Jed Rothwell wrote:
Jones Beene wrote:
No anchor. The West coast, and Northeast has little or no "shelf" and
the ocean is too deep for anchorage anyway. You would use converted
drogues. A drouge is a
sea-anchor which merely slows movement, like a parachute- and does
not attempt to create a permanent anchorage. It can slow a ship in a
30 knot wind to 1-2 knots - or perhaps a 20 mile controlled-drift per
day. They are steerable.
Imagine a giant *funnel* which at the small outlet-end there is a
propeller attached to a generator.
In this design, do you envision some sort of wind turbine mounted
above the deck, or only sails, to move the ship along? In other words,
would all of the energy come from the propeller at the end of the
drouge, or would some of it be generated directly by wind turbines?
A design with only sails might be simpler. The ship would always go
before the wind, which simplifies sailing. (And takes the fun out of
it, too.) These would not be cloth sails, but rather large, rigid
structures which could be retracted or feathered when the motor is used.
There are schemes to augment container ship power with wind power, as
I mentioned. These are turbines that can face any direction, so they
can be used no matter which way the wind is blowing, except when the
ship goes directly into the wind of course,
A ship-mounted wind turbine _can_ be used to drive the ship even when
heading straight into the wind.
With a wind turbine up top and a conventional prop underneath a "sailing
ship" is completely independent of the direction the wind is blowing ...
at least, as long as the wind speed is substantially faster than the
speed of any current in the water through which the ship is sailing, and
as long as you don't require that the ship sail at a speed approaching
that of the wind itself.
If you want to sail as fast or faster than the speed of the wind, on the
other hand, the wind direction starts to matter quite a bit.
in which case they would be retracted.
Here is someone trying to make a 50,000 dwt automated square-rigged
sailing ship with five masts and no mizzen:
http://www.rina.org.uk/rfiles/navalarchitect/editorialnov04.pdf
Shiver me timbers! Avast, me hearties!
- Jed
