I know I’ll probably get a lot of flack for saying this, but I think solar cell powered ocean transportation is almost as likely as a perpetual motion machine. MS Turanor PlanetSolar, after all their high tech geekiness, managed a circumnavigation that does indeed demonstrate what solar power is capable of achieving: going around the world at about the same rate as Kon Tiki.

Solar-powered catamaran goes around the world in 584 days

In the spring of 2004 Raphael Domjan, a Swiss electrical engineer, conceived of a borderline insane idea—to travel around the world aboard a ship powered entirely by solar energy.

It would be an adventure and a statement. If he could do it, he would prove to the world that there are other alternatives to powering sea travel besides fossil fuels and wind. It would also demonstrate just what solar power is capable of.

I know I’ll probably get a lot of flack for saying this, but I think solar cell powered ocean transportation is almost as likely as a perpetual motion machine. MS Turanor PlanetSolar, after all their high tech geekiness, managed a circumnavigation that does indeed demonstrate what solar power is capable of achieving: going around the world at about the same rate as Kon Tiki.

Sailing ships have been going around the world a lot faster than that for a very long time, (the current record is 45 days, 13 hours, by Banque Populaire V) and while it can be argued that BPV is a racer, good for nothing but setting a record and creating good PR, so also is PlanetSolar.

I have a secret idea for solar powered sea transport that I’m assembling into a prospectus with which to lure green investors:

Let’s create bio-engineered “green” factories that produce advanced engineering materials! The factories run on sunlight and water, and they expel oxygen as a waste material. All engineering materials are bio-degradable at end of useful life cycle.

We will then employ these materials to create an autonomous, mobile, floating platform suitable for human habitation and cargo, that incorporates a sophisticated device that can capture solar heat energy from the atmosphere, and use this energy as a motive force with which to travel on the sea.

I know, sounds pie in the sky, doesn’t it? There’s probably no investor on earth who’d fall for it.

The Third Baltic Proa Congress is officially scheduled for the weekend of July 6, 2012, in Plaza Mielno, a narrow strip of sand between Jamno Lake and the Baltic Sea, in Poland. Everyone interested in proas and sailing canoes are invited to attend. Janusz O. is organizing and keeps updates on Facebook - Zlot Proa - Bałtyk’12.

Friday 7/6: Arrival, introductions and talk tales of wind, waves, crab claws and voyages.
Saturday 7/7: I would like Saturday to be the day when Toliwagas can focus on proas, themselves and our friends – sailing a lot learning and teaching until sunset.
Sunday 7/8: Fleet parade for people in Mielno and Uniescie. Secondly, I hope for wind more favorable then last year so the fleet will pass the channel to the Baltic.

Baltic Proa Congress 2012
Photos from Baltic Proa Conference 2011
Baltic Raid 2011 by proa
Proa Raid 2011 of Tevau

Here are a couple of new boat designs with rigs that harken back to the days of working sail. The trimaran is a Dick Newick design for a cargo/passenger lug rigged schooner, for the Vaka Fanāua project, the second is a 60m yacht designed to evoke the romantic image of a dhow.

The lug rig was a favorite of Phil Bolger because it combines short spars, sturdiness, simplicity, thrift and aerodynamic power. The first five of these virtues are of little interest to racers but still of considerable value to cruisers and to those who promote a return to working sail. Newick has drawn balanced, standing lugs for this craft, which means it can avoid the lowering or “dipping” of the traditional dipping lug, though the penalty is that the sail will set against the mast on one tack, compromising the sail shape.

The luxury dhow is a settee or ‘arabian lateen’ rigged ketch, with each sail divided at the mast into two sails set on the same yard. The intention is to make the sails set without coming aback on the mast while on the “bad” tack. This would appear to be an unnecessary refinement because the two yards and sails interfere with one another to the point of preventing a tack in the first place.

Phil Bolger wrote about a similar rig, the split lug, in 100 Small Boat Rigs:

There’s another type of rig called the split lug in which the lugsail, with or without a boom, is divided at the mast into two sails set on the same yard… The intention is to make the lugsail set without ever coming aback on the mast. The rig is workable but it’s clumsy to set and take in, and the mast spoils the drive of most of the sail on both tacks. Sir Alan Moore said that this rig “was probably designed by a big-ship sailor unaccustomed to boat sailing, or someone in an office”.

Cred: The Newick cargo tri was found on Boat Bits, the dhow on Sailing Anarchy.

Using archival footage, the Int’l Hydrofoil Society has made a short video of David Keiper’s hydrofoil trimaran Williwaw. David built the first flying hydrofoil cruising sailboat in 1970 and subsequently cruised her all over the Pacific. The boat and the voyages are detailed in Keiper’s Hydrofoil Voyager, which is being republished on Amazon this summer.

Couldn’t let St. Paddy’s day go by without a doff o’ the cap to the wearing of the green, via the proa Equilibre.

Thanks to Frederic M. and Golden Oldies Multihulls for the submission.

The first sail of Lady Godiva in a quarter century. The Richard Newick designed proa was built in Martha’s Vinyard by Rory Nugent, for the 1980 OSTAR. Now owned by Anne and Paul Buttin.

