Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Giant Sailboats on the Horizon? ‘Wind Challenger’ Could Reduce Fuel Consumption…or Not

Sails

   Good Day Humboldt County!

 Proof there’s nothing new under the sun comes from some Japanese ship builders who’ve turned the clock back on sailing.

One twist; metal sails. It’s all about saving money on shipping costs in a future where fuel will surely be more expensive.

I like the idea of looking down the road at ways to save fuel and using alternative energies (wind power).

That said, I wouldn’t want to be The Wind Challenger’s maiden voyage (after testing the prototype) because those metal sails don’t seem right to me! I can just see it, the modern day Titanic but it doesn’t sink…it flies into a deadly headwind!!! I’ll try to be serious for a moment while I share this story:

“Modern cargo vessels burn millions of gallons of low-grade fuel to get where they're going, but it wasn't so very long ago that their predecessors plied the waves with nothing but the wind in their sails. The Wind Challenger project hopes to combine the two by equipping ships with enormous metal sails. They claim that fuel consumption could be reduced by as much as 30 percent.

Shipping by sea is slow work, but the immense capacity of the ships makes them cost-efficient. But it also means that a large amount of force is necessary to propel them -- much more than was needed for the galleons and clippers of the 19th century. And even the toughest sailcloth would stretch and tear at the size necessary to move something of their bulk.

But engineers at the University of Tokyo believe that they have created a sail system that can handle the forces involved and make shipping more efficient. The enormous aluminum and fiber-reinforced plastic "sails" would be 164 feet tall, 50 feet wide, and able to retract downwards when not needed. A ship would have several along its length, each independently configurable to maximize thrust from the wind.

Don't expect to see these giant sailboats any time soon, though. They're still highly theoretical, and even if all goes well, it would be 2016 before they can begin trials at sea in a reduced-size prototype. And while the estimated cost (around $2.5 million per sail) would eventually be paid for by the fuel savings, the whole thing may strike the shipping industry as a bit too whimsical.” -  Devin Coldewey

Time for me to walk on down the road…

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