Development of New Sailing-rig

Abstract

Recently energy saving and environmental conservation are becoming a world-wide problem. On the marine transport, it is gradually becoming important to utilize the natural and clean energy, for examples wind, wave and tide so on. Sail equipped vessel is one of the countermeasures answering the request. But, there are much to be desired for style of sailing-rig at reef. In order to remove this defect, we develop a new sailing-rig. This sailing-rig makes use of accordion curtains. If use this system, the wind effect at reef is smaller than that of a normal sailing-rig. By carrying out some experiments, we found some suitable points for practical application. Important results are summarized as follows : (1) New sailing rig reduce wind force effect at reef. (2) The ship's handling becomes easy as same as normal vessel. (3) Dragging anchor due to wind effect can be decreased (4) Initial and maintenance costs become cheap.