9 ms·
How to design a sailing ship for the 21st century?
- forgotpwd16 5y agoDiscussed few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27128257 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27128257
- carapace 5y agoOne of the comments there ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27138310 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27138310 ) pointed out this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2WKJtbm8yM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2WKJtbm8yM about a project to build a cargo ship: > This is a summary of our story so far, from building the shipyard to shipbuilding. The film follows the progress made by SAILCARGO INC. a young organisation emerging from the mangroves of Costa Rica, with the bold aim to change how the world goes about international shipping. https://www.sailcargo.org https://www.sailcargo.org > Building Ceiba: 45m Square-Topsail Cargo Schooner > We are a group of shipwrights, carpenters, business professionals and sailors. Ceiba is our effort to inspire change in the industry to which we have devoted our lives. Ceiba is a sustainably-constructed vessel that will carry cargo, 100% emission-free. When operational in 2022 she will be the world’s largest, active, clean ocean-going cargo vessel. She will elevate the existing sail cargo movement to a new level while bringing attention to the harmful and pollutive practices of the global shipping industry. (I have no idea if it's practical, but it's wonderfully romantic and I love it!)
- silicaroach 5y agoFinally, a proper look at the cost in most respects of the real cost of a 'sustainable' technology. We need more of these but no one will pay nor pay attention. Unfortunately though, sail driven ships are kind of useless for the efficient movement of cargo. Masts are required and take away stowage space and, more importantly, make efficient cargo loading/unloading impossible. Read the book "The Box" to understand the changes brought about in cargo shipping over the last century.
- aclatuts 5y agoTanker boats could probably use sails without loading and unloading getting in the way. I would imagine it's just hoses and pumps to get the liquid out.
- bombcar 5y agoExactly, and these are precisely the vessels that can most handle slower transfer speeds - as you just have more sailboats to make up for slower speeds/smaller sizes. All that matters is how many arrive each day, as the cargo is fungible. In fact, doing such would provide a buffer that could help prevent supply shocks.
- TylerE 5y agoAt what point does the additional resource of building a lot more ships (which have more crew, eating more food, producing more waste) result in a net negative? Oceangoing ships have a relatively short useful life...salt water is rough on metal.
- bombcar 5y agoI suppose the upper limit would be when it’s possible to make an ocean-wide winch system and you can just hook barges to it and pull them across the ocean.
- jasonschlatt 5y agoJust hook containers to it like cable-cars and move them across.
- vanderZwan 5y agoInstead of sails we could try other methods, like kites, or that weird turning-metal column effect. To name two serious proposals I've seen
- aww_dang 5y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yP1f3Df6SXE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yP1f3Df6SXE Maybe this kind of lifestyle appeals to enthusiasts, but I can't see modern unions allowing some of the dangerous work out on the sails.
- mistrial9 5y agoaargh - this is a step in the expansion of humanity on a planet divided by vast oceans, a way of life, adventure and the actual elements of air, water and sun.. a union rule book is .. what? boring!
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y agoIt's a nice case of how anything can be 'just a job' to the people doing it, at which point the people doing the work really want safety at work, even if to outsiders it looks like an adventure.
- bombcar 5y agoI see no reason why most of the sail work couldn't be automated and motorized.
- aww_dang 5y agoRigid wingsails make more sense than tall ships, unless you are looking for nostalgia.
- tdfirth 5y agoThanks for sharing this interview. I've seen about 10 minutes so far and I'm hooked. I just love learning about lives that are/were so different to mine.
- exolymph 5y agoRecently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27128257 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27128257
- thinkingkong 5y agoThere are types of sails or wind power that have been investigated to reduce carbon output / efficiency of tankers but they never seem to have been deployed at scale in any sense. Basically a kite-surfing tanker. It seems like until we get tiny compact fusion energy we'll always end up running off the cheapest oil products, as they make the most sense economically. Without any actual incentive to switch, not a single shipping company will.
- AtlasBarfed 5y agoLFTR: it's almost everything you want from fusion but can do now. Scales down for the size No meltdown/overload No proliferation risk But... artificial fuels are probably the (at least) carbon neutral path forward for shipping and aviation.
