you in your sailboat want to play chicken with a freighter of any kind, you're taking an unreasonable risk. Actually, commercial boats get priority over pleasurecraft, so even in theory it's probably your job to stay out of the way.
Not even in theory. Sure I may loose my boat but they will be liable for it and will not even question being liable, the cost is tiny to them and I would get a new boat if they ran me down. Things are more complex when that freighter is also under sail and most of the world lacks any legal bearing here.
You might want to read more about the right of way rules and USCG apportionment in maritime accidents. In the scenario you describe you most definitely would not be getting a new boat.
What makes you think the USCG has any bearing on my life? Even if I am an American I stated that my dream was to be blown about the oceans, which strongly implies that I will be out of USCG jurisdiction the majority of the time. You are right in context of a busy seaway like New York Harbor but in that situation a sailing freighter will be under power, not under sail and anyone in a small sailboat will be very alert. Most of the ocean is not under jurisdiction of the USCG and the rules for open water are different than those for near the coast or in the harbor.
I’m not sure where people get the idea of the rules don’t apply in international waters. The COLREGs clearly state commercial vessels have right away over recreational sailboats. End of story. You get run over by a commercial vessel, it’s your fault for being in the way but it’s their fault for running you down.
Not under command
Restricted maneuverability
Constrained by draft
Fishing (actively dragging)
Under sail
Ignoring not under command; in the open sea only the fishing boat has right of way over a sailing boat because the rest are not restricted by maneuverability or draft when in the middle of the ocean unless the crew is negligent. Fishing vessels in the open ocean tend to give way unless they can raise the boat on the radio and get them to change course because they really do not want the sail boat to foul their lines, especially the long line boats. In restricted waters boats under sail often have the right of way because they have restricted maneuverability (restricted by the wind) and their deep keel means they are restricted by draft but it is not so black and white here; if the sailboat can fire up its engine it is more maneuverable than that tug pulling a bunch of barges so if that sailboat has less draft restriction than the tug and its barges, it has to fire up its engine and get out of the way.
But COLREG is not the rule of the sea, just the rule for countries who are a part of the UN. But the truth is that a collision with such a sailboat will not phase these boats and generally writing a check is an insignificant cost and rare enough that it is what they do.
A large ship is very unlikely to just instantly destroy and sink a small sailboat, bow wave pushes it aside and destroys the rigging leaving the boat adrift, crew either abandons it or scuttles it when rescued unless they are near land and can be towed.
Having witnessed a large commercial ship going 15 kts run over a smaller 30 foot sailboat I can assure you it was not “pushed aside” unless by aside you mean pushed under.
If hit just right it would destroy the boat but that is a one in a million hit. The shape of displacement hulls and their need to part and push the water aside so they can move through the water will almost always mean that small boats will be pushed aside and damaged but not sunk. An open boat (which a small number of 30' sailboats are) would be a different story, the hit would almost certainly heel them enough to flood and sink them, but I think it is obvious that I am not talking about open boats but boats with a deck and a cabin that you can live in. I could be wrong in that assumption, many do not know the difference between an open and a decked boat and I could have been more clear there.
I think "reduce" has always been pipe dream by the de-growth sector. At its core I'm not convinced that humans can ever willfully engage in managed decline. When I say this I mean societies, large groups, cities, etc. Not individuals. De-growth has a serious scaling issue. It's fundamentally incompatible with the bedrock of why humans come together.
Maybe? I don't think this is beyond societies, but it does require society to expect it. The idea of reducing had an effect on society back in the 80s and into the 90s, people did reduce, but it didn't last. This is not "de-growth," unless you think growth is a measure of the number of people who live a life a leisure.
Just wondering if there is any potential for coasting with these smaller ships? Replacing lorries for port to port travel say in med or along Atlantic coast of Europe.
Coasting ships were the main cargo transport before trains and for some time after in the UK. Even as late as 1950s a fair percentage of cargo came in and out of London on relatively small ships from UK ports and Europe mainland. Before containerisation of course but I'm not sure it was containers that killed that traffic off. I suspect it may have been motorways and lorries.
They have a passenger service too!
€3200 for France <-> Baltimore, 13 day trip. But with that you get three meals a day, a decent looking cabin, private bathroom, private balcony, and internet service (though how solid the connection is / what surcharges there may be is a question).
~€250/d doesn't sound too bad, and you could get work done along the way. Kind of sounds nice...
https://www.voilasailcoop.fr/transatlantic/
https://www.voilasailcoop.fr/transatlantic/transatlantic-a-b...
As always capped at 12 passengers by SOLAS: the convention classifies every merchant ship with more than 12 passengers as a passenger ship not merely a cargo ship; AFAIK the worst (to profitability) effect is that the ship suddenly needs to carry a doctor.
Considering it's a roll-on/roll-off ship, they're this close to providing a transatlantic passenger+vehicle ferry service, which would really be fun.
Bear in mind that US cars are designed to cope with poor quality fuel with sulphur in it. Bringing an European spec car with engines not designed for use in the US may result in expensive damage.
This is based on what I learned 30 years ago so this may be out of date now.
Interviews with CEO, where he stresses that the main problem is not sailing upwind but to get there on time.
https://youtu.be/qhAlImSIDyU
https://youtu.be/QfHJE1UwMTw
Another contender https://youtu.be/xsFc3pro8Y8
(Also FR based, cultural reason?)
I crossed the atlantic twice, each time for 650 euros the 13 days… add 250/300 euros for internet
What type of ship was it? And how was the experience, did you enjoy the trip & find enough to do to stay busy/not bored along the way?
