Ask an AI agent "Is Cafe William sailing?": the answer is "Yes, Café William is actively using sailboats for transporting coffee as part of their commitment to sustainability. They partner with TransOceanic Wind Transport (TOWT) to ship coffee beans using wind-powered cargo ships, significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Their latest initiative includes transporting coffee from Colombia to Quebec aboard the largest modern sailing cargo ship." We are delighted to receive on the s...

On the show this month, we are delighted to receive Jean Zanuttini, president of Neoline. End of January, Neoline launched in Turkey an innovative and eco-friendly vessel, the Neoliner Origin. This 136-meter wind-powered ro-ro cargo ship is designed to transport rolling and oversized freight across the Atlantic. The Neoliner Origin appears to be a significant step forward in the decarbonization of the maritime industry. By utilizing wind as its primary propulsion energy, the Neoli...

To wrap up 2024, we're thrilled to welcome Nico Cymbalist to the show. Calling from California, Nico will introduce us to Clippership, one of the few wind propulsion projects in the US. Nico, an aerodynamic specialist and former engineer at Mercedes Formula One and Tesla, founded Clippership a year ago with three partners. The company's ambition is to transport pallets faster and more cost-effectively than existing methods. In this captivating interview, Nico shares how his passion for sailin...

To launch the fourth season of Hoisting the Sail, we are delighted to welcome back Grain de Sail, the pioneer in modern, wind powered ocean shipping operating sailing cargoes since 2020. Stefan Gallard, marketing director is joined by Jacques Barreau, CEO and co-founder. In our first discussion with Stefan in 2021, he detailed the inception and early stage development of Grain de Sail, its unique business model: a shipowning company with a maritime business but also a land-based busine...

This episode is taking you to the high seas with our guest Boris Herrmann, the skipper of the IMOCA Team Malizia, currently racing around the world in the Ocean Race 2023. Yes, it’s a lot about racing sailboats. You’ll discover Boris’s joy and thrills of racing high performance sailing machines around the planet, but it’s also a lot about the future of maritime transportation. Because, it’s now an evidence that offshore racing is an engine for innovations. Just like the America’s...

This week's episode brings us down memory lane. Our guest on March 31st, 2021 was Roger Strevens, VP Global Sustainability at Wallenius Wilhelmsen. Roger shared with us the design and feasibility assessment of the Orcelle Wind, the car carrier that will be powered primarily by wind, killing emissions by up to 90% in comparison to other new-built ships. Today, Kat Bride is catching up with Niclas Dahl, managing director of Oceanbird: the Swedish company (joint venture of Al...

We are thrilled to introduce our two new guests. They met on a boat and decided to start a shipping company. They both are committed to succeed on their mission, helped by their passion and their business acumen. One is an accomplished athlete, a sailor whose credentials are world-renowned. The other is an engineer who has worked with success in the automobile industry. Together, with three other partners, they launched VELA Transport. François Gabart and Michael Fernandez-Ferri are our guest...

This episode of Hoisting the Sail begins with the wish of a sail racer who yearned to pilot a flying sailboat above the water and win every race. In 1987, legendary sailor Éric Tabarly famously proclaimed that “one day, all boats will fly.” Today’s guest, Richard Forest, CEO and co-founder of SEair, diligently leads a team of engineers to prove Tabarly was right! Founded in 2016 and based in Lorient, France, SEair rose above the competition to become the global specialist for hy...

This new episode of Hoisting the Sail is taking you to Barcelona! Our guest is David Ferrer Desclaux, co-founder & CTO of bound4blue. A trained aerospace engineer, he switched to the vast horizon of our blue planet in 2015 and started, along with a group of classmates, bound4blue, “to power the world with wind”. Bound4Blue is developing an automated wind-assisted propulsion system, the eSAIL. If you grew up watching Commandant Jacques Cousteau adventures on TV, you may remember his 2...

Our guest today is Christiaan De Beukelaer, a sailor, traveller, and a researcher at the University of Melbourne. Christiaan and Kat discuss his bookTrade Winds, A voyage to a sustainable shipping. In 2020, Christiaan De Beukelaer spent 150 days covering 14,000 nautical miles aboard the schooner Avontuur, a hundred-year-old sailing vessel that transports cargo across the Atlantic Ocean. Embarking in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, he wanted to understand the realities of a little-known altern...

