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 w

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.