PARTNERS - SkySails : Towing a vessel with a kite 

Was more concerned that theyre wasting power by not having a bigger sail on the ship itself.. 🤔

@q.e.d., Any one that's "concerned" about wasting anything on this planet is delusional enough to think it really matters. They believe they'll get a medal and accolades when they return to the Universe. Dreams are nice . . . ☆

The figure-8 is the opposite of "wasteful" - it generates a lot more power.

True Story, my wife and I lived on the Big Island and were married by Sheldon Weldon, who fabricated much of Costner's boat in Water World. We visited his home and he was fascinating.

@@haroldrhodes2610 I know Sheldon ~ He got me a job making props for Mike Milgrem on set. We were extras , my wife and I. She even had a line in the movie which she never got any extra pay for. She fills the screen and says "Kill him kill him kill him ! " Pretty funny. The star of that film was the BOAT which I never got tired of studying up close. All my friends from Malibu were the stunt crew from Stunts Unlimited. That was a fun job...Costner shamed himself and ruined some lives over there. Everybody knew what was happening. I found out a little late. The movie business is a squalid seedy affair... But I dug lots of the crew... like a high school reunion.

The different between sounding and being smart.

@@11kungfu11 "difference"

@@weatheranddarkness touch type fail.

Twas my first thought, though propulsing is in fact a word just the wrong word... propulse. Verb. (third-person singular simple present propulses, present participlepropulsing, simple past and past participlepropulsed) (obsolete) To repel; to drive off or away.

Yup.. These people just proved that for ~ 5mln$ it's possible to attach kite to the boat..! Yet failed to learn the words to describe what they actually intended to do..!

Umm no Gary it's an answer to a non existent problem .. I sail full time both kites and my liveaboard sailboat .. there are so many more efficient methods to move a large displacement vessel via the wind with NO technology required

I'm a little late to this conversation but "no technology" is an overstatement, for sure. Can you explain what you meant, Mitch? I kite and sail as well, and I'm sure kites are tools that haven't been used to their potential in displacement hull sailing. The right aspect ratio kite with a large area and suitability long line lengths may not have been attempted yet (even now 2 years after you wrote your post).

The original name of the boat was planetsolar and he do a world tour in 2012

Since when has sailing not been extremely tedious and difficult as is? Constantly relining shit and re-attaching things to different places because the wind changed a tiny bit.

Nothing new it call a sail boat, being around a few thousand year

@@JohnLee- you learn something new every day. Thanks!

william Burgos Wonderfully obvious, or should be. 👍 Similar but different......why doesn’t every over-big-water aircraft have a device just under it’s skin that automatically deploys when submerged, inflates buoyancy devices, deploys a tethered helium balloon equipped with an antenna transmitting GPS coordinates of the impact location while a super-bright strobe light flashes from said balloon at several hundred feet altitude. Come to think of it, an almost identical device would be a nice addition to your suggestion.

You cannot tack or travel upwind at all with a kite while sitting on a raft. At a minimum, you would need a keel and rudder that can hold its position while you loop the kite. For snowkiting, the edges on our skis/board allow us to tack and travel upwind. For kiteboarding, our heel edge digs into the water to provide the resistance needed to tack. I have put 5m - 14m kites up over kayaks and can tell you from experience it will not work. Traveling downwind, on the other hand, works just fine for a few seconds until you approach wind speed, and the kite luffs and loses its power. You will fight to keep the kite looping, power will pick up, and be quickly lost as you speed up. Watch kiteboarders and snowkiters closely, and you will see they are traveling perpendicular to the kite at all times. In this video, it is clear they are also traveling (or attempting to travel) downwind. Why didn't the kite luff in this video as the vessel picked up speed? Two possibilities; either they only showed clips of the kite fully powered, or the kite never moved the vessel enough.

Because you need a keel for a kite to work. Otherwise its simply a parachute dragging you down wind. as long as there is resistance to keep them inflated. Kites aren't magic or new.

You don’t need a keel per se any lateral resistance works. Like the edge of a kiteboard, the hulls of a hobie 16 etc. A dedicated keel/centreboard is not necessary if the hull is shaped in certain ways

Perhaps it just needs a bigger sail for the boat size

Not practical, you say... ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-pYv6k5A-kHg.html

@@MrFurriephillips I know right! I've seen some screaming kiteboats

There are circumstances where mast and sails are not practical. Try modern cargo handling methodology with a couple of masts in the way. This device can be fitted to a ship’s forecastle, folds away completely and is used as a fuel saving device. The ship steams to her normal schedule with the kite used when conditions are suitable. I read somewhere that given a fuel reduction of about 10%, the device could pay for itself in under 2 years. That could be bullshit for all I know but I don’t think you should regard this as designed to be anything more than auxiliary power. Apart from not impeding cargo handling as masts do, kites have other advantages over sails. Depending on where you attach the line, you can completely eliminate any heeling moment. You can fly the kite at altitudes where the wind is both stronger and steadier. There’s a video of a short race between a number of different vessels including a windsurfer, a foiling cat a three-man-trapezing cat and a foiling kite boarder. Not only did the kite board win by a country mile, but he was both footing faster and pointing higher than any of the rest when hard on the wind.