Have long been interested in something like this. From where to where? How did you arrange the trip?
The easiest way to do it is on a repositioning cruise where at the end of the season the cruise lines take their ships from one market to another. The positives are a cheap cruise, the negatives are that you're right at the end and beginning of ideal seasons so your experience at each end might not be great. Also you'll have a lot more sea days and fewer port days which could be in either column.
Weather at sea can be considerably worse than coastal weather. Cruise ships are pretty stable and it's unlikely to be awful, but plenty of people do get seasick. I used to be a professional sailor and so obviously can't see what the fuss is about, but probably half the passengers I spoke to felt ill on at least one of the days, and a few people spent the entire ocean transit in bed. If you're prone to motion sickness take some medication with you.
The atmosphere is different to regular cruises. Typically less of a party and the clientele skew towards older and more independent travellers.
To answer your actual question - go to cruisemapper and seascanner and you'll find them easily enough. They're all over the world.
Same and always wanted to be completely offline for that length of time.
I'd recommend a long canoe trip in Algonquin park (or somewhere similar nearby if there is something similar nearby) if offline is your goal (though obviously not entirely similar to an ocean crossing in other ways as well).
I took the Queen Mary across a few years ago and it suuuuuuuucked and cost a frigging fortune.
Their main target markets appear to be mennonites and uptight assholes.
What sucked about it? I've been considering it for a long time as an alternative to flying across the Atlantic.
Sure sounds like captive audiences for a resourceful prankster...
No reason why they wouldn't have Starlink today. Or you could take your own Starlink Mini.
The first thing I thought when I saw the article was, I wonder if they have passenger service.
Many freighters have space for the 12 passengers they're allowed to carry before they get reclassified to passenger ship with all the post-Titanic SOLAS requirements those incur.
The first 12 however are easy, they self-select to be low-maintenance, they just get their breakfast/lunch/dinner portion from the ship's cook, and have their cabin. A little electricity, reasonable running water, and they're contend. Essentially a hotel room plus partaking the staff dinner/in-House-catering.
Most people just can't handle the boredom these days, and many don't have that many days to spare, either.
Due to longterm conditioning from reading tech article headlines and discussions, my brain now autocompletes the word "cargo" to "cargo cult" every time it sees it in a tech context.
So I read "Largest cargo cult sailboat completes first Atlantic crossing" and was immediately intrigued...
I love that they're trying this. It appears the more practical goal might be retrofitting existing vessels with large sails to augment the motors, but making a point with a fully wind-powered vessel is a good show. Well, it would have been fully wind powered if not for the damaged sail. Good on them for sticking with the journey, though. I hope they keep running the vessel and get a few more fully wind powered journeys.
Rotor[0] retrofits already have been done on full size tankers[1].
This is probably a more reliable and practical solution than traditional sails.
0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotor_ship
1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maersk_Pelican
But why would you use a motor to spin a rotor instead of a submerged propeller?
Spinning the rotor allows you to generate more power from the wind than what you would have gotten by putting the same energy into spinning a submerged propeller.
From what I understand it's not hugely more efficient, but something like 10-20% fuel savings. Not really equivalent to traditional sails, but also much easier to retrofit and doesn't need additional crew
No mechanical linkage. Basically just installing rotor on top of the deck and some electric connections are needed. Much simpler and much less error prone. Plus keeps all the usable space on decks below.
For the same reason you use electricity for a compressor in a heat pump. It's a lever. You extract more energy from the ambient air than you've spent on the motor.
Seems an interesting solution to whales being cut up by ship propellers
I have a dim recollection of exactly this as a VC proposal likely put to YC in the past 24 months or so.
I think the notion was to fit masts to existing container ship and stacks, and I gsve it scant attention as my intuition (I once studied actual civil/mech engineering prior to jumping ship for applied math) suggested masts are better as integral parts of ships rather than bolt on after thoughts.
EDIT: Wingsails to reduce cargo ship fuel consumption (April 2023)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35426482
https://outsailshipping.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/OutSail-Shipping/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUpVqzpym54Not quite as I remembered .. kite sails, et al. are a good idea, I'm still a bit torn by the physics of a container deployed boom extension sail and the thrust transmission to the ship. Still, I haven't modeled it, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt.
EDIT2: Both links appear dead, so I guess that was a swing and a miss. Still, good to see such ideas pursued.
EDIT3: Also related
350 tons of of chocolate and wine arrive on world’s largest cargo sailboat (April 2024)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40022801
This is an area I have some peripheral involvement with. For retrofitted sails on bulkers, the figure of 10% saving in fuel is the usual one mentioned rather than 20%. However given the long life of ships, there is much more interest in retrofit than in new build.
You mention container ships. I haven't seen anything explicit on these, and I think the reason is probably that they cruise much faster than bulkers and tankers, which means the potential savings from sail is smaller. I would have thought 20% optimistic even for a new-build.
Retro fit is clearly a preferred path for a new approach given ship life spans and size of existing global transport fleet.
My gut objection to the container approach taken above in the first link was existing container locking mechanisms for ships can struggle in severe weather to keep the boxes on the boat .. additional forces from a sail (in good weather) might well mimic the forces that break stacks in bad weather.
Your point is well taken, I might suggest that container ships could be segregated into fast and slow cargo and that might help somewhat with total fleet fuel consumption. (pure spitball notion).
I'm sure there's plenty of businesses out there who'd love to advertise near zero or zero emissions transport for their goods, with the caveat that they have to plan a few more months ahead.
