The Future of Sailing Cargo

Abstract

In this work, I take look into the future of sailing cargo ships and present current existing projects. The aim is to gain understanding on the motivations of sail cargo projects and people beyond, and the aspects that leads the future of Sail Cargo projects.

Sail cargo vessels divides into three categories: auxiliary wind propulsion vessels, hybrid vessels and pure sailing vessels. Auxiliary and hybrid vessels use motor accompanied with the sails for maintaining schedules, but gain benefit from the sails for fuel, emission and cost savings. Pure sailing vessels may have auxiliary engine for temporarily use for port or channel maneuvers, but trade otherwise using nearly only sails. Currently, there are a handful auxiliary wind propulsion vessels (both, retrofitted and soon about new builds), whereas hybrid vessels (like Ecoliner type of designs) has existed a while on a drawing board but none actually built yet. Pure sailing vessels are mainly small projects and they may sail because of there are lots enthusiasm and volunteer work involved, even though new sustainable business initiatives are born around these adventurous projects. There are a handful of these pure sailing cargo vessels today. Regardless their size, they carry a strong message beyond their cargo: our lifestyle is unsustainable, and we divest the life of our home planet and others far away. In the end it does not matter how clean technology we have, the current system itself is destructive socially and to the planet and to ourselves.