They're typically used to decrease consumption, not the sole mode of mobility. The newish Silent catamaran can reach their cruise speed of 8 knots with a combination of solar and one of these kites, without depleting their batteries. Large ocean going container ships use them as well.

Because the kite is moving through the air doing figure 8s it experiences true wind but also apparent wind (what you feel when you stick your hand out the window of a car on the highway) these two winds combine in strength and direction to make the wind the kite experiences up to 4x stronger than the real wind. This combined with the more efficient 3d wing shape makes kits about 10x more powerful than traditional sails given the same area

@@CrispyOkra The vessel is equipped with a lot of PV panels. Does it move by using electric motors and skysail wind power?

@@drzavahercegbosnaponosna5974 Yes.

Not from what I saw.

I Think it is just aquadynamc Shaped

sailing doesn't make that big of a wake anyways. and its says the average speed is 5 knots which is 10kmh that wont make a much of a wake and on such a big boat its almost like not moving at all

Yea! Its not going anywhere!!! Lol!

Florian V.D. Even at 5 there should be a wake. The waves are less then a foot! During a tack I slow down almost half speed about 4ish knots and I still can see a wake.

It seems that way to me too. The question I have is, With all those solar panels doesn’t it completely power the boat and charge a huge battery bank at the same time so you can run at night?

Yes, however the tack angle is 179deg. If the whole world is an ocean then they are set! Perhaps this is an ad for more ocean and less land. Jk, can't knock innovators for trying!

Of course kites can tack, ask any kitesurfer. Perhaps not 45 degrees off the wind, but 60-70 is certainly possible. But even leaving that aside, this makes one badass spinnaker. Bow kite designs have a huge wind range, you could essentially make it self-reefing.

Large freighters will all use enormous kites in the coming years. Reduction in fuel costs, greater efficiency and lower emissions mean they will be upscaled. Wing sails are already appearing on cargo ships, kites have even more potential.

Then it get hit with a bolt of lightining, on a dark broody sky, now they fucked, hang on dont worry, riase the kite an er avoid the lighting bolts and they er waves, and set a course for a safe harbour laughing my black as off, you must be in a warm room conceptualisng theorums about sextants watching your barometer,,,, get the actual fuck out of hear, those lilly livered deck swabs would buckle in a mild roister, real sailors use sials as they work, all this isak newton shit is just laughable, laughable on a stable flat clam sea, mind you yul get a good earth for the lightinening if you lick the tether and wear rubber boots :) lol good luck..........

and it it were bigger the way it was going it would pull the bow all over the place !!! giving a rough ride

Can't compare these 1:1, for two reasons: a) the kite is higher up where wind is about twice that closer to sea level, and b) the kite is moving in figure-8s which means it goes about 5x faster than the boat. Aerodynamic lift is proportional to airspeed - so mentally multiply the kite area by factor of 10 - seems big enough now? They've achieved 20-30% fuel savings on ocean crossing *freighters* with this technology, I think you can trust them to size the kite correctly for this boat. :)

@@linolinco Would this work on a foiling catamaran?

@@HansKeesom I don't see why not. A kite causes far less heeling so a larger area can be flown than with conventional sails. Needs to be actively flown so (unless you have the fancy SkySails autopilot) probably be more of a racing thing. I reckon the next speed sailing world record could be taken by a foiling kiteboat.

@THE GENERAL sorry..i mean just using wind and sail. not charge any motors. some have sing sail, some have multiple sails.

depends on the kite and hull. sailing kites is awesome. its all about apparent wind.

