World's Largest Cargo Sailboat Completes Historic First Atlantic Crossing (marineinsight.com) 83
Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shared this report from Marine Insight:
The world's largest cargo sailboat, Neoliner Origin, completed its first transatlantic voyage on 30 October despite damage to one of its sails during the journey. 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... Neoline, the company behind the project, said the damage reduced the vessel's ability to perform fully on wind power...
The Neoliner Origin is designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 to 90 percent compared to conventional diesel-powered cargo ships. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), global shipping produces about 3 percent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions...
The ship can carry up to 5,300 tonnes of cargo, including containers, vehicles, machinery, and specialised goods. It arrived in Baltimore carrying Renault vehicles, French liqueurs, machinery, and other products. The Neoliner Origin is scheduled to make monthly voyages between Europe and North America, maintaining a commercial cruising speed of around 11 knots.
The Neoliner Origin is designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 to 90 percent compared to conventional diesel-powered cargo ships. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), global shipping produces about 3 percent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions...
The ship can carry up to 5,300 tonnes of cargo, including containers, vehicles, machinery, and specialised goods. It arrived in Baltimore carrying Renault vehicles, French liqueurs, machinery, and other products. The Neoliner Origin is scheduled to make monthly voyages between Europe and North America, maintaining a commercial cruising speed of around 11 knots.
All I can say is duh! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:All I can say is duh! (Score:4, Informative)
I didn't RTFA, but 11 knots is about half the speed of a regular container ship, and 2/3 of a bulk carrier, which I find surprisingly good.
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It's about half the size of the larger cargo ships too, but still quite competitive. I'm sure they can scale up, Running costs should be lower due to less fuel use (it still uses some around ports).
Speed isn't such a big deal for this sort of thing, that can be worked into the logistics. Maybe they will have drone ships eventually anyway, so it's not even costing any more in wages.
Re: All I can say is duh! (Score:4, Informative)
Half the size? By what math?
It can carry 5300t. That's 215x 20t containers.
The largest container ships today are in the 23000 teu range which even if we assume they can't all max out at 20t... Let's assume 10t.... Is still 230,000t or 43x larger.
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Length, which is the relevant metric when you're considering the speed of a pure displacement hull.
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My, we are an aggressively stupid dipshit today.
The only thing that meaningfully matters to a cargo ship is size.
Vessels are already slow sailing to artificially constrain bandwidth and prop up rates, and have been since COVID.
Nobody on earth is trying to build FASTER cargo ships, and haven't for 50 years. Jesus Christ. If only slashdot had a "doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about" filter.
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You do seem to be yes. Maybe time to take a break?
Ships scale up pretty predictably. No, they didn't build THE BIGGEST CARGO SHIP EVAH for their prototype. That would be pretty dumb.
This thread is talking about the ship speed. And the speed of a displacement hull is intimately linked to the length. As is the capacity, incidentally.
Re:All I can say is duh! (Score:5, Informative)
It's about half the size of the larger cargo ships too, but still quite competitive. I'm sure they can scale up,
One of the main motivations for ever larger cargo ships is that the square cube law gives you big savings in fuel efficiency the larger you go. It's why the largest ships are limited by the size of the panama canal - otherwise they'd go even bigger.
But if you don't have fuel costs then this ceases to be a motivation. Sure you get some savings in terms of reduced crew count with a bigger ship vs multiple small ones, but again, automation is dealing with that. There are also costs involved in having big ships, such as not being able to go to as many ports (so require more last mile transport), and the costs of updating the infrastructure they require.
Its entirely possible that a fleet of semi-autonomous sail powered vessels could be competitive with giant fuel powered cargo ships on many routes in the future.
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The largest ships are constrained by the size of the ports that can host them. The Suez Canal is the next biggest constraint. Panama is a distant 3rd.
Boats are always slow (Score:3, Insightful)
It already is much cheaper and slower than flying; so what if they go slower if it ends up cheaper... If it costs the same and is slower then we really should do something to make polluting boats pay more for the harm they cause.
FYI: The top 12 mega cargo ships pollute more than ALL the cars combined; I forget the exact number but it's around a dozen! If I was presi-dictator, I'd sink every mega ship and offer non-profit nuclear powered ships managed by the navy (since they are the only ones who competentl
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Actually the Russian Coast Guard also has extensive experience managing nuclear powered ice breakers (they run all of the largest ice breakers in the world.) Russian sailors are probably a lot cheaper than American ones. :-)
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One really big technology change between the 1950s and today is the ability to know when, where, and in which direction the wind is/will be blowing throughout your entire trip. That's huge, no more Edmund Fitzgerald getting caught by an early storm or avoiding doldrums. Also according to sailing rules wind powered vessels always have the right of way, which might be important in straights like the English Channel or around southern Asia.
