Zephyr (sail): The Kiteship Spin

Monday, November 14, 2005

The Kiteship Spin

In mid October I posted on Kiteship, Inc. - a company designing, producing and marketing spinnakers for freighters. Now I'm all for new, innovative approaches to saving fossil fuel. I'll gladly allow that, if there's a smart way to introduce wind power into the equation then by all means... And I like the "chutzpah" of Kiteship in that they're challenging the status quo in, of all things, the shipping industry. Not a group of businesses known for their forward thinking - or for valuing sailors for that matter. All of this being said I still have to question whether or not this sort of (sailing) technology will ever be adopted given all of the barriers to entry that, in fact, Dave Culp himself cites on his recent comment to that October Zephyr entry. If anyone can make it happen then Culp would be the man - educated at Stanford and UC Davis, Dave Culp began professionally designing kite powered boats in 1978 at the age of 24. Anyone have a thought here?

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"The sail, the play of its pulse so like our own lives: so thin and yet so full of life, so noiseless when it labors hardest, so noisy and impatient when least effective."
-Henry David Thoreau

"Sailors work like horses at sea and spend their money like asses ashore."
-Anonymous

"Never go into strange places on a falling tide without a pilot."
-Thomas Gibson Bowles

"They that go down to the sea in ships; and occupy their business in great waters; these men see the works of the Lord; and His wonders in the deep"
-Book of Common Prayer

"There was a grandeur in everything around, which gave almost a solemnity to the scene; a silence and solitariness which affected everything. Not a human being but ourselves for miles; and no sound heard but the pulsations of the great pacific."
-Richard Henry Dana

"It was with a happy heart that the good odysseus spread his sail to catch the wind and used his seamanship to keep his boat straight with the steering-oar"
-Homer

"Why is almost every robust, healthy boy with a robust, healthy soul in him, at some time or other, crazy to go to sea? Why, upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land?"
-Herman Melville - Moby Dick

"To insure safety at sea, the best that science can devise and that naval organization can provide must be regarded only as an aid, and never as a substitute for good seamanship, self-reliance, and sense of ultimate responsibility which are the first requisites in a seaman and naval officer."
-Admiral Chester W. Nimitz

"Ships are the nearest things to dreams that hands have ever made, for somewhere deep in their oaken hearts the soul of a song is laid."
-Robert N. Rose

"O Captain! My Captain ! Our fearful trip is done, the ship has weathered every rock, the prize we sought is won, the port is near, the bells i hear, the people all exulting."
-Walt Whitman

"I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by, And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking, And a gray mist on the sea's face, and a gray dawn breaking."
-John Masefield

" Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean. Water, water, everywhere, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink. "
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

"The sea - this truth must be confessed - has no generosity. No display of manly qualities - courage, hardihood, endurance, faithfulness - has ever been known to touch its irresponsible consciousness of power."
-Joseph Conrad

"The desire to build a house is the tired wish of a man content thenceforward with a single anchorage. The desire to build a boat is the desire of youth, unwilling yet to accept the idea of a final resting place.
-Arthur Ransome

"Confronting a storm is like fighting God. All the powers in the universe seem to be against you and, in an extraordinary way, your irrelevance is at the same time both humbling and exalting."
-Franciose LeGrande

"Men go abroad to wonder the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering."
-St. Augustine

Zephyr - May 05, 2005 - Sailors are intrinsically storytellers

Technology is having a significant impact on sailing culture, particularly in how sailors communicate with one another and share information about key aspects of voyaging and cruising (weather, friendly ports-of-call, sheltered anchorages). Some of the best examples of this are found in the multitude of individual sailing weblogs being published with more popping every day. Unlike Zephyr, which focuses on a specific topic (sailing culture) and covers it broadly, these sailing blogs are written from the perspective of voyagers, boatbuilders, weekend warriors they're mostly about the individual journey and serve as a two-way, grassroots window into the sailing world. When I was mate on the Maxi in the late 90'€™s I used to punch out email updates to all my desk-bound friends back in the States, compile a mailing list and send them whenever I could find an Internet cafe when we paused in Roadtown, English Harbor, Culebra, etc. I remember people enjoyed them, forwarded them all over their offices, to friends across the country. Sailors are intrinsically storytellers and the Internet has magnified this attribute. Consider the shift from the viral, uncontrolled mass email to a narrow-casted, self published weblog. We are witnesses to this technology proliferating, evolving and beginning to virtually knit together the larger sailing community...not surprisingly the results are (like many things in life) heterogeneous - we discover compelling content side-by-side with the trite, sublime with mundane, unique with conventional...

Zephyr (sail)

Monday, November 14, 2005

The Kiteship Spin

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Zephyr - May 05, 2005 - Sailors are intrinsically storytellers