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Wave Powered Boat to Sail From Hawaii to Japan
CaroKann writes "In the middle of May 2008, Kenichi Horie, an adventurer known for such feats as paddling a pedal powered boat 4,660 miles from Hawaii to Okinawa in 1993, will be sailing a wave powered boat from Honolulu's Hawaii Yacht Club to the Kii Channel in Japan. The boat, a 3-ton catamaran named the Suntory Mermaid II, works by virtue of the fins located at the front of the boat. These fins "generate thrust force by moving up and down like the tails of dolphins and whales and absorbing the energy of the waves." The system can propel the boat no matter which direction the waves come from. Because the wave propulsion system absorbs the energy from the waves, a passenger on the boat will experience a smooth ride. With a top speed of about 5 knots, the journey is expected to take about 2 to 3 months."
If the top speed is 5 knots, a sail would be faster at some points, I must just be missing something...
Woohoo!! First Post! I actually tried to RTFA, but the link doesn't seem to want to load at work. If the max speed is only 5 knots, I'm skeptical there'll be much of a market for it. Can it be incorporated into power boats as a means to conserve energy and stabilize the ride?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
"A set of eight solar panels produces 560 watts to run the navigation lights, ham radio, satellite phone and PC."
If he's going to have a PC on board I wonder if he'll have Internet hookup via the Satellite phone. And if so if he'll be posting a blog to detail his journey. That would be pretty sweet.
Does anyone know if he has a personal web site regarding his voyage ? TFA doesn't mention one.
I am intrigued by transport using the power of nature. I myself am working on moving a ship by "catching" the wind with a large upright "surface" altough I don't exactly know how I am going to contruct this "surface". I was personally thinking about using a soft fabric and bind it to a pole. I am also testing if multiple surfaces work better than one.
I'll keep you informed if I continue to the next fases of my daring contruction plan.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
I can see modified craft like this becoming automated, slow mules for smugglers. Since there is no need for a sail, they can ride low, leaving almost no visible, radar or sonar signature. Just put a generator and some electronics for navigation, and you've got a virtually undetectable smuggle-bot.
The article is dated February and the article states he would be sailing this month. If he was sailing in May he would arrive in the middle of the typhoon season.
the journey is expected to take about 2 to 3 months
Wow, that's pretty good. How long does it take in a boat powered by fossil fuels?
Nice Boat.
(Sorry. Obligatory.) Here's the link for newbies: http://www.jbox.com/PRODUCT/SHIRT-BOAT1
This is just a brilliant idea! The boat is propelled no matter the direction of the waves, and the side effect being that the boat is mostly insulated from the wave motion? How f'n brillian is that! As I have always said, the "difference between Smart and Genius is not just a few iffy percentage points, it's orders of magnitude.
When he leaves, he always waves goodbye
Water powered boat? It's a surfboard!
Ok, a multi-directional surfboard.
I saw something on the Discovery Channel a long time ago where Ballard proposed artificial islands. Wave-propulsion would be an ideal way to move the beasts around.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Wake me up when they have an asphalt-powered car.
Somehow, this doesn't come as a surprise.
If it's wave powered, why is he sailing it?
if the wind dies, chances are the water will be calm...either way the boat won't be moving! btw, 5mph isn't bad when compared to a sailboat which may need to tack to get to its destination...8 knots max hull speed of a sailboat is reduced when you have to constantly change course to get to your destination
Yeah, I'm sure they never tested even once if the idea works before they set out.
(PS: Waves aren't the same as ambient heat.)
It has a fairly complex mechanism, so it will be expensive to build and maintain. Worse, it is slow. You get paid per delivery; slow means fewer deliveries between interest payments and repair bills.
I read an article from a late 1920's or 1930's popular science that described the mechanism quite accurately. It even had a model you could build using parts from old (I mean pre-plastics old) ice trays (used to make ice cubes) that were common until the early 1980s. And the article talked about a pre WW1 vintage "ingenious mechanism" that worked like this.
Anyone with knowledge of hydrodynamics care to explain?
