The case for fully automated sailing rigs

"as crew on board sailing vessel Escape
try to reduce the sail in a stormunfamiliar equipment Heavy Seas andtheir distance to land leave two Sailors dead "



Could fully power controlled rigs solve the many dangers of Wind Powered Vessels ?




About Dealfeng - ZESTAs https://zestas.org/about-dealfeng/

 

From the description of the incident, bad seamanship was at the root of the problem. This is a high performance boat, that is usually expected to have a larger crew. Short handed they should have shortened sail a lot earlier than they did. This boat has an array of electronics that gives the crew advanced notice of weather conditions. Unless you mean fully automated, like self driving cars, where a computer makes all the decision on how much sail to have up?

 

I am promoting the idea of doing away wit the masts and sails, and replacing it with a fully automated propulsion system.
The whole flogging sails and miles of rope is pretty archaic.

 

Already exists.
Called power boats

 

Of course, I DID mean a system that utilises wind power, as the thread name indicates.
As a keen user of fuel engines in boats, I still recall the huge bills needed for long trips.
There is a great video of a fishing boat travelling from Australia to New Zealand, and the $8,000 fuel bill for the trip.
And then, the last 8 hours where they whiteknuckled a failing Diesel engine in adverse weather, without any secondary power available.

Wind can be a useful accessory.

 

Sails are fine. There are many systems that make taking down sails easier. Furling systems are the easiest. All systems are an issue if they fail, whether they are engines, sails or oars. Redundancy is ideal when possible. However, simplicity is also good.

 

thank you

interesting video and comments

gigantic sloops, similar accidents have occurred with 44 foot long

I don't understand that world of dangerous yachts or repairing complex yachts in exotic places

how comfortable it is to navigate with a small, simple and manageable sailboat with a 2 horsepower motor

 

And if you want a mansion with a crew and a haute cuisine chef .... well then a 15th century Portuguese caravel or something like Beowulf, but why a monstrous sloop?

https://www.boatinternational.com/yachts/the-superyacht-directory/beowulf--61803

 

or a Viking freighter, a Knörr

a simple sail

Knarr - Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knarr

 

We put a propeller on the bow, electric winches for hoisting, details that we can discuss

 

the first time I saw her... she's a beauty

And if you don't know what to do with the money because you have plenty of it, we make it with wood, epoxy resin and carbon fiber

but not some tacky nouveau riche

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I had previously seen a good handful of replicas from this period, the end of the 15th century, and I saw ugly ships or that did not seem well adapted to ocean navigation or in short that did not catch my attention

and one day this replica of a Portuguese caravel appeared and then I understood the great navigations of that time

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This photograph is good; but it is not the same as seeing it up close

 

In my opinion, there is no such thing as a "simple" sail.
An "easy to handle" sail exists, in winds under say, 15 knots, but in higher winds, or worse, sudden gusts, they are beasts.

The reason for the "modern systems", is that large sails are needed to drive any craft at a decent speed, but as soon as the winds get higher, automation is needed to control them.

 

I can agree that automation can be convenient, when it works. However, I don't need it.

 

In the coefficients (drag and lift) of the Force of the headsail (Jib/Genoa) of a sloop we see what we know from our own experience: it does not have a boom and therefore it is a very mediocre sail for sailing downwind

I mean that a giant sloop is such an absurd and irrational sailboat for crossing an ocean that it would be enough to simply give the headsail the murderous boom that the mainsail carries.

The rig of the Viking freighter is more suitable and logical for crossing an ocean and less dangerous: let's think about a 44-foot cruiser yacht whose boom killed a sailor crossing the Atlantic a couple of years ago, and now let's think about a carbon fiber tube horizontal: a rig better adapted to crossing an ocean, more comfortable, simpler and safer

 

Outriggers

Outrigger — Wikipédia https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outrigger

Now we see them proliferate in highly competitive sailboats

and look at these images:



we see an outrigger so that the sail can work well Downwind

Well

We could reconfigure the absurd big sloop:

(A) we remove the killer boom from the mainsail and give it to the headsail, and

(B) the mainsail sheets go to outriggers