Largest cargo sailboat completes first Atlantic crossing
marineinsight.com385 points by defrost 2 days ago
385 points by defrost 2 days ago
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...
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.
Interviews with CEO, where he stresses that the main problem is not sailing upwind but to get there on time.
Another contender https://youtu.be/xsFc3pro8Y8
(Also FR based, cultural reason?)
Getting there on time is just a figment of the fact that you have to effectively sail further when sailing upwind.
I’ve been looking for a reasonable way to get me and my motorcycle to Europe and back (rentals of my bike are $300/day, and I want to ride off-road occasionally, which isn’t great for rentals). I’ve also always wanted to sail the ocean. This could be a win.
Generally you pack it into a crate and fly it. You may well need a Carnet and/or other paperwork, and it only makes sense for longer trips.
Consider buying a bike in Europe instead - generally cheaper and you can get something more appropriate to the terrain.
Have You checked the validity of registration/insurance? I'm kinda curious about doing it the other way and trying some BDRs) maybe in a few years)
Often when you see people on TV doing "around the world" stuff, they actually buy separate motorcycles for each continent, often moving accessories and such over to the next bike. Given the logistical costs for such endevours, the extra bikes are not a big deal and bypass most all the registrarion/insurance issues.
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This is based on what I learned 30 years ago so this may be out of date now.
This is still true for diesel vehicles. I don't think it was ever true for gasoline vehicles since lubricity doesn't really matter for them.
That said, a lot of the relevant key components are technically capable of operation on either though doing so in reality can be more complicated.
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?
Big commercial cruiseships from Norwegian NCL and Costa Cruises
It was amazing ! Perfect to relax, take a step back and think
There's plenty of things to do, you can hang out with others, read a book, work online, look at waves all day long, go to the gym etc.
The real danger is eating too much, food at restaurants is unlimited, even at official table service you can order multiple mains, multiple desserts etc. they won't say anything
Something like these?
Yes those are the ones, although not all transatlantic are "repositioning cheap", it depends on the current market. You can also look at cruise comparators / cruise resellers to see all of them, and sometimes you have better prices with them.
Something to take into account is that USA residents have different cruises prices, usually cheaper, the rest of the world usually has to pay more
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.
Yes exactly repositioning cruises ! I confirm what you're saying. Sometimes you also get people who were visiting a continent going back home. For example Brasilians going back home in December for their summer
Modern ships built in the last 10 years have stabilizers. I've been in a big cruiseship without stabilizer before and it can indeed move a lot laterally up and down (in the directions orthogonal to the direction of the ship). So, for people afraid of that just research if the ship has stabilizers
As the other said I was looking for repositioning cruises like 2 months in advance, from one continent to the other. Like I did Europe -> South America 550 euros Costa Cruise last year and Miami -> England NCL 650 euros early this year
The difficulty is finding good prices for a solo cabin. For a cabin of 2 it's even easier to find good prices for repositioning cruises
As the other said, there are more days at sea (less stopovers), and it can happen that some stopover port get cancelled (for example they cancelled my stop in the Azores because they didn't want to bother entering a big Atlantic storm, it was risky)
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).
Is Algonquin that big? How long we talking here?
Yeah, it is. Basically just up to your route planning... I feel like at more than 2 weeks people start going farther north but I think that has more to do with "we can" than there not still being good routes in Algonquin.
I'd probably not recommend more than a week for a first canoe trip anyways.
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.
I did it in 2018 and it was wonderful. It wasn't incredibly expensive (about the cost of a roundtrip flight, for the one way trip). Food was great, we had the good fortune of being on a Blue Note Jazz special so the music was incredible. Not sure I ever want to do it again - felt more like one of those one-and-done lifetime experiences - but I have nothing but good things to say about it.
Also, unlike cruise ships, the QMII is a bona fide ocean liner, capable of crossing the N. Atlantic even in winter storms.
What sucked about it? I've been considering it for a long time as an alternative to flying across the Atlantic.
It’s a Carnival cruise. If you like going on cruises you’ll probably like it. I don’t like cruising - and we went with our four year old, and there is literally nothing for kids to do on board, (there’s a “kids club” but it was closed for the duration) and they aren’t allowed into the dining room, so we ended up living off the crappy buffet and the very limited room service menu.
Our stateroom also hadn’t been cleaned when we boarded, and they had problems with the black water system so several decks just stank of shit. Our balcony had a persistent leak above it, so we couldn’t use that either.
The tickets themselves weren’t that much, but then it’s about €1,000 for internet access, and they nickel and dime you on absolutely everything, while not allowing you to have the things you already paid for - our bill on departure was about €4,000.