"suggested masts are better as integral parts of ships rather than bolt on after thoughts."
It seems quite mad that we even need to debate this. Wind is free power and we have at least 2000 years of engineering to draw on how to use it.
Any propulsion unit needs to be effectively attached to a ship. Screws are attached longitudinally, low down and push. Sails are a bit more tricksy. A triangular sail mounted along the long axis will generally work best because it can handle more wind angles but a square sail mounted across the long axis will provide more power on a "reach" to a "run" (the wind is mostly from behind, so pushing).
The cutting edge of sailing ships that carried stuff are the tea clippers. Think "Cutty Sark" which is now a visitor attraction in London, Greenwich. Note the stay sails - the triangular sails at the front. Then note the three masts. Each mast has several main sails that are huge rectangles for "reaches" and additional extensions. There are even more triangular infill sails above the main sails.
It's quite hard to explain how wind and sails work but you need to understand that a sailing ship can sail "into the wind". Those triangles are better at it than those rectangles but those rectangles can get more power by being bigger. Even better, you can use the front triangular sails (stay sails) to moderate the wind to feed the other sails with less turbulent wind.
Wind is free power and it is so well understood. How on earth is this news?
I thought (and think) that the teaclipper‘s square sail rigs wouldn’t be considered state of the art for any course the ship might sail.
This is all interesting, but is there a reason trianglular and rectangular sails can't be bolt on after thoughts?
For the sails to be an effective means of propulsion they need to transfer a lot of force through the mast and stays to the hull. This require the attachment points to be very solid. Not something you can easily do as a retrofit. You'd need to reinforc the hull aroud the mast and stay attachments.
They likely can but with reduced changes for being optimal. Sails, keel and rudder should be balanced so that adjusted sails cause minimal pivoting force to mitigate with the rudder. Also the supports below the mast and plates for the stays likely need planning to allow sufficient structure without limiting the working angles of boom too much.
> EDIT: Wingsails to reduce cargo ship fuel consumption (April 2023) > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35426482
> I’m Joseph, and along with Arpan and Bailey we are the founders of OutSail Shipping. We’re building a sail the size of a 747 that rolls up into a shipping container.
Wasn't the main issue with this that fuel is paid for by cargo ship customers (the container owners), not the shipping company? So the shipping company doesn't want to spend a ton of capital to get a 10% discount to all their customers, and there was no way for thousands of random customers to exert pressure on the shipping company to do so. Basically the economics didn't make sense.
The economies of this make sense if there's more than one shipping company (they'll be cheaper and get more business) or if they just change how they charge, neither seems that hard.
This ship carries 5300 tonnes of cargo.
The average transoceanic container ship carries around 150,000 to 250,000 tonnes.
Use it for luxury goods! "Why _my_ iphone arrived in Baltimore on a clean cargo ship, so yeah, ..."
I am only half joking. Anything luxury of vanity related, just add the fact they've gotten to the consumer on a clean ship and you'll find some people to pay extra for it. The more expensive the better. They can brag about it to each other.
Bottom line: impressive optics, zero impact for this technology on global warming, it's a distraction.
Or an experiment? Maybe eventually finding its niche, even if it doesn't solve climate change, but why would the impact be zero? If it does not use oil, then this is CO2 not released.
Well it does use oil.
> The 136-metre-long vessel had to rely partly on its auxiliary motor and its remaining sail after the aft sail was damaged in a storm shortly after departure.
Used the motor "shortly after departure".
Last summer we motored ~10% of the miles.That includes full day leg when there was practically no wind and few hours occasionally with combined powering. Working towards less or fractional oil based power can have significant benefits.
Yes. Experiments have a tendency to show where problems are.
You always start small.
Conspicuous nonconsumption of fossil fuels... Hmmmm.
I doubt Apple is lunging to do this tbh.
You think they're gonna take a first crack at this and jump straight to the biggest they could go?
https://www.ship-technology.com/projects/neoliner-origin-ro-...
Apparently Neoliner Origin capacity is 265 TEU (twenty foot equivalent units).
That’s tiny by cargo ship standards and bulk, not weight, is the bulk of bulk shipping costs.
Could you have autonomous ships this size, like a waymo for the ocean?
What would be the point? Ships are complex machines and the ocean is an incredibly harsh and unforgiving environment. You would need crew to simply maintain the ship while underway and fix things that break (which pretty much always happens).
Next, these ships can be downright dangerous for other, smaller ships. It has happened before that large cargo ships have killed people on sailboats when they didn't keep an adequate lookout. I wouldn't trust an autonomous system to have enough accuracy to avoid running over other boats.
Also if the ship is large enough to send economically feasible, the value of the cargo is so huge that a few crew won't affect the bill.
There are plenty of reports of crews being overworked and underslept, so clearly some shipping companies still cut corners as regards staffing.
Does anyone know how well this scales? I assume it just doesn’t make sense to actually make one of that size when they are testing out the concept.
A "normal" ocean-going Ro Ro ship would be over 200m long and quite a bit higher. Typically only the lowest deck can carry trucks and heavy loads and the upper decks carry cars. Their solution of only having the heavy load deck is sensible since they need a low center of gravity to counteract the sails and any added deck height hurts the sailing characteristics. With all that said, there is not much to scale it up. They could make it a bit longer but probably mostly easily: risk in bad weather, structural integrity demands from the added sails and all that may quickly add up.
It also broke shortly after beginning and didn’t make the trip by sailing.
1 of their 2 sails broke. They completed the trip on one sail and their back up engine.