In this episode, you are in for a treat with our guest Daniel Hubbell. We first met Dan around a glass of wine and a bar of chocolate aboard Grain de Sail last spring in Brooklyn and interviewed him in October when he was the Shipping Emission Campaign Manager for Ocean Conservancy (since the interview, Dan started a new position as Policy Analyst at U.S. Department of State) Daniel Hubbell takes us on a tour of the International Maritime Organization where he spent a few ...

In this new episode, we are thrilled to receive Nicolas Abiven. Nicolas is a Senior Engineer at the Chantiers de l’Atlantique, the shipyard in Saint Nazaire, France. The 150 years old shipyard has launched some of the most iconic vessels, such as the Normandie, the Queen Mary 2 and the Splendor of the Sea to name a few. After launching a first concept ship equipped of sails, Eoseas, in 2009, les Chantiers have been developing a type of sails suitable for large cruise ships and for co...

We launch today Season 3 with an interview of Clare Newman, the president and CEO of the Trust for Governors Island. Kat and Clare discuss many facets of sustainability and adaptability - New York City since Sandy, the current and future developments on Governors Island, its maritime facade and the many experiments that can be run from the Island. Governors Island, located South of Manhattan and East of the Statue of Liberty, was originally used by the Lenape as a hunting &...

In this new episode of Hoisting the Sail, we are delighted to welcome two guests from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute: Kerry Ann Crehan-Strøm, the Marine Operations Coordinator for WHOI and Magdalena Andres, associate scientist physical oceanography and an expert on climate variability & impacts. Magdalena and Kerry are speaking with our host Kat about Science RoCS, i.e. Research on Commercial Ships, an initiative launched to answer the need for increased ocean monitoring. ...

In this new episode, our guest, Benoit Baisle Dailliez, initiative leader for WISAMO by Michelin, explains how the giant tires manufacturer came to develop a solution suitable to any vessels, and more particularly cargo ships (new or existing). Their motto, “Engineered by Michelin, powered by the wind”, makes clear that the company is fully committed to the decarbonization of maritime transport and a decrease of greenhouse gasses emissions. WISAMO's team embarked in "a real adventure fully ...

This week's episode is about performance sailing and how innovation in yacht racing can be transferred to maritime shipping, making it more efficient and cleaner. We are delighted to receive John Cooper, who is the CEO of BAR Technologies, a company that is at the forefront of maritime innovation. Cooper joined BAR Technologies as CEO In October 2019, swapping automotive technology for marine technology. At the end of 2020, Cargill announced a promising partnership with BAR Technolog...

We are back this week to welcome Martina Reche Villanova, a naval architect and maritime engineer, with a special focus on aerodynamics, green shipping, and digitalization. Though originally from Spain, she finished her Master’s degree at the Denmark University of Technology in Wind-Assisted Propulsion Systems. Villanova currently works at North Sails in Denmark, an international sailmaker and sailing wear company that designs, engineers and manufactures sails for racing and cruising sa...

In this week's episode, we welcome Miles Keeney-Ritchie and Satchel Douglas, the founders of ALOFT. This startup champions wind propulsion and was founded in 2021. They aim to retrofit current ships with wind propulsion and optimize operations to significantly reduce shipping supply chain emissions. Our guests are creators and well-experienced in the technical field. Satchel is a naval architect and professional engineer. He has built sailing yachts, crewed on oil tankers, and engineere...

In today’s episode, we are delighted to host James Rhodes, the Chairman, CEO, and Co-founder of Magnuss, a maritime technology firm. Rhodes brings over 30 years of experience in maritime shipping, renewable energy, investment banking, and management consulting. Magnuss delivers onboard systems that reduce fuel consumption and emissions for today's global shipping fleet. Rhodes joins us to talk about a technology called the Magnuss VOSS™ which stands for Vertically-variable Ocean Sail Sy...

We are delighted to receive today one of the early partners of Wind Support NYC, Guilhem Gaillarde, calling from Utrecht in the Netherlands.