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Also according to sailing rules wind powered vessels always have the right of way, which might be important in straights like the English Channel or around southern Asia.
It's difficult to take nautical advice from a dude who can't spell "strait" correctly. The "rules of the road" are a bit more complicated than you describe. A ship under sail, for example, must give way to a vessel restricted in its ability to maneuver, or a vessel not under command (can't maneuver at all). A sailing vessel must also give way to a fishing vessel using nets or trawls.
So no, wind powered vessels do not always have right of way.
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Yes, or a rowboat, or drifting debris, or . . .
Re: Nuclear powered ships (Re:All I can say is duh (Score:2)
They still have "more right of way" than a comparable engine vessel.
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The Fitzgerald had to change course because of the waves, they wouldn't have wanted the waves, coming out of the north, on their port side. Taconite pellets (partly processed iron ore) can shift in the holds, and if part of the cargo moves and the other doesn't on a 1000 foot ore boat it could twist the hull (that may have actually contributed to the breakup, it's unknown). They knew they were near Whitefish Bay, but needed to head into the storm for stability.
how much profit is there in operating 10 sailing ships than a single New Panamax ship?
Depends on crewing and the availability of cu
Re: Nuclear powered ships (Re:All I can say is duh (Score:2)
Having diesel engine on board doesn't change right of way - virtually every sailing vessel has one.
You need to be actively using it.
Re: Nuclear powered ships (Re:All I can say is duh (Score:1)
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Hee, hee. My dad was a fanatical fisherman on the Great Lakes. I remember looking out on the whitefish grounds on Grand Traverse Bay one winter and seeing one black dot on the ice, which we knew was Dad, and an ice breaker with the oil company ship behind it. The reason that I had looked is because the ships were blasting their horns at him to get out of their way. Stubborn bugger that he was, he didn't and eventually the ships had to go around him. When we asked him about it he said, "The fish were bi
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Oil power is lazy, dirty, and inefficient. Wind is the obvious choice.
Sorry, but no. Bashing rocks might be green, but if everything shipped this way you'd probably 10x shipping costs (and make many supply chains non-viable).
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$ is king... if this thing is taken out of commission for a few days/weeks for repairs every time it encounters a storm... that down time starts to eat into the profits. And by profits i mean they'd still be making money, just not as much as if they had been operating a standard cargo ship.
That is on top of the fact that a standard cargo ship runs 15-24knotts.. and can reach capacities of 300,000 tonnes (almost 60x).
So if you operated one of the behemoths... you can do twice the trips, carrying 60x the car
Re: All I can say is duh! (Score:5, Insightful)
First, most sailing ships survive storms undamaged; and conversely, engine ships het damaged and require commissioning downtime, too.
Sexond, start baking real environmental cost into shipping and let's see where Maersk and their crude oil engines end up.
Third, st this point it's about survival of the species. The argument used to be "there are things thay can't be done without oil", and now that we're doing it, it becomes " yeah but it's not as cheap"? No shit. How's displacing 30% of the world population soon, because they live in aeas that will become incompatible with human life, for cheap?
Re: All I can say is duh! (Score:1)
Re: All I can say is duh! (Score:2)
But it doesn't have to be. There's no rule of the universe that says "cargo ships must be at least this heavy or else".
Re: All I can say is duh! (Score:2)
Well, no, there's no law against shipping single containers at a time either. It just means a banana costs $100,000.
We have an entire thread here where you have ecological doomsayers are telling the world's most efficient transport industry how they can do things better. Sure.
Re: All I can say is duh! (Score:2)
Reductio ad absurdum.
Let's see how it works the other way: if the bigger the ship, the cheaper the banana, then why don't we make ships large enough to reach around the world and get yhe bananas practically for free?
I didn't say "single containers", I just said fewer than now. The current economy is for current ships, current cost structure and current propulsion systems. Different propulsion and different cost structure may result in different economics in this future.
how did it take us THIS long? (Score:5, Funny)
It's amazing to see that we're only just now discovering we can use the power of wind to move boats around!