Especially in a prototype, proving something can go wrong and you can still complete the mission is valuable data.
You wouldn't prototype something like this at full scale.
Bring back the Onedin Line...even just for the theme tune. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2IuPjpAHnI
Looks cool! What's the latest innovation in 'sails' (shape/tech) development? And what would it take to scale a cargo sailboat to take >100k tonnes load?
> The ship can carry up to 5,300 tonnes of cargo
Ok but ... what was it carrying? I mean there may be a government active right now that is bombing civilian ships, in particular when they carry fish.
That sounds fishy!
In the meantime, China is constructing nuclear cargo ships ([1], [2]) that will be able to transport 14,000 containers at full throttle (200MW) without a need to refuel for years.
Obviously, it's still not done, and yet to prove to be profitable, but their reactor design does suggest that they have a chance to make it work and replace a lot of CO2 emissions.
1. Original article, but paywall: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3331031/chin...
2. Derivative (+based commentary), but no paywall: https://www.chosun.com/english/world-en/2025/11/07/MND3QUGUT...
Nuclear ship propulsion is not a new technology so I have no doubt they will succeed. But where this will and all previous attempts have (see: N.S. Savannah) failed is that ports do not want to accept such ships, because of environmental and insurance issues.
China owns some ports abroad and probably they have enough leverage in some of those countries to let their ships dock there.
Bring back the Onedin Line.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2IuPjpAHnI
I wonder why we don’t have nuclear cargo/container ships.
It would make for interesting special effects playing Fallout
There is at least one
This article gives a decent overview though: https://thebulletin.org/2024/09/why-nuclear-powered-commerci...
There have been four nuclear powered cargo ships built and operated, but none of the former are currently in active service.
Probably the same reason for why there is not more nuklear power on land as well. Cost.
Or a tug to pull N cargo ships during calm seas
It's coming : https://interestingengineering.com/transportation/thorium-po...
Thought I may go see it in person but looks like it’s about half way home already.
https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:96...
List of large sailing vessels - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_large_sailing_vessels
not the longest
but top notch tonnage
the French Wikipedia lists it at 13 278 GT
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliner_Origin
and
Napkin calculation:
The Neoliner Origin cruises at 11 kts (20Km/h). "Straight line" on Google Earth from Saint-Nazaire to NY is about 5300 Km, so it crosses the Atlantic in 18 days.
The Emma Maersk (which I am aware plies a different route, but just for comparison's sake) cruises at 25kts (46Km/h) and therefore takes about 5 days.
I worked with maritime shipping folks, and they always say "We don't care how slow it is, but we care A LOT to estimate the time it takes right".
The logistical chain is long, so delaying one link breaks the whole chain, and that's costly.
This is one thing my company tries to solve!
that doesn't really make any sense. You'd just overestimate the time and if you arrived ahead of schedule you'd wait out at sea for the "correct" time
But that's extra time when the ship is sitting idle, while it could've already been on its way with new cargo, making more money.
Another interesting comparison: the Emma Maersk can carry ~154,000 tons of cargo, vs. this vessel's ~5,800 tons (if i'm juggling my tons and long tonnes and tonnes correctly).
I wonder what the savings is on fuel cost. I mean there are a lot of things that would be interesting if shipping costs were slashed — two more weeks is not important.
It is when you're shipping perishables. And market trends could fade away during crossing time. The cargo could be worthless before it arrives at port.
“The Neoliner Origin is designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 to 90 per cent compared to conventional diesel-powered cargo ships.”
Is it cheaper?
Are you pricing in the externalities of GHGs?
No.
If it isn’t cheaper it isn’t on the board for the next decade or two outside niche routes. The hard part is in making it economically viable. We already know sailboats work.
That’s a decision we, as a civilization, need to make. I personally hope we manage to enact transnational policies that effectively price environmental and social externalities in my lifetime. Or else witness “free market” capitalism continue to degrade our planet and the lives of millions of less privileged people.
> That’s a decision we, as a civilization, need to make. I personally hope we manage to enact transnational policies that effectively price environmental and social externalities in my lifetime. Or else witness “free market” capitalism continue to degrade our planet and the lives of millions of less privileged people.
Name one decision that the entire human civilization has ever consciously made
Banning CFCs
That really big question for society is how to force GHG emissions externalities to the polluters. In the current political climate it doesn't appear possible...
> how to force GHG emissions externalities to the polluters
Not happening for decades. Not until America’s boomers, Xi and his wolf warriors and Putin and his circle are dead.
Solar is a success because it’s economically viable. We need more solutions like that. Not conference presentations wrapping a regressive carbon tax as a sailboat.
EVs are sinking ships.
If you could build mass fleets of smaller ships that are sail and electric powered to move electric cars and containers of batteries.
What about the positive externalities of sulfur dioxide emissions reducing temperatures?
We need more container ships polluting or the post 2020 global warming rate could double!
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01442-3
If you take climate change externalities into account, it just might be. Sure, your chocolate might be a bit more expensive, but at least your descendants will have some chocolate at all.
If you took climate change externalities into account you wouldn't allow selling of chocolate.
Made me think of this a couple months back
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/apr/11/shipping...
> The 136-metre-long vessel had to rely partly on its auxiliary motor and its remaining sail after the aft sail was damaged in a storm shortly after departure.
Well, that's a bummer. That said, this does seem the way of the future. We just need to either figure out maintenance robots and/or find a way to keep human crew happy on long, slow voyages across the Pacific.
> or find a way to keep human crew happy on long, slow voyages across the Pacific.
