A german fishing boat flies giant kite to save fuel. How great is that? And this is a sign of how the marine future may look like? A really interesting article.
————
The 15,000 tonne ‘Maartje Theadora’ is the first fishing vessel to use the system, in which a 160 square meter blue and white kite similar to a paraglider pulls the ship on a 300 meter rope, assisting its main engine.
“The challenge for us is to see how it works during trawling, because then the ship is not moving from A to B but it’s turning and moving around,” said Diederik Parlevliet, head of fishing firm Parlevliet & Van der Plas, operator of the ship.
It harks back to an earlier maritime age, when merchant ships — especially from the Netherlands — sailed the seas to Asia and the Americas. Modern steam power replaced sails, cutting travel times and making it more predictable.
Read the complete article here:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6281I720100309
Related posts:
By Email
RSS
