You want to do what?
You can just imagine the scene can't you, meeting of the company's 'creative' department, down to any other business on the agenda.
"Okay, next up is Brian. Now Brian what's this months idea."
"It's a giant kite Ted. Huge kite. Enormous kite. 160 square metres of kite that flies 600 feet above the bows of the ship."
"Okay Brian, can't see where your coming from on this but let's here the pitch"
"We put a huge kite onto one of those big transatlantic container ships so that when it's sailing..."
"Across the Atlantic?"
"Yep. We put it on the ship so that once the ships got going it can turn down the engines, hoist the big kite and sail on - reducing emissions, CO2, all sorts of good things come out of it. It will reduce the annual fuel consumption by close on 35 per cent."
"Sounds great. So what do we do, employ some geeky teenager to hold the kite in place?"
"We don't use spars and ropes like they used back in the 1950's on the old square rigged canvas. This one performs figure of eight patterns, it's an acrobatic kite. If this trial goes well we could sell the idea across the world. There's maybe 100,000 commercial ships that could use it."
And yesterday the MS Beluga Skysails left Bremerhaven on its voyage to Venuezuela with its new £370,000 kite system on board. Testing has already been conducted for more than 2,000 hours of sailing now the system will be monitored to see how it stands up to strong sunlight and a constant weaving and bobbing above the 400 foot long diesel powered freighter.
Anybody who wants to read more about the project can do so here
4 comments:
a link! I'm impressed, not that you can do it but that you hardly ever put them in!...
What happens when there's no wind?...it flops over the bow...will the crew like the extra work of reeling it in and (presumably) folding it up?...and when it sails striaght into the quay smashing it's way inland (like many a good/bad movie) they can blame the kite for the loss of vision :-)
Thank you for the praise re the link!
I'm sure as a father you know what it's like spending hours in a field waiting for the 'kite wind' - imagine some poor deckhand with this huge thing on the end of a rope running up and down the deck waiting for lift-off.
Brilliant, it brings to mind the great eccentric engineering achievements of the industrial revolution.
I suppose they could just use it when they were in the middle of the ocean and use engines only when they were near port.
Being a born again land lubber I don't know what I'm on about, do I?
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