The few people I know who pursued jobs on boats did so because they liked being out at sea, away from land.
Combine that with the modern availability of high speed internet via Starlink and entertainment is not a problem.
Spent 13 years at sea, loved every minute. I actually liked it better before phones and Internet came onboard.
What did you do with your time and enjoy?
Work out, read, video games, watch movies, play cards or chess, etc. Plenty to do!
> The few people I know who pursued jobs on boats did so because they liked being out at sea, away from land.
Maybe it wasn't just the land they were getting away from.
Not sure if you ever been at full sea. I was once, well I wasn’t working just visiting but it was kind of outer world feeling.
I lived by the sea my whole life so sea on its own was not much special for me but being on the ship anchored in the middle of water with no land in sight was just different.
Apparently late 19th to 20th century wind cargo ships had their crew essentially subsidized by the fact that some countries (IIRC in Scandinavia?) required commercial sailing experience to get a pilot's license. For bulk cargo (e.g. grain or guano) the economies worked out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron-hulled_sailing_ship
These trips happened all the way to late 1940s. Here's a good book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Grain_Race
If you get the chance, the Pommern is a beautifully preserved ship from that era in Mariehamn's excellent maritime museum.
The rigid aerofoil sails seem more maintenance-free. Some of those are inflatable as well.
> find a way to keep human crew happy on long, slow voyages across the Pacific.
Makes me think of Rory Sutherland's ideas for getting passengers to be ok with a long ride duration on the Eurostar https://www.instagram.com/reel/C98_wbssLjG/
You've got to be kidding. Using a fully sail powered cargo vessel is a PR stunt, not the way of the future. Regular motorized cargo vessels will probably use some form of sails to slightly reduce fuel burn on downwind legs but it's physically impossible to move huge volumes of cargo purely by sail power in an economical way. There just isn't enough energy in the wind.
There’s more than enough energy in the wind, and modern sailing technology has come a long ways. Some modern recreational sailboats can cross an ocean as fast as a cargo ship on just wind power, and speed isn’t even much of a factor for a lot of shipping. With the right tech I think fuel free shipping can disrupt fossil fuel shipping just by being cheaper.
Back when engines first replaced sailing fuel was nearly free, and sailboats were incredibly slow, dangerous, unreliable, and didn’t sail upwind well, and all that has changed- time to take another look.
When engines first replaced sail, sail boats also required far higher crew numbers to operate. That's not the case today
Bullshit. We're not talking about recreational yachts here. There is not enough energy in wind alone to move huge merchant vessels at economically viable speeds across oceans.
...how do you think trans-oceanic trade was done before steam or diesel powered ships?
Plenty of customers don't care about latency, just cost. No fuel = no fuel cost.
You're really missing the point. The volume of cargo carried by sailing vessels in the old days was orders of magnitude lower. Not even remotely comparable to the current global trading system.
Customers care about total cost, not just fuel. There is also crew wages, maintenance, insurance, capital depreciation, etc. Sailing vessels that carry useful amounts of cargo are much slower than equivalent motor vessels so all other costs go up. Fuel is cheap.
> The volume of cargo carried by sailing vessels in the old days was orders of magnitude lower.
Surprisingly, no, it wasn't. I'll slightly fudge the numbers and talk in terms of proportion of world trade that was carried by ocean-going vessels (because if you double the population then it's reasonable to talk about doubling the number of ships).
The world economy was very globalised in 1913. That level of globalisation in trade wasn't matched again until the 1990s.
We're only a little more global now than we were in the age of sail.
The British navy and merchant fleet was a wonder of its era.
That's both wrong and right at the same time. There is plenty of energy in the wind, but when it isn't blowing in a favorable direction for your journey it will cause you to have to considerably lengthen your trip or end up in places where you don't want to go. It also isn't as constant and/or reliable as a motor. But until a few hundred years ago wind was all we had, and there is no reason why you could not make a containership that is wind powered just like it used to be. It's going to be interesting to see what kind of hull that would be. When the wind is blowing, favorable direction or not and it exceeds your expectations you're going to find out that there is more energy in the wind than you are prepared to deal with. If you've ever been on a sailboat in a storm that is the last thing you would write.
Nonsense. Even if the wind is blowing the right direction it doesn't have enough energy to move a huge merchant vessel at economically viable speeds. Do you have any clue about the mass and drag involved with something like a 20000 TEU container ship? There is no magic hull shape which can ever make sail propulsion alone make sense. This is basic physics.
Those same 20000 TEU container ships are famously susceptible to being blown about by winds when they loose power.
The stronger argument is that wind is not consistent or reliable enough for logistics. At least, not without doing a lot of extra math.
So I agree that sail propulsion alone won't happen at large, but it's an interesting question of how far in that direction commercial shipping can go with modern technology.
Modern sailing technology is amazing, and you may want to check it out. Speeds are, literally, 10 times faster (or more) today than the recent past. It’s absolutely astonishing.
The even better news is that the technology is becoming available to the general population and also commercially viable for projects like this.
I am familiar with modern sailing technology. Very little of it is applicable to huge merchant vessels. This project is a cute little stunt but it's never going to be economical for moving bulk cargo. Sails will be a minor supplement at best. Seriously, do the math.
Sincere question: have you done the math? If so, this conversation would be a lot more interesting if you shared it.
How much sail area would it take to move a 20000 TEU ship at, let's say, even 12 kts? How tall would the masts have to be? Would they fit under bridges? You guys are talking about total fantasies here.
