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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

#61

Post by happyopossum »

stefan_ wrote: post #39
chongli wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you secure them? Pirates have already begun to be a huge problem in particular political/economic hot spots around the world. Autonomous drone sailboats would be ripe plums just waiting to be plucked. I think one of the biggest issues is that these drones could ostensibly be jammed from beyond visual range and then disabled and captured during jamming. This would make it very difficult to detect the perpetr…

I suppose there is no reason to make an autonomous cargo ship accessible to humans.

Given time and sufficient motivation (starvation is a common one for pirates), anything is accessible to humans.

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

#62

Post by fsckboy »

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…

the French could keep shipping mass produced crappy cars economically on big ships, and then small numbers of cars de luxe on these bougie ships, and advertise the... "car bon offsets".

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

#63

Post by toast0 »

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 crew consumes fuel. A large sailing vessel and a large container ship probably require a similar number of crew.

Labor cost per ton will be huge.

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

#64

Post by sva_ »

agentultra wrote: post #45

Everyone is always concerned about scale. But I sometimes wonder if we need to scale down. Are cargo ships full of essential goods or disposable items that will more likely than not enter a landfill without seeing any use at all? We’re really good at over producing items and goods that we don’t need or use. It’s interesting to see businesses try things like this. It might not be efficient or affordable now. But someo…

> We’re really good at over producing items and goods that we don’t need or use.

Overproduction of essential things like food is by design as it makes a famine much less likely.

About non-essential stuff, I would agree with you.

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

#66

Post by basisword »

cloverich wrote: post #51
agentultra wrote: post #45

Everyone is always concerned about scale. But I sometimes wonder if we need to scale down. Are cargo ships full of essential goods or disposable items that will more likely than not enter a landfill without seeing any use at all? We’re really good at over producing items and goods that we don’t need or use. It’s interesting to see businesses try things like this. It might not be efficient or affordable now. But someo…

This is where carbon tax helps. Having to pay the true cost of goods helps everyone make better decisions. Maybe, hopefully, it also pushes the needle towards higher quality, more essential items and hence less waste. Yet, "make everything more expensive" is a challenging position to make progress on.

Doesn’t this just drive up the cost for the people who are already struggling to afford these goods?

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

#67

Post by evomassiny »

rdtsc wrote: post #20

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.

This is their second boat,and they already do exactly that. So far it's been quite successful

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

#68

Post by newsclues »

rdtsc wrote: post #20

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.

I always thought there was a market for fleets of smaller wind powered ships for car transportation especially with EVs.

Plenty of opportunities with taxation to make this viable.

But I think we run into the issue of why cargo was centralized in the first place.

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

#69

Post by prmoustache »

danielharan wrote: post #55
prmoustache wrote: post #35

It would make more sense to roast the cacao and make the fine chocolates in the countries where cacao is harvested if you ask me.

The chocolate has to be shipped cool, requiring more energy. That said: more and more producing countries are doing initial processing (roasting and grinding into liquor), and derivatives (powder and butter). Processing cacao in North America means I have to pay to get rid of shell which could be brought back to farms. Hopefully one day I can buy good liquor.

Still less energy than shipping left and right 3 times

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

#70

Post by thrance »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #32

This is not a method by which carbon emissions can be significantly reduced. It is essentially a marketing ploy to provide an option for virtue signaling consumers to show that they get their luxury chocolates and wine by sailboat. I was going to start out this comment by saying "I don't mean to dump on well-intentioned entrepreneurs", but in all honesty I think I might. That is, at this point, anything that doesn't…

I recall seeing their company on french national TV a few years ago.

If I remember correctly, they didn't claim that sailboats would be able to replace our global cargo fleet, but rather that in an energetically shrinking world they would provide a (luxury) alternative to shipping exotic goods (in a lesser volume, of course).

Also I don't think that there are any ways to both conserve trade capacity and reduce carbon emissions significantly. At some point we'll have to choose which is most beneficial between importing cars from Japan and not reaching +4°C.

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