Kite-powered ship

[AtoZ]

are we there yet

 

[Trazor]

If the ship was fitted with wheels, and put on a conveyor which always matched the speed of the ship.
Would the ship move forward when the sail was hoisted..................?

 

[megawatt]

 

[tim west]

If the ship was fitted with wheels, and put on a conveyor which always matched the speed of the ship.
Would the ship move forward when the sail was hoisted..................?

Depends if theres any wind

 

[empip]

'Skysails' have 1.2 mil euro funding from the EU, so I guess we all have a small stake in the proceedings.
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Kites 'n water.. from some years ago.
http://www.dcss.org/speedsl/

Dave Culp has moved on ...
http://www.kiteship.com/
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Cutting out a knot or more ...

...ship owners clambering onto a bandwagon to reduce speed as a way to save fuel and cut the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, said Hermann Klein, an executive at Germanischer Lloyd classification society.

"The number of shipping lines reducing speed to cut fuel costs has been growing steadily," Klein, whose organization runs safety surveys on over 6,000 ships worldwide, said in an interview.

"Slowing down by 10 percent can lead to a 25 percent reduction in fuel use. Just last week a big Japanese container liner gave notice of its intention to slow down," he added.

Shipping was excluded from the Kyoto Protocol, and many nations want the industry to be made accountable for its impact on the climate in the successor to Kyoto, which runs to 2012.

In Hamburg, the shipping company Hapag-Lloyd is not waiting for 2012. It reacted to rising fuel prices by cutting the throttle on its 140 container ships traveling the world's oceans, ordering its captains to slow down.

The company in the second half of last year reduced the standard speed of its ships to 20 knots from 23.5 knots and said it saved a 'substantial amount' of fuel.

The calculation used in shipping is complex: Longer voyages mean extra operating costs, charter costs, interest costs and other monetary losses. But Hapag-Lloyd said that slowing down still paid off handsomely.

"We've saved so much fuel that we added a ship to the route and still saved costs," said Klaus Heims, press spokesman . "Why didn't we do this before?"

Climate change was an additional motivating factor.

"It had the added effect of cutting carbon dioxide emissions immediately," Heims said.

"Before, ships would speed up to 25 knots from the standard 23.5 to make up if time was lost in crowded ports. We calculated that 5 knots slower saves up to 50 percent in fuel."

Slowing down has not involved a decrease in capacity for the company. For container ships carrying mainly consumer goods from Hamburg to ports in the Far East, the round-trip at 20 knots now takes 63 days instead of 56, but to make up for this it added a vessel to the route to bring the total to nine.

A Hapag-Lloyd board member, Adolf Adrion, said that speeds are now being cut further, to 16 knots from 20, for journeys across the Atlantic. "It makes sense environmentally and economically," he said...

 

[AtoZ]

i have been trying to remember how long ago i saw a fishing boat pulled by kites in greece.
i has to be more than 20 yrs

the boat in greece was quite small but it had a three kite arrangement, with the main pulling rope/line running through the centre of the two lower kites.
like a ww1 triplane
the kites were of that modern style of canopy that base jumpers use but they were much smaller, 6 to 8 feet i reckon.
one of the men in the boat was laid at the stern with the steering lines and the whole thing looked effortless.
i was on another boat looking at all this.
the fishermen were moving quite well and there didnt seem to be any wind at all.

i like the idea of this. i like that modern materials can make a sailing ship viable again.

i know, saddo, but i dont care.

 

[tim west]

I've seen them in greece do it with a guy hanging off the kite and the boat pulling the kite