It doesn't carry even a 10th of the cargo of the big windjammers of the 19th century (5000-8000 tons!).

Of course, setting aside the value of zero emissions which is their obvious selling point, it would otherwise be competing against big container ships (up to 200,000 tons!).

I assume that until they scale it for a few more generations that it'll be more a gimmick for low tonnage luxury items that just want the zero emission marketing claim. Even after scaling, I assume it couldn't be competitive for most bulk things.

Use wind power to produce methane, then use methane to power huge container ships.

Sailing by proxy.

You'll be emitting nitrous oxides when burning that methane. Use wind to produce hydrogen, use that in fuel cells. Electric propulsion units are already in use, what remains to be solved is the megawatt-sized fuel cells needed for this application at a price which makes the whole scheme feasible.

NOx is addressable through diesel exhaust fluid (urea) and catalysts; maybe not elimination, but at least significant reduction. Methane is easier to store and transport than hydrogen, and there's potential for refitting existing engines to run from cng/lng (although I think purpose built cng powered devices usually start from a gasoline engine design and freight vehicles usually have a diesel engine).

How are you emitting nitrous oxides from a synthetically produced (ie very pure) fuel that contains no nitrogen?

You’re burning it in air which has lots of nitrogen.

Long term, I agree. But we already have methane and methanol powered huge container ships. Much better than burning bunker fuel.

It may be the easier option for electrically propelled ships, several of which are already in service. Mind I'm not talking about battery-electric ships but diesel-electric (hybrid, [1]) which have the range and load capacity needed for 'serious' applications. If - and that is a big if - the requisite fuel cells can be developed they could directly drive the existing electric propulsion units in those ships, replacing the diesel generators currently in use.

[1] https://www.wartsila.com/marine/products/ship-electrificatio...

How are you going to store all that hydrogen? You need extremely large and heavy high-pressure tanks, capable of holding 350–700 bar. Methane can be liquefied and stored at only 10 bar.

Hydrogen just doesn't have the density required here. Even if you want to use hydrogen-powered fuel cells, it might make more sense to convert it to ammonia for transport and storage.

how much hydrogen do you need to store though? it doesn't make sense in cars to me, but water-based vehicles seem like they wouldn't need to store problematic amounts given that they have access to h2o

That would imply the ship has the requisite power generation on board to produce hydrogen from water, in which case it would be more efficient to use that power to propel the ship.

So, yes, the ship would have to take all the hydrogen it needs with it.

oh. I thought we were talking about sails to make electricity to run electrolysis to make hydrogen to run engines. storing enough hydrogen for an entire voyage seems prohibitive to me, but I've not done the math

There's many ways to store hydrogen ranging from 'cryogenic' to 'dissolved in ... (acetone is a good candidate)' to 'converted to ... (ammonia et al)' to 'compressed'. Ships (can) have a lot of space so that is not much of a problem. Cryogenic is probably not feasible, compressed is probably also out but in between there are many options.

Scale and throughput. Ships used to have cranes on deck and unload this way (look at pretty much any ocean liner, they had cranes on the forded for cargo). Containerisation improved throughput considerably, but added to latency. There is no way this is cheaper. Way more crew per tonne, the ship itself is almost certainly way more expensive for it capacity, and so on.

Not that I don’t think sailing is a bad way to move cargo, but I suspect if it does work, it won’t be small boats with crew.

> Containerisation improved throughput considerably, but added to latency.

I doubt the “added latency” part. How long do you think it takes to unload 11,000 twenty-foot container from a ship? Do you think anyone would move the contained stuff faster if it were just in a loose pile?

That used crates, but yes I think it way quicker per ship, because ocean liners in particular wanted fast turnaround times. A lot more labour was involved, obviously.

> yes I think it way quicker per ship, because ocean liners in particular wanted fast turnaround times

But container ships also want fast turnaround times. This is not a convincing argument.

Doldrums. Hurricanes. Impulsively murdered albatrosses. Kraken.

Also pirates, undead and otherwise.

Really the list goes on.

Rum, sodomy, and the lash.

I can't believe scurvy has yet to be mentioned.

Well we have juice boxes for that now. Krakens are still a problem though.

Ha! I can see a kid's commercial for a juice box with pirates sipping on a juice box while sword fighting a Kraken attacking their ship. "While sailing the high seas, we no longer have to worry about scurvy thanks to Hi-C's vitamin C fortified juice boxes. We do still have to fight the Kraken though!" narrator voice kicks in

Please don’t tell Sora.

Pressgangs and veneral disease

Oh yeah definitely the venereal disease.

Any port in a storm isn’t a good motto for a long life.

Margins in the shipping industry are typically rather low and it's offset by scaling well with container ships of proportions only limited by the canals they must traverse. This ship is positively microscopic in comparison. I would imagine it's only cost effective for very specific types of cargo.

There are hybrid options with flettner rotors and deployable kite sails for partial fuel savings on specific routes, but it's all rather experimental.

the French could keep shipping mass produced crappy cars economically on big ships, and then small numbers of cars de luxe on these bougie ships, and advertise the... "car bon offsets".

> I would imagine it's only cost effective for very specific types of cargo

I imagine you're close to correct, but that some people might be willing to pay a premium for types of cargo that normally would not turn a profit. "Fine goods", as my local Specs puts it.