Henrik Richter-Alten

Drone Shots

Made some nice drone shots of Proasis while cruising in light wind. Quit difficult to launch and land from the boat!

We had a great time the last couple of days at the Kiel Climate week. It was a pleasure to present Proasis to the public on the first major event, take people sailing and rise awareness for the crisis the Marshall Islands and many other places around the globe are going through.

Proasis at Kiel Climate Week

Proasis will be part of the first Climate Week hosted by the City of Kiel. We will be present with our canoe at the waterfront doing some panel discussions and taking people out for a sail.

Everybody is very welcome to join us for the talking part on land but the space on our boat is limited. Please visit the website of the organizers and make a reservation to catch a ride on proasis.

Performance Measurement

Henrik hast developed a data logger to collect performance data for polar plots for the GIZ implemented 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!

It is planned to test the device on traditional canoes too.

Sailing trip to Flensburg

To visit fjordproa we’ve sailed proasis deep into the Flensburg fjord. On our way back home we had to tack upwind against 20kn of wind and steep chop the hole day. Nothing special in general but so far we haven’t been out with Proasis in those conditions. Spoiler: she did very well and brought us home safely.

Sailing with Fjordproa aka. Elliot

We’ve sailed Proasis deep into the Flensburg fjord to meet Lars from fjordproa. Lars recently over Klaus Deppermanns Gilbertese proa “Elliot” (see his old video from the 1990’s) since he retired from sailing. It’s great to finally see Elliot on the water and once again a special occasion to sail together with another canoe!

Sailing with Mareinoa

We met the proa “Mareinoa” on the baltic sea for an unofficial and spontaneous proa meeting. Two large proas sailing together are a rare event, we hope to do it more often in the future!

Biocide free antifouling

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!

2nd Birthday

On this day, two years ago, the first post was published on www.proas.is. Thanks to all our supporters we’ve come a long way in these two years!

From the very first sketches and calculations over various model tests and real size mockups we’ve made it through endless hours of laminating fiberglass, gluing, sanding and painting. Now we have a beautiful sailing proa and can start to work on the real mission: climate action now!