Maybe it will work out, but only with subsidies of some sort. To me and most others who have looked hard at this idea in the past it is a publicity exercise lacking a sound economic basis. (I have been involved in analysing sailing ships professionally, and have another friends who worked on this for a German company who shares my skepticism).
The problems being that: -container ships have high aero drag (as well as water resistance) that limits sailing speed, winds are seldom strong enough and from the right direction to contribute significantly to the required ship speed at typical 20kts ship speed you might get useful wind 5% of the time. -there is a very large time cost to slow transport, on a big ship the capital tied up in the ship and freight can easily be $0.5 billion. That represents about $100k per day. Half the speed more than doubles the cost (wages, insurance and maintenance costs to pay too). -you need more crew, and generally highly paid/skilled crew to manage and maintain the sails. -you have to have a predictable schedule, so if you are using an unreliable motive force you need to plan in some expensive contingency time on every voyage. -the sailing rigs or kites will have high maintenance costs in the high vibration marine environment (soft sail materials don't last more than a few 1000 hours so they need to be rigid materials to be economic) and there are potential safety problems with large permanently erect sails in hurricane conditions. -masts/rigs can interfere with loading and unloading speed (which is critical given high port costs). -even with today's relatively high prices a big ship only uses about $150k/day of bunker oil. If they convert to LNG (as is starting to happen in some places) it would be even cheaper. Wind turbines on the ship would probably make more sense, as at least they will work in any wind direction (even travelling straight into the wind), as well as in port. Another possibility that might work well is Makani's rigid kite sails. http://www.makanipower.com/ as they behave like wind turbines and yet they can pack away reasonably compactly and can get up into much stronger wind without trying to tip the boat over like a tall rig does. On 25 June 2012 12:50, Terry Blanton <hohlr...@gmail.com> wrote: > No, not an Amazon ad; but, an old idea made new again: > > "Ireland-based B9 Shipping has started work on a full-scale > demonstration vessel as part of its goal to design the modern world’s > first 100 percent fossil fuel-free cargo sailing ships. Unlike most > conventional large cargo vessels, which are powered by bunker fuel, B9 > Shipping’s cargo ship would employ a Dyna-rig sail propulsion system > combined with an off-the-shelf Rolls-Royce engine powered by liquid > biomethane derived from municipal waste." > > http://www.gizmag.com/b9-shipping-cargo-sailing-ships/23059/ > > Piccys & vids. > > T > >
