View Larger The Alcyone - an experimental turbosail boat operated by the Cousteau Society.
Turbosails work on the Magnus effect:
An object spinning in fluid (or air) creates a whirlpool that results in a force perpendicular to the stream around the object:
This exact effect is responsible for the curved trajectory of spinning footballs or golf balls.
Turbosails - as a supplementary propulsion to diesel engines - improve the fuel efficiency of the vessel by 15-30%.
View Larger Now retired Chinese Huchuan type torpedo boat abandoned in Albania.
32 of them were delivered to Albania in 1968-1974.
Amazing toys, coming soon, from Papa Foxtrot!
Under. Water.
Real artists ship.
— Steve Jobs, 1983
“The Floating Instrument Platform, FLIP, is a 355 foot long manned spar buoy designed as a stable research platform for oceanographic research. FLIP is towed to its operating area in the horizontal position and through ballast changes is “flipped” to the vertical position to become a stable spar buoy with a draft of 300 feet.”
