TOKYO (AFP) - A Japanese environmental sailor will try to cross the Pacific Ocean with a boat built partly from recycled material and whose propulsion will be based on the driving force of the waves.
This confirmed sailor of 69 years, Kenichi Horie, plans to leave on March 16 from the Hawaiian archipelago (United States) for a crossing of 7.000 kilometers to Japan where he hopes to reach in May, his agent announced on Thursday a statement.
Her two-hull boat, the Suntory Mermaid II, is equipped with two species of front fins which allow her to move forward, based on the driving force of the waves.
According to Mr. Horie, the upward and downward movement of the swell will allow his boat to sail at the speed of three sea knots (5,5 km / h).
"Mankind has used the force of the wind a lot in its history, but no one has taken the force of the waves seriously," Horie explained in an interview with AFP last year.
His 9,5-meter-long vessel was partially built using recycled aluminum.
The sailor has been known in Japan since 1962, when he had crossed the Pacific Ocean at sail at 23, in three months, thus breaking Japanese law which prohibited sailors from leaving the country under sail.
Among the trips he has made since, Mr. Horie has made crossings using boats that run on solar energy or are made of recycled material.
source: yahoo news
For more details on the propulsion system (and a small explanatory diagram) you can click this link
What seems very interesting to me in this system is that the same mechanism (very simple) serves both as a sensor (for wave energy) and as a propellant.
From there to imagine that this concept could be used (by adapting it) as secondary propellant on all types of boats ....