Just saw a couple more articles on new ideas for sails powering large ships:
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Hi Doug: Thanks for these interesting information. You are always open to new ideas.
Cargill:
Pyxis Ocean sets sail with ground-breaking wind technology.
Same Cargill ship - Popular Science article:
This sort of ship is probably a better fit for sails than container ships with all those containers stacked on top. 
Well, the hits just keep on comin’!
Here’s another article on sails for ships, and eight (8) MORE articles linked at the bottom of the page!
Union Maritime to fit BAR Technologies’ WindWings on LR2 tanker duo - Offshore Energy (offshore-energy.biz)
Another article on co-flow jet sails for ships:
[Researchers develop giant sail technology that could propel new, cleaner shipping standard: ‘The shipping industry … will have to change’ (msn.com)](MSN
Anyone think this is going to take hold?
Low-carbon cargo tall ship to sail the Channel (msn.com)
Here’s a new twist for sails: fabric sails giving a large area. These breakthrough ships are said to only burn fuel for maneuvering in ports. Of course, if you read carefully, it’s all “in the future”…
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This ship has an old-fashioned look. After all, the future may be the past.
Well, olden times windmills had larger blade area relatively to modern turbines. We are not going back to the old style of sail shipping. Technology progressed a lot. Flettner sail seem a nice improvement over this.
I love a bit of elitist wind powered sport
But the Italians were being a bit ambitious with their power source
https://youtube.com/shorts/RbGwVAJa51I?si=5Ds6j4eiM46IEE_-
Would love to see some of this design effort being applied to airborne wind energy.
There was a bit of analysis on how crucial it is to design how much energy the sails need to work through a pre-start
Hello Tallak: Keyword: “seem”. For 100 years, flettner sails have “seemed” to be the answer, but where is the real evidence, beyond greenwashing and “press-release breakthrough” activity? Why are they not used in sailboat races?
Yes, what is needed is some “really smart people” and many, many millions of dollars. Oh wait - they’ve already tried that…
Well there are no «classic» multi sail sailships in operation these days, but a few flettner rotor ones. So that would be an indication that flettner rotors may be a better choice. Also just looking, it seems the steel flettner rotors are easier to manage in a storm, also they dont require much in terms of handling and control. Whats not to like? The only thing holding it back is really, does it actually work well enough?
True with respect to cargo ships but there are still millions of sailboats and yachts plying the waters around the world today. Not sure if anyone has actually disproven the use of cloth sails to augment diesel or turbine power, versus just an emotional choice for the Flettner rotors since they seem less disproven, being unusual. Has any modern cargo ship just tried adding a few regular unpowered, cloth sails? Has there ever been an A/B comparison of the 2 models of same ship, with one adding flettner rotors, and the other adding some cloth sails, seeing which works better, or whether either is truly worth bothering with in the modern world?
Or do cloth sails lack the “pizazz” and perceived novelty of flettner rotors, being seen more as “yesterday’s news”? Remember, Professor Crackpot never sleeps, and in this era of “Global Warming Derangement Syndrome”, many people have abandoned common sense, and are instead driven by emotions and slogan-based “reasoning”.
Not to mention “Greenwashing”. If a large corporation is providing shipping around the world, by which billions of people benefit, yet are castigated for sole responsibility for some resulting emissions, it is understandable they should waste a small percentage of revenue on “greenwashing” symbolic supposed efforts to comply with the bumper-sticker-level “thinking”, so they can point to some noneffective box-checking symbolism “project”, to receive more lenient treatment by the manipulative and money-grubbing corrupt “authorities” that thrive on making the fulfillment of simple needs, like transportation, difficult or impossible.
It can then be said “Well, at least they are TRYING”. This is how any “command economy” swirls down the toilet bowl, as symbolic obedience to the illogical demands of the tyrannical rulers increasingly replaces economical reality, until complete paralysis eventually results.