When will leisure craft adopt the new sailing systems?

Who proves that there are? Where are they "hiding"?

 

Sorry. I have never been a "fan" of spending hard-gotten taxpayer money to produce nothing useful. And I never will be.

 

Because those "big commercial entities" kowtow to the political winds and government subsidies... Simply being "seen as green" has value in an of itself, quite regardless of how far divorced from reality the virtue signaling actually is.

 

I don't think ship owners would mount these things on their ships if there were no benefits. These people are on a tight profit margin.
They want to save fuel. Do you think these devices would not save fuel?
The companies designing these things may have subsidies, but the ship owners do not.

 

On another forum there was a guy who suggested that giant container ships could cover the containers with flexible solar panels to generate the electricity to propel the ship.
I'm not so sure he had the slightest idea of the energy required to move 100,000 tons, (or a lot more,) against wind and wave at the speed those ships travel, (I guess at night they would use batteries?).

 

Exactly how many "shipowners" have mounted such devices? Be specific.

 

Or fire up those diesels again.
It's not an all or nothing proposition.

Neither am I, but not because the money is lost. It's just ridiculous, and selfish.

BINGO!

-Will

 

There are so many but I can just mention a few: Econowind have mounted their Ventofoils on MV Ankie and MV Progress and MV Perfect. Bound4blue have fitted their "Efoil" on Longliner "Balveiroll" and "La Naumon". Norsepower have fitted Flettners on "SC Connector" (Owned by Sea Cargo) and "MV Estraden" and finally they fitted one of their Flettners on the cruise ship "Viking Grace" there are many more.

 

You can look up the vessels on Vesselfinder.com but the pictures may be from before they were retrofitted. However, if you look up the wind-assist companies, Econowind, Bound4blue, Norsepower you will likely find their "Latest News" where you can see pictures of the installations.

 

Windmaster, this Peter Worsley chap you linked to either exaggerates to the point of dishonesty, or he's ignorant about rigs. In one of his pages, he claims "Traditional sailing rigs for boats have been around for hundreds of years, and have not changed much in that time."

Unless he has a very odd idea of "traditional" or "not changed much", this Worsley chap must have had his eyes closed. Only 200 years ago, this was a leading edge racing rig;



https://images1.bonhams.com/image?s...72-6-2.jpg&width=640&height=480&autosizefit=1

Aspect ratio of about 1:1, topsail on jackyard, solid timber spars, hoops for the luff, flax for the sails, hemp for the standing rigging, no rigging screws, gaff rig with multiple headsails upwind, stiff spars, sheeting angle of about 30 degrees or more, no winches, etc etc etc.



This is a typical mainstream modern rig; carbon mast, carbon sails, carbon stays, hydraulic rig tension control, high aspect ratio, amazingly close sheeting angle, superb low stretch and controllable rig tune, etc etc etc.

This Peter chap must be absurdly out of touch, or suffering from severe vision issues, if he can't see that the two are vastly different. Does this Worsley person not know that carbon is different from solid timber and flax?

The claims made for "new sailing systems" tend to be equally odd. Take the fact that the Flettner rotor is said to add two knots to the small freighter. Well, what does that mean to a leisure sailor? If it adds a couple of knots when the motor is on, it's not really much use, is it.

This Peter chap has some pretty unconvinving videos. In this one he's sailing a surfcat with a wing rig, but despite the good breeze (look at the water, and the sails flogging in the yacht in the background at the start) it's going very slowly for a boat like that. In that sort of breeze that sort of boat should go many times as fast as it does under the wingsail. A tiny conventional rig would be very cheap and easy and probably go faster.

It's also interesting to see that the related Dellencat guys can only prove their claims for performance by showing two short vids in light winds. This is the sort of thing that's so weird about alternative rig designers - they just never get out their and prove their claims. Why on earth can't anyone associated with this rig just enter a race (and the claims that such rigs are banned from racing are sheer and simple lies) and show how their creations perform compared to conventional rigs? About 15 years ago we had one guy here who claimed that his soft wing sail was going to be raced soon - that never happened. One or two major production builders tried the rig and ditched it because it just didn't work as the creator claimed.

Why doesn't this Peter guy just go out and sail his Hawke cat in a few races somewhere in England to show us that it can get along well enough to be a practical small craft rig? He's been sitting on it for about a decade so what stops him simply demonstrating it against comparable craft?

Oh, and while we're about dubious claims - in other posts, Windmaster, you have admitted that YOU are in fact Peter Worsley. Now you're referring to Peter Worsley in the third person. Is that a "royal we" or you trying to pump up your website while appearing to be independent?

Directory of many years of sailing research https://www.boatdesign.net/threads/directory-of-many-years-of-sailing-research.67101/#post-930740

 

Worsley Chap does not claim his rig is faster. He only claims it is simple to operate (which is its). There are no races which allow any sort of craft. All of them are for different restricted
classes. So you really want anyone who has new ideas to do nothing because "it has all been done already" You should have told that to the Wright brothers or Frank Whittle (no - Worsley is not comparing himself with them) I'm afraid it is not nice to knock inventors who have taken the trouble to demonstrate and prove their ideas. Where you yourself have done nothing (has anyone heard of you?). As you can imagine Worsley has suffered attacks for many years from people who have no imagination and do not want to improve anything. Good luck to him and the Amateur Yacht Research Society who pursue their ideas often in the face of derision and ignorance. These kind of tirades are common on these kind of forums where the participants do not meet in person. I would expect if you were ever to meet the "Worsley Chap" in real life you would be polite and respectful.