Oh, and at disembarkation in Southampton they destroyed two of our suitcases, and told us to go cry harder - and then it’s a three hour wait for a taxi.
Honestly, the whole experience was pure crap.
Sure sounds like captive audiences for a resourceful prankster...
Now that sounds like a vacation worth my time and money. I like the way you think.
You could also take the Queen Mary2 from Southampton to New York. 8 nights, from 920 GBP: https://www.seat61.com/queen-mary-2-transatlantic.htm
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.
Yeah, I’m aware of that and I hope one day to do this myself. A somewhat isolated time like this seems super appealing to me.
My brother did this (Southampton -> Baltimore). It's a lot slower than the Queen Mary. He told me when he arrived "You don't know what time is until you've already watched all the movies you bought with you, read all the books, done all the work, and you realize you've still got 5 days left".
And he's probably the most able-to-handle-boredom human being that I've ever known.
The passenger capacity is mostly expected to be used by people related to the shipping industry, basically repositioning people the same way airlines do.
Like you'll have two guys being repositioned and another guy will be there with a clipboard and tasked with something.
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...
No reason why they wouldn't have Starlink today. Or you could take your own Starlink Mini.
And funnel my hard earned funds to a Mars-obsessed wanker? No thanks.
Lol. EDS at its finest. I don't like Tesla and its cars any more than you do, but SpaceX and StarLink are amazing.
Call it what you want, doesn't bother me. And I've not commented on either SpaceX / Starlink technical / team qualities. But, regardless, and again, I won't fund a narcissistic wanker. If you're comfortable with the contrary, that's for you to sit with, not me. All best,
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.
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
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.
It’s not as easy as throwing a sail on top of a boat. Having done a quite a bit of sailing on a yacht, the sail and its supports literally run from the top of the mast to the bottom of the keel.
I suspect for any great deal of efficiency gain you’d need a similar system on cargo ships to support the forces generated.
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
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?
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.
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).
> 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.
I can recall an 'artisinal' chocolate brand in Brooklyn doing this about fifteen years ago, taking cocoa from the Dominican Republic to Brooklyn via sailboat.
https://ediblebrooklyn.com/2011/the-mast-brothers-live-up-to...
My observation is that prople interested in luxury stuff are usually those that have the least interest on their carbon footprint.
It's rather more interesting to them if luxury stuff is made out of the rarest and most undangered species possible. Also diamonds mined by kids are more popular and expensive than fabricated ones.
> My observation is that prople interested in luxury stuff are usually those that have the least interest on their carbon footprint.
That's probably right. I guess I was thinking of the smaller segment who are more publicly visible and want to at least look virtuous while still bragging to their peers.
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.
I expect that it's much worse than zero impact. Don't forget that they've got to build and maintain the ship, feed the crew, and so forth. It seems likely that what they're not using in the actual propulsion of the ship, they're expending anyway - and then some - because they've lost the economies of scale of giant cargo ships.
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.
The real question is how much does it cost to transport a ton of cargo compared to the average transoceanic ship?
Could you have autonomous ships this size, like a waymo for the ocean?
I read about the US Navy's work on autonomous ships. One big challenge is the lack maintenance. Sailors can perform periodic and break-fix maintenance throughout the journey, and if something unpredictable happens, they can handle it.
The autonomous vessels need far higher robustness, not only to function without maintenance for months at a time, but reliably enough that few of them end up lost or stranded at sea.
Yeah, you may not need a crew to steer the ship, but it's far more effective to do maintenance while it's moving cargo than while it's doing nothing in a port.
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.
I did some searching around for this (not a subject matter expert).
Basically the sail area grows with length squared, but ship mass and resistance grows roughly with length cubed. So propulsion gets weaker with size.
To move a full sized freighter, you would need a mast the size of a skyscraper and we don’t currently have materials that can support that.
If we did have a material that supported sails that large, it would still be a problem because you are functionally making the ship top heavy (when wind is applied) increasing how likely it is that the freighter rolls over.
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.
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.
The problem is always multi-modality.
Switching modes of transport increases cost and complexity.
The volumes also needs to be very large for it to be worth it.
Switching from just point to point trucking to truck -> ship -> truck needs to have extremely large efficiency gains in the ship portion to be worth it.
We’d need to automate cargo handling, which is something the longshoremen union fights very hard against.
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...
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...
