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Wind in Our Sails: A New Age of Shipping

The cargo ship is to the ocean what the Hummer is to the highway: inefficient and expensive. But by harnessing a new innovation called Giant Sail Technology, the German company SkySails is looking to change the seascape of commercial shipping.


By Flickr user ChibiJosh Imagine parasailing behind a cruise ship in the Mediterranean (nice, right?)—except that instead of pulling you behind the ship, the parachute instead flies ahead of the boat, pulling it along by catching the wind like a kite. With sails as large as a football field, the parachute works something like a tugboat, flying up to 1,000 feet in front of the ship and cutting the vessel's use of fossil fuels by 30-35 percent. And on a good day, when the winds are blowing in the right direction, the helpful kite can offset half of the fuel the ship would otherwise have used.

The technology is still very new. The MS Beluga, for example, only set sail (now literally) on its maiden voyage from Germany in January 2008, landing in Venezuela in March. And while at first glance the technology appears expensive, the sail can easily be run on autopilot and saves the shipping company about $1600 a day.

SkySails hopes to expand their business, manufacturing a sail the size of a cruise ship by 2010, and having up to 1500 ships equipped for the sails by 2015, from oil tankers to cruise ships to buoy tenders. Who knows? Maybe the by the time you do take that cruise you've always wanted, you'll be tugged along by a friendly kite of your own.