 

I notice no reply to the last section of CT249's post.Nor have I seen indicative costings of the "new sailing systems" ,given that many leisure sailors use no more than 60 litres of diesel in their engines in a year and sail quite happily with their existing rigs,why should they make any change?Similarly,a commercial ship will inevitably have to make voyages against headwinds and in such times the windage of the rig will detract from the commercial success of the voyage.In the absence of real world financial figures,might we be exposed to actual wind tunnel comparisons of novel rigs versus contemporary established practice?Do we have reliable CFD figures for both upwind and downwind performance?Or do we have a situation where there is a quasi industry in harvesting research grants?

 

I do not possess costings of the new sailing systems. I only ask if there is an awareness of them, which judging from the response on here so far is little. The companies fitting these systems on their ships are hoping to obtain benefits of fuel saving - the installers (not the owners) have done testing and including wind-tunnel testing I know. If you want the details it would be a good idea to refer to the websites of these operators, many of which I have quoted already. These systems have already been fitted so the results will be available very soon, and if they are worthwhile they will continue to be fitted. Research grants when they are used are there for a purpose to encourage innovation which is not a bad thing. It is informative to check this webpage Evaluating the potential of wind assisted technology https://www.rina.org.uk/Wind_propulsion_conference_Evaluating_the_potential_of_wind_assisted_technology.html

 

I am respectful and polite almost always in real life, but then in real life one doesn't normally meet people who try to pretend to be someone else and refer to themselves in the third person.

My post, although slightly tongue in cheek, was actually on point. In reply to your question, leisure craft will adopt the new sailing systems when leisure sailors are properly shown that they work better for leisure use. Videos of models, wing rigs moving at slow speed, and websites that make claims that are very dubious at best are not proper demonstrations that the "new sailing systems" live up to their claims.

The reality is that good PROVEN ideas in rig design tend to get picked up very quickly. For an example from the racing world, take the modern assymetric spinnaker; the first ones came out in 18 Foot Skiff in about 1984 and by 1989 the bugs had been worked out (and yes, there were quite a few) and we were using them on production dinghies and offshore keelboats and the first major production one design offshore yacht (J/105) had them by 1991. Given the number of issues that had to be sorted out, that was a very quick adoption.

What happened was simply that people created the rig and PROVED it was faster in one class, and then others adopted it very quickly and adapted it to their classes. While it was not picked up universally, there are very good reasons for that. Sail designs and techniques take a long while to evolve even when very innovative people are working on them full-time to try to gain a winning edge.

The point is that claims that most sailors are overly conservative about rigs don't appear to have any actual basis in hard evidence. If a new idea is properly demonstrated to be better, sailors adopt it quite quickly.

As for your other points;

1- It is completely and utterly untrue to claim that "all" races are only open for restricted classes. There are many clubs in your area alone that offer mixed fleet racing, often for catamarans. Marconi SC, for example, has a huge catamaran fleet racing under Portsmouth Yardstick. Gt Yarmouth and Gorleston has cats and has a personal handicap series so you don't even need a PY.

2- Why did you claim that normal rigs have not changed significantly in hundreds of years? Will you defend your claim that an 1800 hemp-sailed wooden-sparred gaffer is the same as a modern carbon masted bermudan sloop?

3- There's nothing in my post that says I don't want anyone to come up with new ideas; for example I own and sail a foiling windsurfer which is hardly an ancient concept. The point is that it's actually very easy for people who come up with new ideas to go out and prove many of the claims they make - just go out and do a bunch of local races and show the actual results and times.

You may not be claiming that your rig is faster, but if you read my post I quite clearly referred to developers of "novel" rigs in the plural, and others have made the claim that their rigs are faster - a claim that many years later they have still failed to back up. If their rigs work so well, why don't they just show us by beating comparable boats around race courses?

If someone claims that their product is better, but does not take the simple and easy steps to demonstrate that it is better, then why should anyone believe them?

4- It's utterly untrue to claim that I "do nothing".

5 - If you are going to get on your high horse about manners then you should not have dishonestly implied that you are not who you really are, by referring to yourself in the third person.

6-Showing that your rig allows a Hawke cat to sail very slowly in a good breeze is not a demonstration that it's particularly easy to handle. A far simpler rig like a very small battenless, bermudan sail on a short mast would probably drive the Hawke just as easily and quickly from my experience with similar surfcats.

 

I'm not going to argue with you on the many detail points you have brought up because it would be endless claim and counter-claim. What I do see from your post is that you have not researched the wingsail control system I have patented. You clearly do not understand how it is controlled and that all you have to do is move one lever for forward and reverse and to adjust the power from zero to full. Please see www.windthrusters.com/story3.html There is no doubt about this. Other builders who have confirmed the value of it are mentioned in that page. I can tell you without doubt it works as it is advertised. By the way yes, the test 12ft catamaran did not go as fast as you would like. But bear in mind that the sail area was only 20 sq ft! which is approximately half that of an Optomist. If the design was scaled up there is no doubt that it would be faster area for area than conventional sails. It is just a true fact which you cannot dispute.
You say: "Why did you claim that normal rigs have not changed significantly in hundreds of years? Will you defend your claim that an 1800 hemp-sailed wooden-sparred gaffer is the same as a modern carbon masted bermudan sloop?" - Its exactly the same - it uses cloth sails which are controlled by pulling on a rope.