As much as we want the next generation ships with less CO2 emissions, that nuclear cargo ship is not coming anytime soon. It will use a Thorium melting salt reactor, which although not new, is still in experiment. US first proposed melting salt reactor in the 1940s and had operated one briefly in the 1960s. China is building and testing an experimental Thorium reactor. It made the news earlier this month for been successfully converting Thorium to Uranium, perhaps means it is actually burning Thorium as compare to rely on Uranium in previous melting salt reactors. The news also states the plan has 3 stages: experimental reactor, research reactor, and demonstration reactor. The current one is at first stage. The third stage, demonstrator reactor, is scheduled to build in 2035. Therefor that nuclear cargo ship is at least another 10 years from now.
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.
> Nuclear ship propulsion is not a new technology
Have they been used in for-profit scenarios? Military ships and ice breakers don't have to turn a profit.
Aren't all military submarines and aircraft carriers using nuclear power already? No reason they couldn't make it work as long as regulations allow them in ports.
No reason the ships can't be built but turning a profit is another thing. US nuclear-powered aircraft carriers cost ~$10 billion, though of course they have many other requirements.
Flying to the Moon can be made to work - it's been done for 56 years. But turning a profit is trickier.
How ironic, a huge "EMBRACING NET-ZERO FUTURE" logo on the behemoth filled with cheap plastic crap that will chill out in landfills for generations to come.
If there was a trade-off: Stop climate change but increase platics production, would you do it?
> 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.
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
In principle, with modern solid wing sail technology and computer controlled sail trim, a sailing vessel needs no more crew than a motor vessel.
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.
It is much harder to get consistent high speeds on a smaller sailboat than a larger one. Back in the “golden age of sail” the highest cargo capacity sailboats were also the fastest. It will absolutely require new boat designs and engineering to create massive modern shipping boats, but the fact that recreational boats can sustain high speeds across oceans at small scales proves it is possible at larger scales needed for shipping. There absolutely is a lot more energy in the wind than you need for this.
Even with old sail tech it was already closer than you might expect to modern container ships. Look up the Preussen, launched 1901. It could do over 20 knots and carry 8,000 tons of cargo. Although small by modern standards, there are economical viable smaller container ships operating today in that speed and cargo capacity range.
Even if you still had an old low tech boat like the Preussen nowadays, modern sail technology and hardware, plus better weather routing data would make it substantially faster, and require a tiny fraction of the crew that was initially required.
...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.
> You're really missing the point. The volume of cargo carried by sailing vessels in the old days was orders of magnitude lower.
At the end of commercial merchant sailing, the largest steel hulled merchant sailing vessels were about 1/10th the cargo capacity of a modern container ship, but actually pretty comparable in speed, which is limited more by the physics of displacement hulls in the water than the propulsion method.
Historically, sailing ships risked becalming, but that is no longer a risk, with improved weather routing and backup engines that allow them continue at full speed if the wind dies.
Considering that the cost of modern shipping is 50-60% fuel cost alone, and that in principle with modern tech sailing vessels won't require large crews, it is not clear to me that it can't be economically viable nowadays even at the scales already possible a century ago, nor that it would be impossible to develop tech to scale merchant sailing up to modern container ship sizes.
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.
> 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?
For ocean-going ships, isn't 99.x% of the trip in the open ocean? If so, what limit is there on sail dimensions? It's a genuine question; if coastal infrastructure isn't the limit, what is the next limitation.
They could lower sails, and use a motor and/or smaller sails, around coastal infrastructure.
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.
I think nradov has a point about the physics.
> The power required would be the same as that provided by the bunker fuel engines in common use
And that is a lot of power! Emma Mærsk has an engine output around 80-90MW.
The largest off shore wind turbine today is 26MW with a rotor diameter north of 300m/1000ft(!!). Common (modern) offshore wind turbines today are about 10-15MW with rotor diameters of ~220m/720ft.
I will not conclude it is impossible at this end of the scale, but you need a huge foil area to match such engine output.
IIUC, the physics work against us as we scale up in size, because of the square/cube-law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square%E2%80%93cube_law (weight of the foil/sail + mast is cubed when the area is squared).
> 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
> > Would they fit under bridges?
> You do realize that none of those ships could get into any port, right?
Container ships sail under bridges all the time. Check YouTube for videos of this or just Google it if you want proof.
Absolutely. There's a reason steam replaced sail immediately when the technology was invented.
Bring back the Onedin Line...even just for the theme tune. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2IuPjpAHnI
> 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.
I wonder why we don’t have nuclear cargo/container ships.
There is at least one
This article gives a decent overview though: https://thebulletin.org/2024/09/why-nuclear-powered-commerci...
Probably the same reason for why there is not more nuklear power on land as well. Cost.