But you don't need 12kts, right? The ocean logistics is ~only about costs, as evidenced by the reduction in travel speed. That being said, cost is currently not dominated by fuel cost either. That means unless you reduce crewing requirements or build cost, there is probably not much savings that will pencil out. Plus you'd need more ships and the physical capacity to build more is limited
The power required would be the same as that provided by the bunker fuel engines in common use. Modern, computer controlled sails are efficient and very powerful. It’s obviously working for this ship, which is a conservative build.
> Would they fit under bridges?
You do realize that none of those ships could get into any port, right? We've made modifications to accommodate that.
I tend to agree with you that putting a fixed sail on top of a container vessel won't fly.
Maybe ships would need to be smaller. I think the size of ships was mostly increased because it makes it more efficient. But if fuel is free, you could have smaller ships take direct routes instead of the layovers we do now. That might compensate for time lost as well due to lower speed.
This is a PoC not a finished product
There are even more crazy steampunk ideas out there, like pulling ships with giant high-altitude kites https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/giant-kite-sai...
Cool link, thanks! Unfortunately they went bankrupt and the tech now belongs to what was their first and only customer, K Line.
That's such a disappointment, I always had higher faith in the kites than the sails. Just seems easier to retrofit on existing ships witouth taking too much of the cargo capacity.
But are you sure they are bankrupt? The Internet claims "The company says the purpose of the acquisition, for which the price was not reported, is to strengthen the development and commercialization of “Seawing,” the automated kite system". That might be bs of course.
There also seems to be anther company trying it out, https://cargokite.com/
Fun fact: the fastest way to get around the world by boat is on a sailboat. Wild, but true.
Faster than an American attack submarine or aircraft carrier?
In a word, probably (but without documented speed runs who knows?).
Circumnavigation is a longer voyage than those craft would travel in one go, and the stops would increase their transit time. Even without that it would be a close competition with the latest class of racing sailboats that are able able to maintain very similar speeds, and the next generation will be decidedly faster.
Things have changed.
American submarines and aircraft carriers are nuclear-powered. They can sustain over 30 knots without stopping effectively indefinitely. They make their own water and, where needed, breathing air. The only thing they need to stop for is food, and they have enough aboard to circumnavigate the globe easily.
It would be really hard to sustain an average speed of 30 knots in a sailing vessel for the entire journey. Certainly you'd need the assistance of the wind deities of your choice. Central to commercial travel by wind is the predictability or lack thereof with wind power. It would be tough to run a tight supply chain when you don't know when one's ship will arrive within a reasonable window. For that reason, I think the future can't really be purely wind-powered for most commodities, it's just not predictable enough to build schedules around.
That’s correct, but look up the Gitana 17.
> The Gitana 17 is a 100ft trimaran designed to foil offshore at sustained speeds of 45 knots or more.
Also, 1964, the all-nuclear Task Force One, including the USS Enterprise, completed a high-speed circumnavigation in 65 days.
The winner of the Vende Globe did it in 64. And that was solo (one person on board).
The Vende Globe is ~44k km (Mm?) and Operation Sea Orbit was ~49k km.
But the Vende Globe is restricted to monohulls (i.e. no hydrofoil trimarans) and as you wrote, is more about individual skills.
This seems to be a tiny vessel ... just 5000 tons of cargo. Most container ships carry more like 200,000 tons of cargo. Can sails scale to carry that much cargo? If not, I fear the economics will not work out for sails alone. Perhaps sails plus something else makes more sense?
You can put a helluva lot of sails on a ship. The Preußen (1902) had 73,200 sqft of sail area on a ship 482 ft long. The Very Large Container (VLC) ships that hold 200,000 tons are over 1,300 ft long. And wind is a very, very strong force (it damaged these mechanical sails!). You could definitely make a VLC ship that could be powered by sails, in theory.
But wind's biggest downside, besides it sometimes being too strong, is it can completely stop. That and the complexity of sails, and its potential for failure, would probably not make it economically viable. Even if it was technically cheaper, the inconsistency and potentially poor performance would lead customers to continue chartering motorized vessels. There's a reason everyone switched from sail to steam.
Why does that cargo all have to be on giant ships vs tons of smaller ones?
It's a Ro Ro ship for rolling cargo. Not a big one and without the additional car decks an ocean going Ro Ro ship typically has, but for what it is the cargo capacity is reasonable.
That's still roughly 5 Cutty Sarks (1100 tons at 15 knots average speed)
Sails scale. You can make them out of steel if necessary - the wind does not care what it pushes.
It's not like the issue is with the windspeed. I'd imagine you'd only need stronger materials if the windspeed goes up, it's not like the sails break if the ship is too heavy. It just would get accelerated less by the amount of force captured by the sails. At least in my mental model of things. The only case in which you'd need to make the sails themselves stronger should be if the wind speed is somehow scaled.
>> He added that wind propulsion offers an advantage because it is a free, widely available, and predictable energy source
Written by someone who obviously has never owned a sailboat.
11 knots seems a good speed.
Indeed, it's a very impressive speed. I have been on few ships of similar size as this sailboat. With their huge, extremely loud, hot, and diesel hunger engine they usually cruise at less than 15 knots. Container ships are outliers. Not sure how much more fuel they burn when sailing at 25 knots vs 15 knots. But they use cheaper heavy oil so perhaps are less sensitive to fuel cost.
Also the same speed feels faster at sea than on the land because waves make sailing like drive off-road. A small boat can feel like fly at 30 knots. 11 knots makes a joyful ride.
