Sustainable Sailing - The Future of Yacht Design

[Sam Shimmin]

Hello Everyone,

I am a Design student from the UK and am in the research phase of a project investigating the potential of the latest material technologies and renewable energy generation systems within the marine industry.

The project is being developed in collaboration with British Maritime Technologies, a leading Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering company based here in the UK.

The main objective of the project is to design a conceptual yet functional sailing vessel, incorporating renewable energy production systems as an integral part of the design, without compromising the overall exterior and interior styling of the yacht.

Although there are obvious environmental benefits of such technologies, this project is more focused around the cost benefit ratio of such systems. Large scale yachts are expensive to run and maintain, if a large proportion of the yachts energy needs were supplied by renewable sources it would equate to a massive reduction in running costs over the life time of the vessel.

The yacht is to be a minimum of 15 metres in length and a maximum of 30 metres.

Having worked on the design of various large scale catamaran projects in the past, my initial idea was to develop a catamaran concept, the large deck surface area could be advantagous in a project such as this.

I am researching the current market and am looking for anyone interested or involved in yacht design, sailing, renewable energy generation etc to provide some feedback on the design proposal.

Any information or ideas on interesting energy generation systems, material technologies or general opinions about the project would be most welcome.

many thanks,

Samuel Shimmin

[venomousbird]

I would suggest looking into the concept of using the motion of waves in a pendulum type configuration to generate power, not sure how this would affect the hull/water interface though. Also, perhaps read up on the use of fresnel lenses in solar power generation. There are videos on youtube about this as well. I believe it's a more efficient system than using the panels for electricity production.

[steele m.a.]

Sam - Mark Steele in Victoria.
I'm working on a single hull that I've developed here.
It's called Venture 1 , and it appears that my design correlates to
what you are looking for
markalfredsteele@yahoo.ca

[Massimo De Luca]

Have a look at this....

http://www.sly-yachts.com/_vti_g2_vincitore.aspx