And crew training, certifcation, etc.
Not to diminish the skills required to run a conventional ship powerplant but running a nuclear reactor would take years more training and education and also command higher pay.
The ship would also be a prime target for pirates/terrorists.
There have been four nuclear powered cargo ships built and operated, but none of the former are currently in active service.
“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
There are very many. Sovereignty of nation-states, the international passport system, international standards for airplanes/airports/flight operations, Unicode, every other IT standard, every ISO standard, outlawing aggressive warfare, the international financial system, the UN, the Law of the Sea, compact discs, time keeping (60 seconds, 60 minutes, 24 hrs, 7 days, etc.), time zones, calendar, names of celestial objects, names of elements, international science research, Enlightenment scholarship, ........
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.
Solar wasn't economical until China made the strategic decision to invest into cutting solar costs and scaling production up. Putin isn't relevant, nobody really listens to him (the reason why he is so mad). It's really the American boomers who are happy the cook the planet to own the libs.
Taxing CO2 isn't regressive - poor people don't fly to vacations or commute in unnecessarily large single-occupancy trucks.
> Taxing CO2 isn't regressive
It certainly is. Everything poor people need is manufactured and delivered with fossil fuels. Rich people could afford extra costs for carbon without blinking.
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!
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.
I was specifically talking about chocolate because I remember an interview of TFA's company's CEO where he would haul chocolate by sailboat, from South America to France. He would explain that even in an oil-less world, we'd still have chocolate in Europe. Just (way) less of it.
Ultimately, people should be free to choose how to spend their carbon budget. I haven't flown in years, I think I'm entitled to some chocolate from time to time.
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.
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
Not so easy. Oftentimes there's no place to store the offloaded containers, and parking spaces are limited too. Probably a ship can also park "on the street" aka in open ocean, if weather agree, but I didn't see that.
Same thing with train carts that arrive to pick up the containers -- there's little place to park them to wait.
For comparison, I calculated the J/(kgm) for both the Emma Maersk (at the numbers I could find in the Germany Wikipedia article; they seem to be for higher power levels with less efficient hydrodynamics) and a generic battery electric truck like a Mercedes E-Actros ("1kWh/km"; realistic net payload on/in trailer: ~20t): Emma: 0.0406 J/(kgm) E-Actros: 0.18 J/(kgm)
If we'd only carry modern LiFePO4 at 150 Wh/kg, their range (at zero remaining payload) would be: Emma: 13300 km E-Actros: 3000 km
Thus while a substantial payload mass fraction, the heavy engine could be mostly avoided (the Emma's main engine has a specific power of about 34 W/kg; contemporary power-dense electric motors/generators around even just 1 MW are slightly above 10kW/kg; a factor of 300).
IMO rather look at whether the approach to battery packs of Form Energy allows for this level of specific energy, and if so, how to hook container crane swapped battery packs to the ship's electrics. If that's too heavy, see how such a ship could be plugged in while in port with 1000 contemporary E-Actros worth of charging power (400 MW instead of 400 kW; gives 1 day recharge after 5 days at sea). By the time that's solved, batteries have gottwn cheaper. Those 5 days of battery capacity would cost in the high triple digit million USD today; for comparison, the Emma build cost inflation-adjusted around 233 million USD today.
A container train on flat track in Europe seems to be rated to 0.15 J/(kgm) while being grid powered, over twice as fast as the Emma (also faster then the truck), though that consumption is what the traction system needs to be rated to to reliably make the train schedule; fleet efficiency should be much better.
Sadly there's oceans either side of north America unless you want to take a great circle through Alaska and Siberia or through Greenland and Norway.
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.
Made me think of this a couple months back
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/apr/11/shipping...
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
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?
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/
https://www.offshore-energy.biz/k-line-buys-out-kite-manufac...
They are still developing the technology:
https://www.offshore-energy.biz/k-line-automated-kite-system...
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 one or the other; we can build vessels with sails and 'steam'.
> There's a reason everyone switched from sail to steam.
One reason was, they thought the climate impact cost zero. Also, technology was much different then.
Why does that cargo all have to be on giant ships vs tons of smaller ones?
Overhead - there’s a fixed overhead to building ships, maintaining ships, crewing ships, supplying ships. If that overhead can be amortized over more cargo, it is cheaper.
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.
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).
>> 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.
the ministry for the future
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.
You have misread my comment. It was a preamble to the rest of my post, not a criticism of the original idea.
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
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"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.
> "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:
Not under command
Restricted maneuverability
Constrained by draft
Fishing (actively dragging)
Under sail
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 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.
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.