- luke2m 5y agoImagine the irony if a tanker ship had sails.
- aivisol 5y ago> However, by definition, the sailing ship is not a carbon neutral technology. For most of history, sailing ships were built from wood, but back then whole forests were felled for ships, and those trees often did not grow back. I do not understand this sentence. If I cut down a tree and do not burn it, isn't it a carbon neutral process? It did not release any carbon into atmosphere. By this logic is there any material to use to build something which is neutral?
- tofuahdude 5y agoThe tree is no longer alive to photosynthesize co2.
- c06n 5y agoIt only takes up Co2 in its growth phase, not afterwards.
- aidenn0 5y agoThat seems intuitively true, but apparently it's still debated whether old- or new-growth forests are more carbon-negative.
- socialdemocrat 5y agoIt is really only a debate about when exactly trees stop growing and consuming CO2. Given enough time, sooner or later the tree isn’t consuming CO2. At that point there is no point in leaving the tree standing. Cut it down and let a new tree grow there.
- TeMPOraL 5y agoYes, but a tree that isn't growing isn't trapping much carbon dioxide either.
- citrin_ru 5y agoA tree cannot live forever. Once it is dead all (or almost all) accumulated carbon slowly released back into atmosphere as CO₂ by bacteria. So cutting trees and preserving them from decay is a carbon negative process in a long run.
- saadalem 5y agoHundredrabbits are traveling on a sailor ship while working on OSS and many projects, they are also providing many informations about their 1982 boat and about sailing and how they are providing electricity from solar power etc.. https://100r.co/site/sailing.html https://100r.co/site/sailing.html
- canadianfella 5y agoWhat is a sailor ship?
- atlantageek 5y agoI struggle with this whole article. It implies keeping a sailing ship labor intensive just with a few electric winches. Wing Sails seem like a better approach and I assume they are much less labor intensive.
- jasonwatkinspdx 5y agoYou're spot on. I've followed this topic area for some years out of curiosity. Saildrone style wingsails only require a very small electric actuator to move a control surface. The control surface sets the overall net angle of attack of the assembly. The wing tracks the wind, only needing the control surface changed as the bow crosses the wind. A system like this can be entirely labor free. Tall ships on the other hand... I don't care how many electric winches you have, they'll always require massive numbers of people for sail handling.
- irishjohnnie 5y agoYup. OceanWings by VPLP https://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/vplp-design-signs-its-first-ocean-transport-ship-equipped-with-oceanwings-wings/ https://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/vplp-design-signs-its-f...
- newsclues 5y agoIf there can be a tax on luxury cars that are transported by ship or planes powered by fossil fuels that is reduced by wind powered shipping, I’d gather there would be innovation in this industry.
- puzzlingcaptcha 5y agoThe most popular class of bulk carriers (some 70%) are the mid-sized Handymax and Supramax with ~50 000 deadweight tons capacity, while employing a similar-sized crew of ~15. I honestly don't know what this clipper would need to carry to be profitable. https://maritime-connector.com/bulk-carrier/ https://maritime-connector.com/bulk-carrier/
- samatman 5y agoEcotourists, and premium goods which advertise their cutting-edge sustainability.
- client4 5y agoIt's a bit tangential, but I enjoy Moxie's (of Signal) stories relating to sailing. https://moxie.org/stories/together-two/ https://moxie.org/stories/together-two/
- samatman 5y ago> Lithium-ion batteries are very compact, but they cannot be considered sustainable and bring safety risks C'mon this is silly. The dominant safety risk of a small vessel (and all of these are small in modern terms) is capsizing in heavy weather, with the loss of all hands. LiFePO batteries, built into a bank with really excellent waterproofing, would be quite adequate to the job. If lithium battery technology in general proves to be unsustainable, we may as well pack up and go home, because decarbonization isn't going to happen. Taking the average specific energy of LiFePO from Wikipedia, we get 12.5kg per kWh, almost five times denser for a proven technology you can buy off the shelf. 4.4 tonnes for the larger battery, compared to 9 tonnes for the smaller saltwater battery sketched out in the draft, and 21 tonnes for the larger one. That's 16.6 tonnes of additional life support the ship can carry; stowing a ship is a classic knapsack problem, there's no such thing as an "acceptable" amount of tonnage and volume to leave out of the equation. Using saltwater batteries here would be an ostentatious stunt. Arguably that's what this whole thing is: an ostentatious stunt. But it doesn't have to be, it's a good proving ground for much larger sail ships, and a thousand tonnes here, a thousand tonnes there, pretty soon you're talking about real cargo. Electricity requirements should be very much sublinear with cargo capacity as well.
