They have a passenger service too! €3200 for France Baltimore, 13 day trip. But with that you get three meals a day, a decent looking cabin, private bathroom, private balcony, and internet service (though how solid the connection is / what surcharges there may be is a question). ~€250/d doesn't sound too bad, and you could get work done along the way. Kind of sounds nice... https://www.voilasailcoop.fr/transatlantic/…
More precisely, this is the price per person but if you travel alone, you have to share a room with someone else. Or you would have you to make private a double room which costs about 5400E.
Well it does use oil. > The 136-metre-long vessel had to rely partly on its auxiliary motor and its remaining sail after the aft sail was damaged in a storm shortly after departure. Used the motor "shortly after departure".
Yes. Experiments have a tendency to show where problems are.
Sails are not a new experiment.
Hundreds of years of progress and known limitations.
In the meantime, China is constructing nuclear cargo ships ([1], [2]) that will be able to transport 14,000 containers at full throttle (200MW) without a need to refuel for years. Obviously, it's still not done, and yet to prove to be profitable, but their reactor design does suggest that they have a chance to make it work and replace a lot of CO2 emissions. 1. Original article, but paywall: https://www.scmp.com/news…
As much as we want the next generation ships with less CO2 emissions, that nuclear cargo ship is not coming anytime soon. It will use a Thorium melting salt reactor, which although not new, is still in experiment. US first proposed melting salt reactor in the 1940s and had operated one briefly in the 1960s. China is building and testing an experimental Thorium reactor. It made the news earlier this month for been successfully converting Thorium to Uranium, perhaps means it is actually burning Thorium as compare to rely on Uranium in previous melting salt reactors. The news also states the plan has 3 stages: experimental reactor, research reactor, and demonstration reactor. The current one is at first stage. The third stage, demonstrator reactor, is scheduled to build in 2035. Therefor that nuclear cargo ship is at least another 10 years from now.
I wonder why we don’t have nuclear cargo/container ships.
There were four:
NS savannah (US): 1962 to 1971, too expensive to operate
NS Mutsu (Japan): 1972 to 1992, neutron leak
Otto Hahn (Germany): 1970 to 1982, converted to diesel power
Sevmorput (Russian): 1988 to 2007, converted to world's first nuclear powered drilling ship
This ship carries 5300 tonnes of cargo. The average transoceanic container ship carries around 150,000 to 250,000 tonnes.
Use it for luxury goods! "Why _my_ iphone arrived in Baltimore on a clean cargo ship, so yeah, ..." I am only half joking. Anything luxury of vanity related, just add the fact they've gotten to the consumer on a clean ship and you'll find some people to pay extra for it. The more expensive the better. They can brag about it to each other.
This ship carries 5300 tonnes of cargo. The average transoceanic container ship carries around 150,000 to 250,000 tonnes.
Does anyone know how well this scales? I assume it just doesn’t make sense to actually make one of that size when they are testing out the concept.
It scales horribly. Essentially, as the ship gets larger, the sail area has to be even larger (proportionally) to maintain the same speed. Further, the larger the sail, the more susceptible to damage and the harder it is to control.
Use it for luxury goods! "Why _my_ iphone arrived in Baltimore on a clean cargo ship, so yeah, ..." I am only half joking. Anything luxury of vanity related, just add the fact they've gotten to the consumer on a clean ship and you'll find some people to pay extra for it. The more expensive the better. They can brag about it to each other.
luxury goods are shipped by air
But that's burning fuel and pollutes the air! It's not good if they want to show off how conscious they are about the climate, and also how much they are willing to spend just for that.
Interviews with CEO, where he stresses that the main problem is not sailing upwind but to get there on time. https://youtu.be/qhAlImSIDyU https://youtu.be/QfHJE1UwMTw Another contender https://youtu.be/xsFc3pro8Y8 (Also FR based, cultural reason?)
There's also Grain de Sail. Not only French, all these are from the region of Britanny, sailing is very cultural.
Big commercial cruiseships from Norwegian NCL and Costa Cruises It was amazing ! Perfect to relax, take a step back and think There's plenty of things to do, you can hang out with others, read a book, work online, look at waves all day long, go to the gym etc. The real danger is eating too much, food at restaurants is unlimited, even at official table service you can order multiple mains, multiple desserts etc. they…
Something like these? https://www.costacruises.eu/destinations/transatlantic.html
Yes those are the ones, although not all transatlantic are "repositioning cheap", it depends on the current market. You can also look at cruise comparators / cruise resellers to see all of them, and sometimes you have better prices with them.
Something to take into account is that USA residents have different cruises prices, usually cheaper, the rest of the world usually has to pay more
This ship carries 5300 tonnes of cargo. The average transoceanic container ship carries around 150,000 to 250,000 tonnes.
Use it for luxury goods! "Why _my_ iphone arrived in Baltimore on a clean cargo ship, so yeah, ..." I am only half joking. Anything luxury of vanity related, just add the fact they've gotten to the consumer on a clean ship and you'll find some people to pay extra for it. The more expensive the better. They can brag about it to each other.
I can recall an 'artisinal' chocolate brand in Brooklyn doing this about fifteen years ago, taking cocoa from the Dominican Republic to Brooklyn via sailboat.