German cargo ship to be propelled by kite-power

"don't know, but this story would make an absolutely incredible movie."

Interesting tale! I got hooked reading it right away. If a movie were to be made, who would be the hero?

"Why does this remind me of "Rotor Sails".. those diesel driven rotating vertical cylinders used briefly on a pair of German vessels (Buckau & Barbara) in the early 20th century."

Here you go:

""He projects 1,500 vessels will have the system by 2015, when he reckons he will have 800 employees"

Obviously he's not been in front of the same investors that I have.

I used one of those on my kayak years ago.

The only real entitity in the story having truly heroic qualities would be the ship iteslf. The end would be anti-climactic irony in that its reputation is besmirched as a "hell ship"; final scenes could be scenes of it in all its splendor, immaculate, bright and yet nobody'll sail on it. The captain walking off into the sunset with regal character, erect, head held high, like a man.

The only other heroic aspect to the story is the American justice system as it played out at the end of the story. The end of the story would epitomize the contrast of a republic in opposition to the very epitome of democracy.

Waterman would have to be the protagonist character who'd have the dubious distinction of being in the end a sort of anti-hero hero, in that he'd be the person having the least contemptable qualities. "Anti-hero" not in the sense of a villian, but a usurper to the position of hero. The guy who helped Waterman escape would be the deuteragonsist, and Douglas the tritagonist. There'd be no central antagonist, or villian character, in that this could be accomplished by prortraying the villainy inherent within all the characters.

Everybody else could be elevated onto the hero pedestal, and then ruthlessly and mercilessly knocked down. The movie should elicite empathy for many of the characters, but ultimately sympathy for none.

I speculate one plausible poetic license with respect to that of hero character: the ships boy. The story could be told through his eyes. He could be young and innocent at the beginning of the movie. Of course at the end, well, has been through quite a lot. He could be an associate of Waterman, or he could just be a young naive kid looking for adventure on the high seas; the story being told through his eyes. The character could have either a small puppy with him, or even better something wonderfully incongruous with the setting that is utterly and completely out of place. I like the idea of a beautifull and exquisite small songbird similar to that which was in the movie with James Spader: Slow Burn.

This character could have many endearing qualities, and virtues, but just doesn't have any fundamental qualities required to be able to rise to hero status whatsoever, except that he neither has any of the despicable, contemptable qualities that are so heinously and vicously evident in everybody else; and that not for just those on the ship, but the Griswolds, and practically the entire town of San Fransisco (which should be portrayed as the cesspool it was), and its leaders guilty of the rankest corruption of the highest order, and the mud-raking press being no different than the despicable modern main stream media; sheer and utter hysteria reigns.

"Wrage said ships will initially need to carry an engineer to operate the sail, which is about as big as a medium-size passenger jet."

This is getting comical...

EXACTLY RIGHT. A mate or any deck ape can handle the sails, we don't need no stinkin' engineer...

Yep, I'm in the biz, m'self... have you noticed how SMALL that ship in the picture is? I'm pretty sure that shot was on an endurance motoryacht, being used for scale-model sized testing. My own ship loses about 1/10 of a knot for every 15 knots of headwind, and we have a house with a massive sail area, far greater than any parachute sail. 30 knots of tailwind don't really speed us up even when we're in ballast. What was your experience?

Every Merchant Marine academy in the world has had some kid do a feasibility study of sail and sail-assist as a cost containment measure... pretty much every year, one kid does the study... and it's never feasible.

Think they've considered what ABS or the the P&I club will say about the liabilities imposed by labor-intensive supplemental sails?