A sailboat isn't simplistic at all. We're just used to it. Most of all: keep in mind that in this example the additional kitesail is nothing but a little optional gimmick for some extra power, on top of its main propulsion system. This is first and foremost a SOLAR boat (and the fist boat to have completed a circumnavigation under sun power alone) - and yes, by nature it can point as high to the wind as you want and is 10times more simplistic than a sailboat. What drives maintenance and costs up in a sailboat? Basically everything that has moving parts and/or is exposed to the elements. Sailing vessels have A LOT of that. Sails, including multiple sailplans, running + standing rigging, Diesel engine, winches... On the other hand: solar panels, charge controllers and brushless electric motors are highly reliable and almost maintenance-free. In other words: the solar(!) vessel is the part with the real merits, at least as long as the overall vessel is light enough (and in this regard, i.e. when you look at displacement per solar peak power, many other solar boats are actually doing better than the PlanetSolar Turanor). I admit that solar vessels don't work when you need to carry a lot of cargo, but for simple cruisers (e.g. have a look at the Sun Concept 12.0 Cruise!), they actually make more sense than sailboats which are motoring or motorsailing half of the time anyways because the wind isn't in their favor.

@@___Chris___ Trimarans and performance cruising catamarans seem to solve that "wind isn't in their favor"-part...

By your reasoning a sail on a mast wouldn't be ideal for physically pulling a boat in anything but flat water either... more dangerous actually as the heeling moment is much larger.

less steps though. you have almost no care of wind direction and its fully automated.

knots in French

@@LuigiSimoncini Grazie!

Action against the keel(s) should be able to go a little into the wind

@@Liberator12k Interesting. I thought it might be an improvement, bur I am not very experienced.

They shade the solar panels.

@@Liberator12k @Vgames 1 Here's a kite powered hydrofoil trimaran: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-RC_e9FvPkbw.html 36 knots.

AHRRRR

Why figure 8's? Why can't it go higher and be stationary

Kingjeffkoch Not doing shit!

curtismayne1 haaaaaaaaaa Lol gold , yeah didn’t look like it was doing much , was a big boat though . Be interesting to see it on a 30 footer

The figure 8 generates *more* power, as any kitesurfer can tell you. Think of it this way: the lift of an airfoil is proportional to its airspeed. If the kite travels 5x as much as the boat due to the figure 8 patttern, then its average airspeed is 5x the boat speed, hence 5x the power.

It's the most efficient way known today, try kite surf and you'll see for yourself.

You de power the kite by taking it close to vertical then winch it in down onto the stub mast on the fore deck. Though windsurfer kites have a inflated beam in the kite that holds the shape and will float the kite on the surface of the water... from where its launched In their case.

apparent wind

Nah you leave them out and boom you got yourself a big ass paraglider

You hit 35 knots haha

@@clouclouc Haha 😄

If you are out in a small boat in hurricane conditions then your parasail is the LEAST of your worries.

I think they wanted to write knots, but as French speakers used their term "Nœud", which abbreviated to Nds.

Stuart Brown Lol right? There’s no reefing on that is there! I bet you’d just have to pull it in when that weather was coming.

Near dead stop. 🤣🤣🤣

Why would you ? A spinnaker is more efficient as it has a larger sail area and is directly coupled to the boat which means it would be more efficient.

You can ... Theres a chap who rigged a round chute to his yatch off a stub mast ..

@@pentachronic Actually a kite sail flying in a figure of 8 is many times more powerful for a given area and because it can fly above the turbulent surface layer the wind speed is more constant and is higher generally.

@@clivestainlesssteelwomble7665 Ok, I stand corrected, but I don't understand why it would be. From my understanding of physics on a kite vs a spinnaker you have a smaller surface area, even if the wind is faster due to being above the ground attraction, the PSI will still not outstrip a larger sail area. Please show me the math/physics as I'm intrigued.

@@pentachronic The power is generated because the kite formes a 3dimensional aerofoil with the tube Spar forming the leading edge, the other contributing factor is the speed of the kite flying in its figure of 8 pattern the angle of the wing is akin to the pitch and speed of a propeller in the air rather than a passive primitive hang gliders wing. There are also Ram air kites.. As for the numbers i will try to find you some links ... the largest kite systems have been deployed on cargo ships. At large size they do have limits like tacking into the wind but the figures are on a par with some poor conventional sailing vessels. The other is if you are faced with weak intermittent winds ... You do have the option of going higher though to find more consistent airs. When it drops completely you have to haul it back in at the moment ..a stub mast can keep it ready above the fore deck in a calm but ..I suggested a larger kite with helium ballonets to provide enough bouyancy to support the kite and its harness on pehapse a minimal length of line till it picks up. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-yLDb9w6X9eo.html Theres a basic area traction force diag. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-DwiXTye681M.html This is a performance foiling kite boat near 37 kts ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-qrkrepYd_uI.html A kite boat hull... Tacking... Moving up and down wind. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-64J0-etds5E.html Brief History.. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-LpQb0PZx2BA.html New Atlantic record ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-deq-opacVUM.html This guy might be able to give you the numbers Sam Light ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Idd9ATteoWM.html