This is just an unresearched idea so no for of feasibility, but what about helical windmills to generate electricity to augment power to a motor, ala hybrid gasoline/electric cars?
It’s probably one of the best understood methods of crossing oceans, just that all the knowledge has been forgotten.
Recall how slaves were transported from Africa to the Americas.
How gold was transported from the South America to Europe and sugar from the Caribbean.
And not forgetting how opium was transported to China by the Europeans from India.
So transporting stuff by sail is definitely not “unresearched” rather it is a forgotten technology.
More efficient is something that directly provides thrust like a flettner rotor.
E-Ship 1 exists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Ship_1 They report fuel savings up to 25%, so it may be viable for some ships types and voyages. But a long way from propelling the whole ship.
like so much smaller then biggest conventional ones irrelevant
"World’s Largest Cargo Sailboat Completes Historic First Atlantic Crossing Using Auxillary Engine"
Fixed it.
I am pretty sure there is a reason why the very fast Clippers were replaced by steam engines 150 years ago. I guess we can learn why again.
Crew requirements? And we can learn that technology has change in the last 150 years so those same requirements no longer exist.
No ones suggesting building a sailing ship like they did 150 years ago. Just that the wind is still an interesting source of power.
As someone whose goal in life is to be blown about the oceans by the wind, I have mixed feelings about this. With the "traditional" freighter I would have the right of way, my being a sailboat under the wisdom of the wind, they have to make allowances for me and change course, but things are different when that freighter is also under the wisdom of the wind. The same goes for things like offshore wind power, my life is made more difficult because most people expect their home to be 70F when it is 60F outside and 60F when it is 70F outside, anything else would incur undue hardship.
It is a complex situation, should I be penalized for wanting to live a life that has little or no environmental impact at cost of those who want to live in reasonable comfort while being a part of/contributing to, society? Probably not but I can't help but wonder about what happened to the first 'R' of the three R's (reduce, reuse and recycle), no one seems to reduce anymore unless technology gives them a way to do it without any inconvenience no matter how small that inconvenience is.
> The same goes for things like offshore wind power, my life is made more difficult because most people expect their home to be 70F when it is 60F outside and 60F when it is 70F outside, anything else would incur undue hardship.
This is an overly simplistic view of demands on energy, but it might be one of the easiest for people decry. (As it happens, comfort is nice though.)
> should I be penalized for wanting to live a life that has little or no environmental impact at cost of those who want to live in reasonable comfort while being a part of/contributing to, society?
No, but it's also unrealistic to expect to be sheltered from all externalities of society.
After all, switching to sail cargo ships is itself reducing an externality incurred by others.
> what happened to the first 'R' of the three R's (reduce, reuse and recycle)
This is a good principle, but it's not universally accepted, and it still permits things that involve cargo via ocean.
As more and more people are pulled from poverty, they too will begin to use more energy to improve their lives, perhaps to the point that they can choose to follow their dreams upon retirement.
I admitted or strongly implied everything you used as rebuttal with the exception of your final point, I don't believe using more energy improves ones life. Also, this is not a retirement dream, this is going to happen in the next year and I will be pulling over to work for ~6 months every couple years.
>I don't believe using more energy improves ones life
That's a very interesting perspective and I would love to hear some arguments or examples supporting it.
Not OP, but in general, while some things do improve my life (climate control, hot water, cooking), I'd say there are also plenty of things that don't.
I don't think my device usage habits or media consumption actually improve my life. I'm not sure the energy that's been dumped into producing the many gadgets I've bought over the years really improved me life.
I'd say that a lot of energy goes into distracting me in a way that I can't genuinely say is an improvement.
I think the point is larger than any individual. It involves the environment in which you're located. Infrastructure changes require energy, lots of energy. Increasing quality of life for most things we've built in our world requires investing lots of energy at the state level. You reap the benefits of this by living in the state.
Yeah, but even looking beyond individuals, my personal take is I'm no longer convinced, for example, all the massive amounts of electronics, fast fashion, and other consumerism-oriented production (which definitely do all use energy) are actually improving life. Same goes for a lot of online businesses that are occupying data centers and using electricity.
eg I'm unconvinced smart phones are truly improving life, let alone getting yearly incremental updates from every manufacturer.
So yes, to some extent, most life improvements are going to use some energy, but I wouldn't argue that most increases in spent energy lead to quality of life increases for a majority of people.
Why do my beliefs require anything to prove them? My beliefs are not fact and I never represented them as such, I said plainly that I have mixed feeling and that society should not bow to me. The exchange in response to my post are a good example of why my goal in life is to retreat from society, everyone ignored what I said to be "right." Admittedly I did not actually say that society should not bow to me, I said probably not, but that is simply because I don't actually know and I don't believe I ever implied that I did, putting on a sweater seems a small sacrifice to me.
I find it somewhat inconsistent that you feel people's choice of indoor temperature is an imposition on you, but also that your choice of sailboat should entitle you to having something that is literally hundreds of times larger and less nimble than you have to make the effort to go around you.
> that your choice of sailboat should entitle you to having something that is literally hundreds of times larger and less nimble than you have to make the effort to go around you.
That's how the rules of the road work. See: COLREGs.
We also travel by a small sailboat, and it is always reassuring to see huge tankers make small course changes tens of nautical miles away. That way everybody stays safe and nobody is majorly inconvenienced.
I know it's the rule of the road, but that's not the point.
The point is the inconsistency in tone between "your life choices make me go around your wind farm, that makes my life difficult", and "my life choices make your giant freighter go around me, I have right of way".
