Are Sails the Future of Cargo Shipping? - DTNS Weekend

**Nicole Ackermans** (0:08)
Welcome to the Daily Tech News Show Weekend Edition, gratefully provided to you by supporters of this show. On the weekend, we talk about topics a little bit more in depth. I'm Dr. Niki, I'm the science correspondent for DTNest, and I'm here with a very special guest today to talk about cargo shipping.
Kind of in reaction to a news piece that came out last November, the world's largest cargo sailing ship, the Neoliner Origin, embarked on its maiden voyage across the Atlantic. And this is a cargo ship that also has sails, and we're noticing that there's a trend of wanting to reduce the carbon footprint of shipping, cargo shipping specifically. So I brought on an expert.
Jim Ackermans is here, but also known as my dad. Welcome to the show. I brought you on today because you know a lot about ships. And so we want to hear about what you have to say. So, hi.

**Jim Ackermans** (1:07)
Hey, thank you for having me.

**Nicole Ackermans** (1:09)
Of course.
Can you share some of your qualifications with the audience? What do you do and why do you know so much about ships, I guess?

**Jim Ackermans** (1:17)
Well, I used to be a marine engineer. I'm now retired. So I've worked at sea for about 30 years and also did some construction projects of new build ships and yachts with the idea as well of not trying to reduce our carbon footprint.
And that's the last project I did, a hybrid propulsion vessel.

**Nicole Ackermans** (1:50)
So you've worked on a large sail motor project before, starting from idea to blueprints to actually being on it while it was moving. How did that go, as much as you can talk about it?
And did that work out?

**Jim Ackermans** (2:10)
Yes, mostly it worked out. It was a super interesting project with some really brilliant ideas as far as saving energy was concerned. So it was a large sailing yacht, the largest sailing yacht, with carbon fiber freestanding masts, so no rigging, some huge sails, but only main sails.
And then the idea was that the vessel under sail would obviously save a lot of fuel. And one thing that didn't work out too well was that under sail, the propellers, some drag would be created on the propellers because of the forward movement. And then that would make the propellers rotate and they could then generate energy.

**SPEAKER_3** (3:12)
And that part didn't work out.

**Jim Ackermans** (3:14)
And that part, it did work.
The problem was that the ship consumed so much energy that the idea of completely sailing without using hydrocarbon fuels just wasn't working because of the consumption of electricity on board. You still had to run generators.
However, it did save a tremendous amount of fuel.

**Nicole Ackermans** (3:46)
Can you give us an idea of the length of this ship generally to compare to this cargo? So, the Neoliner is 136 meters long, and normal cargo ships are about over 400 meters long.
Where would you place your project in that size range?

**Jim Ackermans** (4:03)
Yeah, this ship was 146 meters long.

**Nicole Ackermans** (4:06)
Okay, so bigger than the Neoliner.

**Jim Ackermans** (4:08)
Yeah, 24 meters wide and had a displacement of 12,500 gross tons, which was tremendous.

**Nicole Ackermans** (4:19)
And not for shipping, just for fun, right?

**Jim Ackermans** (4:21)
Yeah, it was a motor yacht. Do they still...
A sail-assisted motor yacht, it's called.

**Nicole Ackermans** (4:27)
So yeah, okay, so sail-assisted. So they're not, like you said, they're not mainly sailing. And these sails, they go up and down automatically with motors, right? Do they still use the sails while they're sailing, or do you think they're mainly engine propelled?
I don't know if you know, but...

**Jim Ackermans** (4:46)
When the conditions are favorable, they use the sails, yes, for sure. And it saves a lot of fuel.

**Nicole Ackermans** (4:56)
About how much? Do you have a percentage?

**Jim Ackermans** (4:59)
It depends. It completely depends on the weather. It depends on the direction in which they're going.

**Nicole Ackermans** (5:05)
What about a max percentage?

**Jim Ackermans** (5:08)
Well, the vessel could probably sail as far as propulsion goes by itself, but then you'd still have to run a generator to provide electricity for the hotel loads, as they call them, air conditioning, lighting, kitchens, washers, dryers, all that stuff.

**Nicole Ackermans** (5:28)
Okay.
Do you think that this technology can translate well to cargo ships or is it just a gimmick? Like we talked about this news piece of the Neoliner. Do you think that that's worthwhile from your professional opinion?

**Jim Ackermans** (5:47)
Oh, absolutely. I think it can provide tremendous fuel savings, and it's a relatively small investment, all relatively speaking, of course, depending on the size of the vessel, the size of the sails needed.