The Vermont Sail Freight Project | Hacker News Reader

The Vermont Sail Freight Project

kickstarter.com

41 pointscamurban15 comments

I'm not sure to what extent this will be able to sail under wind power. They mention they will go through canals, which are too narrow to tack against a headwind. Back in the heyday of canals, sail power was not used much - barges would usually be towed by animals walking alongside the canal. If they're aiming for renewable (as opposed to just plain archaic), solar panels and / or a wind turbine (e.g. [1]) would be significantly superior.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackbird_(land_yacht)

I was wondering the same thing. In my merchant marine cadet days I've taken a ship (steam) up the Hudson from the Atlantic to Albany and it's quite a twisty river, sometimes with tall, steep, wind-blocking banks. Assuming they're planning to transit the Hudson, it will be an interesting trip.

However, I love stuff like this and if I'm convinced that they can pull it off, I will contribute what I can.

Now I'm wondering how many acres of soybeans it would take to power the barge by biodiesel.

My first thought, along with "this is a cool idea", was that their design is antiquated. Better sails, lighter materials, and yes solar powered.

I suppose they'd like to appeal to people who think that because it's made of wood, and not, say, carbon fibre, then it's more "natural".

Vermont has quite an obsession with food and local stuff. In Burlington I went to a food place where mostly every ingredient was local, and the waitress not see the irony of that in a MEXICAN restaurant...

Please tell me what the irony is. I can see how it might superficially seem ironic if one didn't understand the reasons why people might want to buy locally-sourced food, but surely you appreciate that "food prepared in the style of some other place" and "food that was grown locally" are in no way exclusive.

I have, over times, gotten used to people using the word "ironic" in a broad variety of ways, sometimes ironic.

I read it as the circumstance being ironic in that Mexico is much further south and one might not expect to find so many ingredients native to that area also to be sourced locally in Vermont.

I guess the "irony" might be found in having to be in Vermont, of all places, to find locally sourced Mexican cuisine. I don't know whether that is really "ironic", in that there is a significant movement for locally sourced food in Mexico, as well. (In which case, one might better describe the Vermont experience as "surprising", rather than "ironic". Meaning, it's not ironic because you can find locally sourced Mexican cuisine in Mexico, as well.)

For those wanting to revisit the meaning of ironic, one exercise might be to run the lyrics of Alanis Morrisette's song through your head:

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/alanismorissette/ironic.html

That song is not the best example, as analyzed in excruciating detail here (warning, 1990s CSS ahead): http://fgk.hanau.net/articles/ironic.html

Well, I hesitated a bit when typing my comment. And I chose the words "one exercise" (of multiple possible exercises) with some deliberation.

But, it's a well-known work, and I thought it would be at least acceptably on the mark.

I'll have a look at your link when I have a few more brain cells free for contemplation. I did skim it, and at that level I found myself not fully agreeing with the author on the specific points my skimming happened to capture.

As for the '90's CSS warning, appreciated. But, from my viewpoint, far better to have '90's CSS, than '10's "everything loads via Javascript" BS... ;-)

Isn't it ironic...

I, who grew up in Texas, was recently in a truckstop in Sweden (don't ask) and the lunch special was: Tex-Mex Buffet!

We Swedes do love us some tacos. And pizza. Also that Thai stuff with the chicken and peanut sauce.

We are very international in that way.

I don't see why it would be hard to source the ingredients locally for Mexican food in particilar. The only things that are not grown everywhere are some spices, but they don't really count.

I hope this works, but I'm a little nervous.

I don't know what the law is like in the US, but in Australia a new commercial vessel has to have its plans approved by a survey authority before construction can even begin. I couldn't find word that had been done, apart from "extensive research into regulations".

If there was a lot of maritime expertise on the team, I'd expect them to be announcing it on the Kickstarter. Buried in a page on his blog[1], it mentions that he has help from a pair of boatbuilders.

It wouldn't be the first time a professional woodworker has decided to build a boat[2], and it wouldn't be the first time that it's worked. I hope they know what they're doing.

[1]: http://vermontsailfreightproject.wordpress.com/about/ [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notorious_(ship)

Large cargo ships are phenomenally efficient. The efficiency of sea freight has more than doubled since the 1970s and is now in excess of 6 ton/km per MJ - more than fifteen times the efficiency of road freight.

Large ships have two key advantages. The first is drag, which increases approximately in proportion to the square root of displacement. The bigger the ship, the less energy it needs per tonne of freight. Large vessels can use extremely clean and efficient engines, with complex heat-recovery systems and exhaust particulate filtering. They run on bunker fuel, which consists of the densest and least valuable fractions of crude oil.

A standard 20-foot container is 30m^3 in volume and normally carries a maximum of 14 tonnes. The queens of the ocean, the eight Maersk E-class vessels, each carry 11,000 containers with a crew of just 13. Maersk have placed orders for twenty triple-E class ships, which will be a quarter of a mile long, carry 18,000 containers and be 37% more efficient than the E-class.

If sail is the long-term answer to sea freight, then it will be on an unimaginably grand scale.

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1665567/4-reasons-why-the-future...;

Reminds me of this article re: the emergence of "small-scale" capitalism...very interesting - thanks for the share.

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