Proa building blog
Sad but true: we have already winterized Proasis. We need to do some work on the bottom of the hulls anyway and I (Henrik) will soon go back to the Marshall Islands for half a year (make sure you stay tuned, updates will follow!).
We had the great advantage of using an electric winch and some nice custome made trolleys to pull her up the beach this time. The task was done very quickly and didn’t took many people.
After some delay we finally managed to modify our new sail for the reefing system. We have designed an innovative system using a long zipper parallel to the trailing edge of the sail. In strong winds the aft part of the sail is simply zipped of. It works well so far but time will tell whether this is manageable in high winds and swell or not. We will keep you posted!
Our new sail is finally ready to take it out on the water! So far we are very pleased with the shape and the performance. The reefing system is not yet installed, testing the shape first was more important. It will follow later, stay tuned!
Covid has slowed down our progress one more time but the new sail is finally taking shape! We hope to take it out on the water nex week.
We’ve started to make a new sail for Proasis. This time with a better cloth and improfed shape. We will also try an innovative system to reef the sail (reduce sail area in strong wind).
While proasis is still in the water (we will keep her wet for this winter) we moved back to the workshop to work on some improvements:
The new sail will be made next year but all other bullits are tackeled now:
We are proud and honored to get the opportunity to advocate for climate action as part of the delegation of the Marshall Islands at COP26 climate conference in Glasgow. We had two very nice events where we presented the achievements of Waan Aelõñ in Majel (Canoes of the Marshall Islands) in gaining climate change resilience by reviving the traditional outrigger canoe.
A recorded video of our session is here available on demand (requires free registration).
The Marshall Island Journal (local newspaper of the Marshall Islands) has published a nice article about the successful collaboration between Waan Aelon in Majel (WAM), Proasis and the Low Carbon Sea Transport Project. WAM has just launched a slightly smaller version of our Proasis with sustainable fishing in mind. Kommol tata for the great work!
Henrik hast developed a data logger to collect performance data for polar plots for the Marshall Islands project on low carbon sea transport. The loggers collects samples of GPS speed, heading and wind speed and direction simultaneously. The data is collected and will be processed soon!
Fouling (marine growth on the bottom of boats and ships) is a big problem for shipping worldwide. Excessive growth of barnacles, algae etc. increases the friction between hull and water and therefore leading to high fuel consumption and unnecessary GHG emissions.
The conventional solution are toxic bottom paints which slowly leach microplastic and biocides into the water. This is a big problem for the marine environment taking into account the thousands of big and small ships out there.
The Dutch company Finsulate has invented a biocide free (non-toxic) antifouling solution. Manfred Bauer, the local distributor of our area has invited us to an application training.
Innovations like this have the potential to make a real impact. We will trial the Finsulate material and report regularly about the results in the future. In a first step three identical test bodies will be deployed at our mooring: One equipped with Finsulate Seagrade, one with conventional Ultra 600 bottom paint and the third one without any specific antifouling measure.
Check out www.antifoulingfolie-sh.de and www.finsulate.com for further information!
