Kite Flying's New Niche

Love your yacht but worried about your carbon footprint? Do you fancy a nonstop trip from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean without troublesome refueling?

It might be time to upgrade. Way up. SkySails has devised a solution that allows you to glide across the oceans while saving up to 35% in fuel costs. A giant kite floating high above the boat provides the propulsion, if the winds are favorable, to keep it moving. Designed for cargo ships, the SkySails technology combines the attributes of sail- and motorboats. The parachute-like sail produces about four times as much energy as that on a regular sailing ship and, with winds of 8 m.p.h. (7 knots) or more, can be used to relieve the main engine. Crossing under bridges isn't a problem either, since the SkySails sail, unlike the regular kind, has no fixed mast and can be retracted quickly. There is also a safety advantage, since the uplifting force of the kite prevents the ship from listing too much.

Like Benjamin Franklin, SkySails inventor Stephan Wrage had his epiphany while flying a kite. "I started sailing at an early age, and I also liked to build kites," he says. "At some point — I must have been 14 or 15 — I thought to myself, there must be a way to put the enormous energy of a kite into a boat." One of the biggest challenges was the problem of how to get the kite into the air and keep it there. This was solved with the help of a telescoping mast at the ship's prow, which lifts the kite into the air. There, with the wind streaming in, the kite unfolds like a huge accordion. An autopilot calculates wind force and direction, ship route and speed and makes sure the sail is optimally positioned.

The first cargo ship with a SkySails kite is scheduled to be launched on Dec. 15. Wrage's long-term goal is to install kites measuring 2,500 to 5,000 sq m on cargo ships more than 300 m in length. Ship traffic produces up to 800 million metric tons of CO2 annually worldwide. The company figures that retrofitting all suitable ships could save about 18% of that, or an estimated 144 million metric tons of CO2 a year.