Is the sailing navy making its comeback? There are countless wind projects in the fight against greenhouse gas emissions which is taking shape in maritime transport. At this stage, notes Pierre Marty, researcher at the Hydrodynamics, Energy and Atmospheric Environment Research Laboratory in Nantes, “the only truly carbon-free boats are sailboats, but they represent a tiny part of the sector”.
Initiatives are popping up everywhere. In northern Brittany, the chocolatier Grain de Sail has just created a transatlantic connection with a 52-meter-long sailing cargo ship, which departed on March 15 from Saint-Malo, heading to New York. In Concarneau (Finistère), the Towt company is completing the construction of an 80-meter cargo sailboat, theAnemos, which will be launched this year to carry freight using pallets and no longer containers. Four more boats of this type are on order. The company Vela-Sail for Goods, in Bayonne (Pyrénées-Atlantiques), is putting the finishing touches, for its part, to a 65-meter cargo trimaran. From 2025, it will offer freight between Europe and the United States, also with pallets.
In some cases, the sails are rigid, like those of the 89-meter cargo ship from the Marseille cooperative Windcoop, led by Nils Joyeux, the inventor of Canopy, the boat with eight rectangular sails used since November 2023 to transport pieces of the Ariane-6 rocket to Guyana. The Windcoop boat has two masts and will shuttle between Marseille and Madagascar with 1,400 tonnes of freight on board.
Another example of a rigid sail, the one manufactured using folding composite panels by Chantiers de l’Atlantique, in Saint-Nazaire, a center of French shipbuilding, and currently being installed on a 136-meter building belonging to the shipowner Neoline, with two tilting masts. The same device will soon equip a luxury cruise ship from the Accor group, with three rigs associated with hybrid propulsion using liquefied natural gas.
400 square meter kite
Other, even more original ideas are taking shape. Inspired by paragliding, Michelin start-up Wisamo in Nantes has invented an inflatable wing capable of raising and lowering itself around a telescopic mast, using low-pressure fans. It is intended for container ships, bulk carriers, ro-ro and tankers, as an additional means of propulsion to the combustion engine. The Beyond the Sea company, in the Arcachon basin, is testing a kitesurfing wing, a sort of 400 square meter kite, which would make it possible to tow large boats to reduce fuel consumption there too.
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