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Re: how did it take us THIS long? (Score:2)
Sails and storms dont mix. Innumerable sailing ships had their sails ripped, masts snapped or went to the bottom because of it. Hardly surprising that when a technology that didnt involve having a couple of 50-100 foot high poles with large fabric attached to them that could work in all weathers came along it quickly took over. I mean FFS, this ship had only just left harbour and one of its modern rigid sails got damaged!
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Now they know when a storm is coming and what its probably path is. The pilot will have to take into account calm areas and avoid those as well, but satellite weather forecasting makes that possible now.
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In nautical terms, a pilot is a specialist in navigating through a harbor, lake, river or other difficult passage, and is not a regular member of any ship's crew. You have the right idea, but the proper job title is "navigator."
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Ah. I grew up on the Great Lakes, where they're 'pilots'.
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Re: how did it take us THIS long? (Score:1)
Here's news: essentially all sail ships today, of all sizes, typically sail through storms (as opposed to turning on their motors). And conversely, there are motor vessels, too, that sunk in storms. None is inherently safer than the other.
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Modern freighters can go through a force 12. Good luck doing that in a sailing ship from any era.
Re: how did it take us THIS long? (Score:2)
Sorry, but no - a 12 is a shitty and tiresome situation to be in, but it's pretty much standard for touring sailors. Just youtube for "storm 12 sailing" or similar to prove you wrong.
I used to be in your random shitty sailing club far from shore (the usual "by the lake" club), but we'd have members going on ocean races regularly, more or less). Of course they'd try to avoid storms, like any sane sailor would do, simply because they are dangerous and tiresome no matter the ship you're in if sailing around or
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And that's when you're racing. Remove the incentive to go fast and you're even safer.
Re: how did it take us THIS long? (Score:2)
Stay at home and you're at safest.
But this isn't the point; the point if storms are sailable, and yes, they are, very so and routinely. It's like.drivong a car in show: if you've never done it and yoir car isn't equipped to do so, it's veru dangerous. But if equipment and driver are adequately prepared, it's "Tuesday".
And adequate preparation isn't Science Fiction, it's trade standard.
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I'm not really sure what your point is. You are correct that racers frequently sail through all sorts of weather without damage. They do sometimes take damage though, the vast majority of which is due to trying to sail through weather as fast as possible.
A cargo ship would presumably sail through storms as fast as it could without risking damage.
Re: how did it take us THIS long? (Score:2)
My point is that sailing through storm isn't prohitively dangerous, it's a routine task.
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Humans have been sailing since at least 60,000 BCE, since that was the only way for them to get to Australia (paddling rafts is remarkably slow, and there are some nasty currents in that straight.) Genetic studies came to the conclusion that rather than a single event consisting of a couple of possibly storm-tossed families (the old speculation) colonization was a deliberate efffort by hundreds of people over the course of centuries.
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It's amazing to see that we're only just now discovering we can use the power of wind to move boats around!
You make it seem like we were able to do this easily before rather than acknowledging the engineering feat this is. Here's some comparison for you:
The Neoliner Origin is the longest cargo sail ship ever made, 20m longer than the France II, it has a taller main mast *which is retractable so it can maneuverer under bridges*, and has 25% more cargo capacity than the France II as well. There's a lot of engineering involved in getting something that big to move around flexibly, especially when it comes to compat
Re: how did it take us THIS long? (Score:2)
Re: how did it take us THIS long? (Score:1)
So... ship 900 cars then? And use more vessels to build the other 8100?
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Yes because we all know in a growing world with growing interdependency on trade the most viable step forward is to start by cutting 90% of logistic capacity in new manufacturing?
Re: how did it take us THIS long? (Score:1)
Logistics capacity isn't the same as ship capacity. What's wrong with using more, smaller ships?
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Logistics capacity isn't the same as ship capacity. What's wrong with using more, smaller ships?
Using more smaller ships affects logistics capacity. You've now created a queue at ports, a queue at maintenance yards, a high requirement for shipping staff, etc. Economies of scale apply.
A bit slower, but ... (Score:5, Funny)
It arrived in Baltimore carrying Renault vehicles
Oh boy! The Deux Chevauxs have arrived.
Re: A bit slower, but ... (Score:2)
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Renault are doing fantastically well with their cars right now. They have won accolades from every corner for the new Renault 4, 5, Twingo, as well as the Megane and Scenic.
