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350 tons of of chocolate and wine arrive on world’s largest cargo sailboat

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Re: 350 tons of of chocolate and wine arrive on world’s largest cargo sailboat

#11

Post by tempay »

solarpunk wrote: post #4
tocs3 wrote: post #2

I have wondered a lot bout using sail for shipping. If you are the shipper and you enjoy he sailing it seems like it could be a good idea. Just a way to pay for a lifestyle not a way to make boatloads of money. It would not make much of a dent in traditions shipping but more of a way to live a nice life.

all in all it's gotta be cheaper to ship time-insensitive things via a vehicle that consumes no fuel. I'm curious if they can turn around and monetize their lack of emissions thru some kind of carbon markets or whatnot

Only if staffing and maintenance costs are low enough.

Re: 350 tons of of chocolate and wine arrive on world’s largest cargo sailboat

#12

Post by bragr »

mentos wrote: post #7

With starlink we could see completely autonomous drone sailboats for shipping coming soon?

There won't be fully autonomous ships for transoceanic shipping until all the maintenance can be done autonomously too. Perhaps you can eliminate most of the bridge crew, but the engineers aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

Re: 350 tons of of chocolate and wine arrive on world’s largest cargo sailboat

#13

Post by spudlyo »

yawpitch wrote: post #9
playingalong wrote: post #3

Just by reading the article the impression is that it's both faster and should be cheaper (?). I get that only some type of cargo would fit or would make sense to load like this. What are the downsides?

Doldrums. Hurricanes. Impulsively murdered albatrosses. Kraken. Also pirates, undead and otherwise. Really the list goes on.

Rum, sodomy, and the lash.

Re: 350 tons of of chocolate and wine arrive on world’s largest cargo sailboat

#15

Post by scrumper »

mentos wrote: post #7

With starlink we could see completely autonomous drone sailboats for shipping coming soon?

Hmm, what’s starlink needed for if it’s completely autonomous? Satellite internet covering oceans has been around for a while - but the hard part of fully autonomous sailing is not a low latency backchannel for telemetry :)

Some small, drone sailboats exist for ocean research in the 2-3m range. There are some designs and prototypes for larger vessels. A lot of the actual work of the crew on an ocean crossing is fixing stuff that breaks. No real way to AI that away, and the bigger you go the more likely things are to fail.

Re: 350 tons of of chocolate and wine arrive on world’s largest cargo sailboat

#16

Post by thejohnconway »

playingalong wrote: post #3

Just by reading the article the impression is that it's both faster and should be cheaper (?). I get that only some type of cargo would fit or would make sense to load like this. What are the downsides?

Scale and throughput. Ships used to have cranes on deck and unload this way (look at pretty much any ocean liner, they had cranes on the forded for cargo). Containerisation improved throughput considerably, but added to latency. There is no way this is cheaper. Way more crew per tonne, the ship itself is almost certainly way more expensive for it capacity, and so on.

Not that I don’t think sailing is a bad way to move cargo, but I suspect if it does work, it won’t be small boats with crew.

Re: 350 tons of of chocolate and wine arrive on world’s largest cargo sailboat

#17

Post by inetknght »

moffkalast wrote: post #8
playingalong wrote: post #3

Just by reading the article the impression is that it's both faster and should be cheaper (?). I get that only some type of cargo would fit or would make sense to load like this. What are the downsides?

Margins in the shipping industry are typically rather low and it's offset by scaling well with container ships of proportions only limited by the canals they must traverse. This ship is positively microscopic in comparison. I would imagine it's only cost effective for very specific types of cargo. There are hybrid options with flettner rotors and deployable kite sails for partial fuel savings on specific routes, but…

> I would imagine it's only cost effective for very specific types of cargo

I imagine you're close to correct, but that some people might be willing to pay a premium for types of cargo that normally would not turn a profit. "Fine goods", as my local Specs puts it.

Re: 350 tons of of chocolate and wine arrive on world’s largest cargo sailboat

#18

Post by Quarrel »

playingalong wrote: post #3

Just by reading the article the impression is that it's both faster and should be cheaper (?). I get that only some type of cargo would fit or would make sense to load like this. What are the downsides?

It doesn't carry even a 10th of the cargo of the big windjammers of the 19th century (5000-8000 tons!).

Of course, setting aside the value of zero emissions which is their obvious selling point, it would otherwise be competing against big container ships (up to 200,000 tons!).

I assume that until they scale it for a few more generations that it'll be more a gimmick for low tonnage luxury items that just want the zero emission marketing claim. Even after scaling, I assume it couldn't be competitive for most bulk things.

Re: 350 tons of of chocolate and wine arrive on world’s largest cargo sailboat

#19

Post by chongli »

solarpunk wrote: post #4
tocs3 wrote: post #2

I have wondered a lot bout using sail for shipping. If you are the shipper and you enjoy he sailing it seems like it could be a good idea. Just a way to pay for a lifestyle not a way to make boatloads of money. It would not make much of a dent in traditions shipping but more of a way to live a nice life.

all in all it's gotta be cheaper to ship time-insensitive things via a vehicle that consumes no fuel. I'm curious if they can turn around and monetize their lack of emissions thru some kind of carbon markets or whatnot

The fuel burned by container ships is literally the sludge left at the bottom of the distillation vessel after all of the lighter petroleum fuels have been removed for sale. It is incredibly cheap fuel, extremely energy dense, but unbelievably dirty stuff.

Unfortunately, these ships only burn the nasty fuel in international waters so the process of getting them to pay for emissions would have to go through international maritime law, specifically MARPOL [1]. If you want an idea of how difficult that would be, check out the implementation and enforcement section of that page.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARPOL_73/78

Re: 350 tons of of chocolate and wine arrive on world’s largest cargo sailboat

#20

Post by rdtsc »

This could work for luxury goods if the products and the associated marketing reflects it.

It has to be on the label - “brought you by a sailboat across the Atlantic”.

I could imagine someone paying a large markup for it just like they pay for fancy wine or jewelry. As long as everyone involved in the business understands it and doesn’t drink their own kool-aid, which often happens.

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