So the waves move these fins up and down. Ignoring the fact that fins are under the surface and waves are, as far as I understand, a pretty much surface phenomenon - the question still remains. Where is the propulsion? This is no different than placing an object under water - even if it is being pushed up and down, it is also being pushed backwards by those same waves at their own speed. At the same time - I see no reason for the object to create any thrust of it's own. It just bobs there?
I guess I must be missing something - but what?
At 3 tons, this boat is very light. A 3 ton boat can be flipped very easily by a rough wave. Coupled with the fact that this is a catamaran, you have a boat that is equally as stable upside down as it is righted. Our boat is 12 tons without food and equipment (we have about 1.5 tons of spare parts and tools alone!) -- 8 tons of this is keel weight. It cannot flip over and stay upside down (unless the keel breaks off).
As for the stmt that says it will absorb the energy of the wave making for a smooth ride: don't believe it. That's like saying your knees can absorb the energy of your uneven surface. If there is more energy than can be absorbed, you will experience a rough time standing up. Same thing applies here. Do you know how much energy is in a wave? Think about the Tsunami on Boxing Day 2005. Think about wave-absorbing power plants. The amplitude of the wave doesn't even matter: it's a combination of amp. and freq. I've been in waves that are 60 feet tall, but they're 500 feet apart. This makes for a smooth, duck-like, enjoyable, infinity view when you crest, and a rather enclosing feel when you trough. :-)
Interesting facts: 5 knots is quite slow, but manageable. A knot is about 1.8 km/hour, so we're talking about 9 km/h which is actually slower than a human can run. Captain Cook sailed around the world at about 2.5 knots. He literally went around at walking speed.
As an aside, you can always tell the difference between the cruiser boat and the bay-sailer simply by the sheer amount of shit attached to every surface. :-) Also, look at the size and number of anchors. If there are two or more anchors: cruiser. If the anchor looks like it should be grounding the USS Enterprise: cruiser.
Waves are more consistent, which is why this is ingenious. Unfortunately they can also come in pretty big sizes, which may cause trouble. This thing won't be visiting the Bay of Fundy, or for that matter the Mediterranean, any time soon.
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I remember reading an article in Popular Mechanics or Popular Science back in the mid to late seventies about an experimental wave-powered boat named "Gausefin". What stuck with me all these years was how cool the craft looked. It was a sleek monohull with a low deckhouse, not a catamaran like Suntory Mermaid II. Imagine the dream-like shape of a sailing yacht, but without the masts or sails. The fins that drove the vessel were flexible, and were the only moving parts of the propulsion system; there were no hinges or springs.
Does anyone else remember the Gausefin, or have any information about what happened to this craft? I haven't even been able to find it with Google, and I'm beginning to wonder if I imagined the whole thing.
Great, but what happens when we use up all the waves?!? This is an environmental catastrophe waiting to happen.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
In this scenario the entire boat is the float.
the boat was then acting against a fin under water, that fin is held down by all the weight of the water above it (or held up by the water below it)
in the wave pushing up situation, the fin is angled so that it has a slope where a few inches of rise, over a few feet of run.
So in order for the boat to move up a few inches, it must move forward a few feet at the same time. This fin then flips into the downward position once the pressure swaps directions so then for every few inches the boat moves back down the ship must still move forward a few more feet.
since water is relatively incompressible. Still the fin has to be sized appropriately so water can't more easily circulate around it rather than over it.
my mental math says thats where all the springs come into being, their would be too much energy present for the materials used, that it would immediately break the connections between boat and fin, without some relief.
at a minimum you would have the equivalent power of the entire mass of water displaced by the entire boat through the wave, thats ignoring the likely equal power of surface tension that must be overcome to move in any direction, relative to the surf (you will have a suction effect between the boat and the water, in addition to the weight involved.)
There is some conflicting information about the exact day the voyage will begin. Some sites state the middle of May and others state the middle of March. According to this article in The Japan Times, Kenichi Horie stated Wednesday that the voyage will begin on March 16. My apologies about the confusion.
I hear that from chinese folks.
I hear "wakime honsaitemo makimukemotosande desdensai saiyan dbz pokemon kitsune warimesu" from japanese folks.