See, for example:
https://www.caroftheyear.org/ [caroftheyear.org]
https://www.carwow.co.uk/renau... [carwow.co.uk]
Re: A bit slower, but ... (Score:2)
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No worries! Renault are haunted by their old reputation, but they’ve been knocking it out the park recently when it comes to EVs. The only shame is that they’ve not been able to do better on range — the 5 has the same range as the Zoe did when it was discontinued 4 years ago. 245 miles is still good for a supermini, but I was hoping they’d be able to push past 300. Still, that’s a minor quibble, especially as not many folks drive a supermini on massive road trips very often. Yo
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The Deux Chevaux, the only car that made my 1958 VW type 1 feel like a Porsche 911.
Re:A bit slower, but ... (Score:4, Informative)
It's funny but the Deux Chevaux was Citroen. :)
Re: A bit slower, but ... (Score:1)
"despite damage to one of its sails" (Score:5, Informative)
It uses "semi-rigid sails" and from the photo I can see they are whoppers, far too large for manual operation. Probably they are managed with hydraulic or electric actuators and it looks like they are on swiveling platforms. It makes me wonder how easily the crew can reduce sail area during a storm or heavy wind, which can blow up very quickly.
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They'll know when a storm is coming before it gets there. Weather forecasting has come a long way since the 19th century. They may preferentially skirt the edge of storms for a speed boost.
Re:"despite damage to one of its sails" (Score:4, Informative)
Apparently they didn't know this time. Some very strong winds can occur even during a minor squall out on the water and many a sail has blown out because it wasn't reefed soon enough.
On a cargo ship like this they may be reluctant to reduce or drop sails and take the speed penalty. In the future I expect they will err on the side of caution.
Re:"despite damage to one of its sails" (Score:4, Informative)
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There's some significant technology involved in what they are doing, I'm impressed with the audacity. The ship has a flat deck to accommodate the sails so it doesn't seem suitable for a container ship. It might be a lot cheaper to operate though.
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Re: "despite damage to one of its sails" (Score:2)
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It uses "semi-rigid sails" and from the photo I can see they are whoppers, far too large for manual operation. Probably they are managed with hydraulic or electric actuators and it looks like they are on swiveling platforms.
Not just that the masts are fully hydraulically operated, the masts are tiltable to 70 degree angle so that the ship too so that the ship which normally stands 90m tall can get under bridges or other infrastructure with only 42m height.
When the masts are tilted it looks WEIRD. https://www.neoline.eu/en/why-... [neoline.eu]
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Well I butchered that sentence.
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far too large for manual operation
As are the sails on many large recreational yachts. Power furling systems are quite common.
It makes me wonder how easily the crew can reduce sail area during a storm
"The crew" (skipper) just pushes a button. From there, it's how fast the hydraulics can work.
Diesel cargo ship? (Score:1)
The Neoliner Origin is designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 to 90 percent compared to conventional diesel-powered cargo ships.
Cargo ships don't run on diesel, they run on bunker fuel. Diesel is much cleaner. Bunker fuel/heavy fuel oil is closer to tar than what most folks would think of as fuel. It's some of the dirtiest burning oil product there is. But it's cheap. It's basically the sludge that is left after the gasoline and diesel are refined out of crude oil. It has to be heated to 105C to 130C (depending on grade) in order to be able to pump it into the boilers.
Re:Diesel cargo ship? (Score:5, Informative)
Bunker fuel isn't a fuel. It's a name for a different set of fuels that ships use. Among those is Heavy Fuel Oil (which is effectively banned now), Marine Fuel Oil (what you are talking about, a low sulphur and slightly lighter variant of HFO), and ... Marine Diesel Oil (actual diesel which all container ships need to run on when they get close to port because you haven't been allowed to burn HFO or MFO anywhere near populated areas for a long time now.
And while it certainly used to be sludge that is left over, these days there are increasingly tighter restrictions on what MFO can contain, and it is very much starting to look more and more like diesel in composition (the last decade or so many refineries have focused on equipment upgrades precisely because they would no longer be able to sell their sludge to the shipping industry).
It's not incorrect to call these ships diesel powered. In fact for some of their journey the only difference between what they put in their engines and what you put in yours is the colour (colour denoting that the fuel was exempt from local taxes and may only be used for marine purposes)
Re: Diesel cargo ship? (Score:1)
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They use compression ignition engines though (unless there are any gas turbine powered cargo ships...), so it is correct to refer to them as diesel ships.
When you're not in a rush to ship your products... (Score:2)
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"How can we make shipping slower, more expensive, and less reliable?"