Thanks to Frederic M. and Golden Oldies Multihulls for the submission.

Before Steve and Linda Dashew became famous for their innovative blue water cruising yachts, both power and sail, they raced catamarans at the center of the growing multihull movement - Southern California in the early 60’s. Steve has put up a page at Set Sail with some great archival images of the catamaran racing scene back in the day. Rudy Choy, Warren Seaman, Bob Reese, Mickey Munoz, Phil Edwards, they knew and raced them all. Go check it out.

The Footprint Boat was created to revolutionize the boating world… Using a form must follow function philosophy, this design focuses on what it must do, not how it should look. The Footprint Boat is a lightweight, low maintenance, fuel efficient, affordable “working man’s yacht.”

On the other hand, well… look at it! Considering all this yacht can do, all the while sipping teaspoons of fuel, I do see a certain empirical, practical beauty, but it takes seeing her without eyes, if you catch my drift. I think I’d paint NCC-1701/7 on the side just to nip all the shuttlecraft jokes in the bud.

I’m conflicted. On the one hand, Footprint Boats is doing everything right:

The Footprint Boat was created to revolutionize the boating world… Using a form must follow function philosophy, this design focuses on what it must do, not how it should look. The Footprint Boat is a lightweight, low maintenance, fuel efficient, affordable “working man’s yacht.”

On the other hand, well… look at it! Considering all this yacht can do, all the while sipping teaspoons of fuel, I do see a certain empirical, practical beauty, but it takes seeing her without eyes, if you catch my drift. I think I’d paint NCC-1701/7 on the side just to nip all the shuttlecraft jokes in the bud.

Frank Smoot is the ultimate DIY sailor. He began his sailboat design career in 2009 with this and has progressed to this in only two years. His latest is the most ingenious small trimaran I’ve ever seen. If he continues at his Moore’s Law rate of improvement he should be building America’s Cuppers out of plywood/epoxy in about 6 months. Story via Small Trimarans. See more at DIY-Tris.com

Proafile will be blacked out on January 18 in protest against proposed legislation in the United States – the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate. We’re also supposed to be getting a huge snow storm in Seattle tonight, so if Proafile is not back online by Jan 19, you’ll know why!

I found this electric-powered mini-camper by architect Jay Nelson at Tiny House Blog. I like the faceted, polyhedron style, all done up in plywood, plexiglass and epoxy. See more of his work (including a mini-camper boat) at JayNelsonArt.com

His “Golden Gate” electric camper car is made from a combination of plywood, glass, fiberglass, expoxy resin, bicycle parts and powered by an electric motor. The Golden Gate measures 96″x54″x64″, drives 10 miles on a charge with speeds up to 20mph.

Malcolm Smith always has something really tasty cooking in his workshop. His latest project is a force-balanced design utilizing a ‘ring wing’ that he calls the ArcSail. The concept has huge potential for boats both large and small, and I’m very pleased that Malcolm has opted to share it with us at Proafile:

“I have a long time fascination with sailing boat configurations that minimize heeling moment, due to their potential for higher speeds. Over the last 30 years or so, apart from producing hundreds of sketches and drawings,  I have built quite a few sailing models with canted rigs and foils and/or stabilizing wings. What I have learned is that while the potential is there, the realization of that potential is plagued by the constraints of reality.

In order to minimize the heeling moment of a sailing yacht, you simply align the thrust vector of the sail with the reaction vector of the hull and foils. The downside is that (1) you need significant horizontal separation between the sail and the foil and (2) both the sail and the foil need to be canted over at an angle. These two constraints add weight to the structure and reduce the efficiency of the sail and foils. Hence low heeling moment configurations will be less efficient than traditional ballasted configurations at least up until the point where the ballasted system runs out of righting moment. (Editor’s note: “ballasted” includes any yacht that relies upon weight, or “ballast” to windward of the center of buoyancy in order to carry sail. This includes ballasted monohulls as well as normal multihulls, and proas.)

Given the level of development of ballasted systems (look at Banque Populaire, which has just circled the globe in less than 46 days), designing a workable low heeling moment boat which can match traditional boats in light conditions is a difficult task. I have been taught this lesson many times, but I still can’t let it go. So ArcSail is my latest attempt at a workable solution.

Many of my previous designs and sketches featured a canted biplane sail arrangement, a bit like the Hobie Trifoiler arrangement but with more extreme cant angles. The ArcSail configuration came from attempting to blend the two canted sails together at the head to form a single airfoil. Once I had drawn it, I realized that it shared similar characteristics with the ‘ring wing’ concept that has been proposed for aircraft, in terms of gains in aerodynamic efficiency. According to theory, blending two separate foils together at the tip reduces induced drag by a significant amount. The width of a low heeling moment rig means that choice a suitable platform is usually limited to a multihull. I often choose a proa configuration for it’s low hull drag characteristics. Another suitable configuration is the slewing catamaran configuration. I have adapted the ArcSail concept to both of these configurations. Hence we have the ArcSail Proa and the ArcSail Slewing Catamaran.

