Zero Emission Boats, Electric or Human Powered.

[Emett]

Electric and Pedal powered boats! That's super. Here's new member's Dan Clark website: Sea Lark Sales and blog about the ones he's selling. Looks great. Plus he's offering more on his website like sail kits and bike trailer boat hitches!

[Emett]

We need a solution for the cargo ships of the world. Any ideas out there? Sailboats? Improved propulsion is certainly are part of it. Check this out this link to a pedal powered flapper/fin drive for kayaks by Hobie ...
Amazing... would that work on a bigger scale?

Powered by... solar? Underwater thermo-gradient electricity generation? Nuclear power... naaaaaa. Maybe cables and pulley's could pull the ships around in the harbors, or batteries (huge mechanical batteries), at least for in-port operations.

Something to think about...

[Don Clark]

Thanks Emett. I will try to participate in this Forum. The flapper/fin drive would have to be powered by a drive train just like a propeller. Using solar power to move ships would take very large panel arrays. Maybe using satellites to concentrate light from the sun would work if it was then directed to a collector on each ship. But we have too many ships on the water to supply all of them this way.

[Emett]

Concentrating solar does work! And that makes the getting the best possible solar collectors even more valuable. Hmmm, once ships are out on the water there's plenty of space to unfurl some kind of gigantic reflectors...

I'm not sure that space based anything would work out due to the cost of shipping anything "up there" into orbit, but I like creative thinking like that...

We might also what to think about going much smaller and maybe slower with the cargo ships, the money saved on fuel should be worth it for the shipping companies. (Especially if there were more cost to them in the form of a Carbon or pollution tax)

[Emett]

https://www.greencarcongress.com/2020/05/20200510-ship.html