- lardo 5y agoI've never sailed in blue water, but I thought that modern weather and navigation infrastructure mean bad weather can be largely avoided. Either way fire on board is still something to be avoided.
- llsf 5y agoMaybe we could revisit what SkySails started https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkySails https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkySails
- edeion 5y agoTangent: thank you for the link, the whole website looks very promising! That's a tremendous collection of articles on low energy footprint. I've only skimmed through some of them but it's a joy!
- maCDzP 5y agoIf you are interested in an account of how it was to sail tall ships I can recommend “Around Cape Horn” [0] If you are curious about sailing tall ships. And have the means. Apply to one of these ships [1]. I have gone sailing a couple of times and it’s one of the most rewarding experiences I have had so far. [0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9tuTKhqWZso https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9tuTKhqWZso [1] https://sailtraininginternational.org/sailtraining/ https://sailtraininginternational.org/sailtraining/
- Lev1a 5y agoGerman documentaries about the "Peking"s journey home to Germany from NYC [0] and then the restoration process itself [1] in Germany. Unfortunately for international viewers there are only auto-generated subtitles (and translations from those) which from a quick look are just horrendous. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n11HVFKO0jA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n11HVFKO0jA [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So609NxlTcw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So609NxlTcw
- lnwlebjel 5y agoYou would probably enjoy the book Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana - an account of working on a tall ship in the 1820's (Boston - Cape Horn - California). It's a personal favorite.
- hyko 5y agoIt is surprisingly difficult to build a carbon neutral sailing ship …if you somehow rule out using wood, because “some of the trees might not grow back”. Utter bullshit!
- SubiculumCode 5y agoThe website has a battery that indicated something was at ~83%. Apparently it is the solar-powered battery that is running the server. Cool.
- castaweh 5y agoI sailed cape to cape on the Bark Europa in 2018, and while we did need to use the engines at times, there was a strong preference to sail under wind power unless absolutely necessary. Everyone in the crew was very much environmentally focused. On the point about warm showers... It's pretty cold down there around Antarctica! I loved travelling with nothing but the wind powering us, and I'd prefer to sail over flying, preventing a lot of emissions. Unfortunately the world moves too fast now and we can't afford to spend months at sea.
- meristohm 5y ago> Two rowing machines could provide roughly 400 watts of power. If they are operated around the clock in shifts, they could supply the ship with an extra 9.6 kWh of energy per day (ignoring energy losses) – one fifth of the total maximum electricity use. Any suggestions for an infinite climbing rope for extra electricity at home? > Even a crew of 12 taking a daily hot shower would require 25.2 kWh of energy per day, half of what the hydrogenerators produce at a sailing speed of 7.5 knots. Well, don’t take hot showers? Get warm with exercise and breathing, then use a little cold water and a soapy rag to get cleaner, then rinse in cold water. I wish I’d been doing this my whole life, for the mental, physical, and ecological benefits. What might a person suffer from that necessitates heated water for washing?
- evgen 5y agoSolar water heaters are among the easiest renewable technologies available. It is literally as simple as a container for the water that is painted black. For something done professionally it is trivial to have a hot loop that keeps a well-insulated storage tank at temp. With a bit of effort you can even reclaim some of the heat from the shower waste water.
- sealeck 5y agoYou might want to take a look at low tech magazine's post on shower technology ;)
- perl4ever 5y agoHere's some alternative answers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotor_ship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotor_ship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbosail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbosail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windmill_ship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windmill_ship