The ArcSail Slewing Catamaran features a tail which provides both horizontal stability and keeps the sail correctly aligned with the apparent wind. It should be inherently self steering and dynamically stable. The way it is configured it can’t sail very far off the apparent wind, a beam reach is about all it can manage (unless you sail it backwards, which is an option). Sailing it downwind requires that it sail very fast in order to generate large apparent wind angles. This is feasible as long as it can be built very lightly. It is not a boat that can carry a large payload, so it’s not particularly useful unless you simply want to go very fast.

The ArcSail Proa is a much more practical boat. A proa hull is easily driven and doesn’t need a huge sail plan to get up a reasonable turn of speed.  The proa version is not designed as a high speed craft, more as an interesting and easy to sail cruising vessel. Because there is no heeling moment, the proa can be sailed equally well on either tack and it can also sail in either direction by shunting. It’s a boat that is inherently safe and maneuverable.

The most difficult part of designing the ArcSail itself is to design a lightweight structure. The slewing catamaran version features a solid thick aerofoil which would be expensive to build lightly.

The proa version of the ArcSail is, I think, much more interesting. It features a simple flat double edged aerofoil. It’s not an efficient section but one of the advantages of a ring wing is that it is very resistant to stall, so even a flat aerofoil should be capable of generating a reasonable amount of lift if a large angle of attack can be achieved. The flat aerofoil can be constructed by stretching a fabric sail between flexible glass fibre or carbon fibre tubes or rods on the leading and trailing edges. The flexible rods are held in the circular arc shape by using wire stays in the same manner as spokes on a bicycle wheel. Hence the fabric version of the sail will be lightweight and can be erected and stowed similarly to a flexible rod tent. The sail is mounted on a low windage cross beam that rotates on a short vertical shaft.

So much for the theory. I am currently constructing a 900mm test model of the Arcsail Proa to see if it will work in practice.”

Further Reading

Wikipedia: Closed Wing
Nonplanar Wing Concepts for Increased Aircraft Efficiency
Annular Wings vs. Straight Wings

The first teaser trailer for the documentary film, “Our Blue Canoe” currently in production and due for 2013 release. The film is part of a larger initiative called the “Vaka Motu” project, by Pacific Voyagers. The vision is to connect all Pacific Islands in a sustainable, carbon-neutral fashion via Vaka Motu, thus gaining independence, better infrastructure, and more economic opportunities for remote island communities.

We are embarking on an extraordinary journey that brings together culture and consciousness as never before. For the first time ever, seven Pacific Island crews are sailing a fleet of traditional Polynesian voyaging canoes (equipped with solar powered motors) across thousands of miles of open ocean. They’ll map their way in the wake of their ancestors, using the stars, sun, wind, and wildlife as their guides. As we travel along with them, we come to experience first-hand, the power and the plight of our greatest ocean – the Pacific.

Far more than an environmental story, this is a human story, told by the people who are contending with the effects of a changing planet in very real ways. As we voyage with them across this vast continent of water, we find they are not only reclaiming their heritage as the finest of sailors, but also the finest of stewards. Drawing on the lessons of their past to propel us all forward, these navigators are charting a bold new course, steering us all toward a sustainable future on earth – Our Blue Canoe.

Santa pic straight from the horse’s mouth.

Well look at that, Santa’s got a new sled! Hope everyone got the present they really wanted this year… *checking stocking* nope, just more coal. Ah well… hope yours was a merry Xmas, and happy new year!

Santa pic straight from the horse’s mouth.

Here is Kurt Heiligenmann’s design for an inflatable beach cat - the Smartkat. Hate the name (I always hated the Smart Car because it implied that whoever purchased it was also “smart” and conversely, those of us who didn’t were less so), but this boat really IS brilliant. A 14’, 93 lb. rocket that fits into two canvas bags - store your beach cat in the closet, under the bed, or take it on your next flight to Ibiza.

I have a longstanding interest in pneumatic (pressurized) engineering structures. Blame it on Jacques Cousteau and his Zodiacs making a strong impression at an early age. For boats, inflatable hulls make all kinds of sense, being unusually light, strong, tough, and repairable. I even made a concept sketch of an inflatable hulled proa.

Here is Kurt Heiligenmann’s design for an inflatable beach cat - the Smartkat. Hate the name (I always hated the Smart Car because it implied that whoever purchased it was also “smart” and conversely, those of us who didn’t were less so), but this boat really IS brilliant. A 14’, 93 lb. rocket that fits into two canvas bags - store your beach cat in the closet, under the bed, or take it on your next flight to Ibiza.

Smartkat breaks a lot of conventional catamaran design rules, so I like that too. It has a central rudder and daggerboard, the hulls are fatter than optimum, the structure is too flexible. But look at that thing haul ass! To me, the lesson is that when it comes to performance under sail, lightness trumps everything else.

Length: 4,3m/14’
Beam: 2,2m/7’-2”
Total Height: 6,05m/19’-9”
sail area: 9,9m2/106 sq. ft.
weight (ready for sail): ca. 42kg/93lb.

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