The cargo sailboat is popular
Audio 02:30
October 9, 2020!
Our first cargo sailboat Grain de Sail, offered its first baptism.
Screenshot / facebook.com / graindesail1
By: Marina Mielczarek
7 min
Wine on the way out, cocoa on the way back to sailing!
Next week, a new kind of cargo ship will cross the Atlantic.
Three weeks of slower navigation but much less polluting than a traditional ship.
It is the Breton company Grain de Sail, (sail as sail in English) which launches this cargo sailboat.
The health crisis has shown consumer demand for a greener world, the construction of cargo ships is a booming market.
Publicity
The twins took the transport backwards!
Yes, that's what people say about them, the Barreau brothers, Jacques and Olivier, the builders of the cargo sailboat for their own company Grain de Sail.
Upside down because usually in the field of freight, we tend to start with goods to find a way for them to move!
There, as Jacques Barreau explains, we first built a sailboat with a very small engine, which is compulsory for maneuvering in port.
A booster engine and wooden pallets to clean up maritime transport
Length, 24 meters.
From afar on the sea, a sailboat similar to all the others except that when approaching, there is this unusual hull, extremely wide with metal doors opening the holds.
Cocoa and coffee which will then be sold in Morlaix (in Brittany) in the Grain de Sail chocolate shop.
In total, the cargo sailboat will be able to transport up to 50 tonnes of products, adds Jacques Barreau:
“
From this month of October, our crew (four professional sailors: a captain, a mate, a watchman and a seaman) will make a transatlantic loop.
The departure from Saint-Malo in Brittany will be carried out with holds loaded with organic wines to go to New York.
The return will be via the Azores after a stop in the Dominican Republic to load cocoa and coffee,
he says as a wind expert, he the former designer of wind turbines converted into chocolate maker.
At Grain de Sail, we work the cocoa ourselves, our chocolates are made and sold in our store in France or on our website.
The aim is not to replace freight transport, a gigantic and global market, but to offer an alternative with products that can be stored for three weeks in the holds
”
.
The International Maritime Organization lacks the will to punish polluting cargo ships, eco-transport is only an alternative
For the ecological cargo market to be profitable, manufacturers plan to equip ships with hybrid energy with sails and hydrogen or electric engines, ten times less polluting than traditional cargo ships.
The market is ripe, believe most specialists, certain that the coronavirus crisis has convinced European consumers of the merits of slower but more environmentally friendly trips.
African sailors on Towt cargo ships
Other French companies like Neoline, Zéphyr and Borée or Towt are already thinking about it.
At Towt, we transport oil, cocoa, tea or rum, by sail.
And next year, the great added value will come, the presence of African sailors.
For this unprecedented training, the partnership has been signed with ARSTM, the Higher Academy of Marine Sciences and Techniques (based in Niangon in Côte d'Ivoire) headed by Karim Koulibaly.
“
At
ARSTM we have young apprentice marine officers from all over French-speaking West Africa,
” he explains.
With this Franco-Ivorian partnership, our students will be able to use the techniques learned throughout their course.
The experience is all the richer since
they will be sailing on a type of boat that is new to them, cargo sailboats.
Usually, they maneuver on large merchant cargo ships.
Safety gestures as well as operations on the bridge will be different, they will learn a lot.
I am convinced that these centuries-old transports which are resurfacing have a bright future in the years to come
”
.
The French sailing freight champions!
For all these French companies or micro-companies (most of them Breton, going from Nantes to Saint-Malo) the promises have accelerated over the past five years.
The health crisis will only encourage the trend, the cargo sailboat market (sailing and hybrid) is a market in Europe as in the rest of the world, in full expansion.
The Grains de Sail company has already announced the construction of two other prototypes.
These two larger cargo ships will set sail in 2022 and 2025. As what, when it comes to sailing boats, history is repeating itself while being modernized.
Newsletter
Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_FR
France
Transport