€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...
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.
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)
"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?
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).
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.
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.
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.
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 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".
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?
> "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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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 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.
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?
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.
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...
I crossed the atlantic twice, each time for 650 euros the 13 days… add 250/300 euros for internet
The first thing I thought when I saw the article was, I wonder if they have passenger service.
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
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
"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?
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).
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.
Could you have autonomous ships this size, like a waymo for the ocean?
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.
It also broke shortly after beginning and didn’t make the trip by sailing.
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...
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.
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.
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 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".
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?
> "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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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?
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
11 knots seems a good speed.
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?
More efficient is something that directly provides thrust like a flettner rotor.
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.
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.