Small sail boats do not need to go around wind farms, they can just sail right through them assuming the weather is agreeable. The problem is more that if you are caught up in a storm anywhere near a windfarm (within range of the storm carrying you into it) it makes everything very dangerous for you; instead of dropping sail and letting the boat find its way through the storm from the safety of below decks you have to stay on deck and fight the storm. To put this into metropolitan terms, it would be like routing the main pedestrian path through the most dangerous part of town for the sake of a highway.
Either way, to repeat myself again, I did not say I was right or better and plainly stated my mixed feelings.
I didn't say that I am entitled or that it was an imposition, just that it was complex and I have mixed feelings about it, literally said that I don't think society should make allowances for me.
Yeah idk. Maybe it's the tone of stuff like "it would incur undue hardship" (re indoor temps) that comes across to me as a bit holier than thou and makes the rest of your first paragraph seem more self-centered.
I plainly stated that society should not bow to my needs and that those who contribute to society and are a part of society are more important than me, what more do you want?
I know, I know. Look, I'm sorry for nitpicking.
I actually agree with the idea of having a lower footprint, reducing, etc. I think you're doing a good thing, and I hope you stay safe at sea.
We all get hung up on such things on occasion, realizing it is probably better than never doing it.
A freighter is always the stand on vessel when you’re sailing. They don’t have the turning radius to even try!
That's true only in constrained waters. But obviously they need to see you from afar to be able to make that course change. That's where AIS transponders help a lot.
We've crossed some of the busier shipping lanes of the world, and have had to call the bridge of a freighter on radio just a couple of times. And usually the watchstander immediately confirmed seeing us and clarified their intentions.
In a bay, sure, but in a busy bay this is not much of an issue, the solo sailor is not going to be asleep in their berth when sailing about the bay.
> "With the "traditional" freighter I would have the right of way"
In theory, perhaps. In praxis, might makes right, bigger wins, and if you in your sailboat want to play chicken with a freighter of any kind, you're taking an unreasonable risk. Actually, commercial boats get priority over pleasurecraft, so even in theory it's probably your job to stay out of the way.
Not even in theory. Sure I may loose my boat but they will be liable for it and will not even question being liable, the cost is tiny to them and I would get a new boat if they ran me down. Things are more complex when that freighter is also under sail and most of the world lacks any legal bearing here.
You might want to read more about the right of way rules and USCG apportionment in maritime accidents. In the scenario you describe you most definitely would not be getting a new boat.
What makes you think the USCG has any bearing on my life? Even if I am an American I stated that my dream was to be blown about the oceans, which strongly implies that I will be out of USCG jurisdiction the majority of the time. You are right in context of a busy seaway like New York Harbor but in that situation a sailing freighter will be under power, not under sail and anyone in a small sailboat will be very alert. Most of the ocean is not under jurisdiction of the USCG and the rules for open water are different than those for near the coast or in the harbor.
I’m not sure where people get the idea of the rules don’t apply in international waters. The COLREGs clearly state commercial vessels have right away over recreational sailboats. End of story. You get run over by a commercial vessel, it’s your fault for being in the way but it’s their fault for running you down.
Here is the COLREG order:
Ignoring not under command; in the open sea only the fishing boat has right of way over a sailing boat because the rest are not restricted by maneuverability or draft when in the middle of the ocean unless the crew is negligent. Fishing vessels in the open ocean tend to give way unless they can raise the boat on the radio and get them to change course because they really do not want the sail boat to foul their lines, especially the long line boats. In restricted waters boats under sail often have the right of way because they have restricted maneuverability (restricted by the wind) and their deep keel means they are restricted by draft but it is not so black and white here; if the sailboat can fire up its engine it is more maneuverable than that tug pulling a bunch of barges so if that sailboat has less draft restriction than the tug and its barges, it has to fire up its engine and get out of the way.But COLREG is not the rule of the sea, just the rule for countries who are a part of the UN. But the truth is that a collision with such a sailboat will not phase these boats and generally writing a check is an insignificant cost and rare enough that it is what they do.
You can be right, and dead; your posthumous estate would get a new boat.
A large ship is very unlikely to just instantly destroy and sink a small sailboat, bow wave pushes it aside and destroys the rigging leaving the boat adrift, crew either abandons it or scuttles it when rescued unless they are near land and can be towed.
Having witnessed a large commercial ship going 15 kts run over a smaller 30 foot sailboat I can assure you it was not “pushed aside” unless by aside you mean pushed under.
If hit just right it would destroy the boat but that is a one in a million hit. The shape of displacement hulls and their need to part and push the water aside so they can move through the water will almost always mean that small boats will be pushed aside and damaged but not sunk. An open boat (which a small number of 30' sailboats are) would be a different story, the hit would almost certainly heel them enough to flood and sink them, but I think it is obvious that I am not talking about open boats but boats with a deck and a cabin that you can live in. I could be wrong in that assumption, many do not know the difference between an open and a decked boat and I could have been more clear there.
I think "reduce" has always been pipe dream by the de-growth sector. At its core I'm not convinced that humans can ever willfully engage in managed decline. When I say this I mean societies, large groups, cities, etc. Not individuals. De-growth has a serious scaling issue. It's fundamentally incompatible with the bedrock of why humans come together.
Maybe? I don't think this is beyond societies, but it does require society to expect it. The idea of reducing had an effect on society back in the 80s and into the 90s, people did reduce, but it didn't last. This is not "de-growth," unless you think growth is a measure of the number of people who live a life a leisure.