Hoisting the sail, a supply chain podcast

Ask an AI  agent "Is Cafe William sailing?": the answer is "Yes, Café William is actively using sailboats for transporting coffee as part of their commitment to sustainability. They partner with TransOceanic Wind Transport (TOWT) to ship coffee beans using wind-powered cargo ships, significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Their latest initiative includes transporting coffee...

On the show this month, we are delighted to receive Jean Zanuttini, president of Neoline.  End of January, Neoline launched in Turkey an innovative and eco-friendly vessel, the Neoliner Origin. This 136-meter wind-powered ro-ro cargo ship is designed to transport rolling and oversized freight across the Atlantic.  The Neoliner Origin appears to be a significant step forward in the decarbonization...

To wrap up 2024, we're thrilled to welcome Nico Cymbalist to the show. Calling from California, Nico will introduce us to Clippership , one of the few wind propulsion projects in the US. Nico, an aerodynamic specialist and former engineer at Mercedes Formula One and Tesla, founded Clippership a year ago with three partners. The company's ambition is to transport pallets faster and more c...

To launch the fourth season of Hoisting the Sail, we are delighted to welcome back Grain de Sail, the pioneer in modern, wind powered ocean shipping operating sailing cargoes since 2020. Stefan Gallard, marketing director is joined by Jacques Barreau, CEO and co-founder.  In our first discussion with Stefan in 2021, he detailed the inception and early stage development of Grain de Sail, its unique...

This episode is taking you to the high seas with our guest Boris Herrmann, the skipper of the IMOCA Team Malizia, currently racing around the world in the Ocean Race 2023.  Yes, it’s a lot about racing sailboats. You’ll discover Boris’s joy and thrills of racing high performance sailing machines around the planet, but it’s also a lot about the future of maritime transportation.  Because, it’s now...

This week's episode brings us down memory lane.  Our guest on March 31st, 2021 was Roger Strevens,  VP Global Sustainability at Wallenius Wilhelmsen. Roger shared with us the design and feasibility assessment of the Orcelle Wind, the car carrier that will be powered primarily by wind, killing emissions by up to 90% in comparison to other new-built ships.  Today, Kat Bride is catching up with...

We are thrilled to introduce our two new guests. They met on a boat and decided to start a shipping company. They both are committed to succeed on their mission, helped by their passion and their business acumen. One is an accomplished athlete, a sailor whose credentials are world-renowned. The other is an engineer who has worked with success in the automobile industry. Together, with three other...

This episode of Hoisting the Sail begins with the wish of a sail racer who yearned to pilot a flying sailboat above the water and win every race.  In 1987, legendary sailor Éric Tabarly famously proclaimed that “one day, all boats will fly.” Today’s guest, Richard Forest, CEO and co-founder of SEair, diligently leads a team of engineers to prove Tabarly was right!  Founded in 2016 and based in Lor...

This new episode of Hoisting the Sail is taking you to Barcelona! Our guest is David Ferrer Desclaux , co-founder & CTO of bound4blue . A trained aerospace engineer, he switched to the vast horizon of our blue planet in 2015 and started, along with a group of classmates, bound4blue , “to power the world with wind”. Bound4Blue is developing an automated wind-assisted propulsion system, the eSAI...

Our guest today is Christiaan De Beukelaer , a sailor, traveller, and a researcher at the University of Melbourne.  Christiaan and Kat discuss his book Trade Winds, A voyage to a sustainable shipping. In 2020, Christiaan De Beukelaer spent 150 days covering 14,000 nautical miles aboard the schooner Avontuur, a hundred-year-old sailing vessel that transports cargo across the Atlantic Ocean. Embarki...

In this episode,  you are in for a treat with our guest Daniel Hubbell .  We first met Dan around a glass of wine and a bar of chocolate aboard Grain de Sail last spring in Brooklyn and interviewed him in October when he was the Shipping Emission Campaign Manager for Ocean Conservancy (since the interview, Dan started a new position as Policy Analyst at U.S. Department of State)  Daniel Hubbell ta...

In this new episode, we are thrilled to receive Nicolas Abiven . Nicolas is a Senior Engineer at the Chantiers de l’Atlantique, the shipyard in Saint Nazaire, France. The 150 years old shipyard has launched some of the most iconic vessels, such as the Normandie, the Queen Mary 2 and the Splendor of the Sea to name a few.  After launching a first concept ship equipped of sails, Eoseas, in 2009, les...

We launch today Season 3 with an interview of Clare Newman , the president and CEO of  the Trust for Governors Island .  Kat and Clare discuss many facets of sustainability and adaptability - New York City since Sandy, the current and future developments on Governors Island, its maritime facade and the many experiments that can be run from the Island. Governors Island , located South of Manhattan...

In this new episode of Hoisting the Sail, we are delighted to welcome two guests from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute :  Kerry Ann Crehan-Strøm , the Marine Operations Coordinator for WHOI and Magdalena Andres , associate scientist physical oceanography and an expert on climate variability & impacts. Magdalena and Kerry are speaking with our host Kat about Science RoCS, i.e. Research on...

In this new episode, our guest, Benoit Baisle Dailliez, initiative leader for WISAMO by Michelin, explains how the giant tires manufacturer came to develop a solution suitable to any vessels, and more particularly cargo ships (new or existing). Their motto, “ Engineered by Michelin, powered by the wind ”, makes clear that the company is fully committed to the decarbonization of maritime transport...

This week's episode is about performance sailing and how innovation in yacht racing can be transferred to maritime shipping, making it more efficient and cleaner. We are delighted to receive John Cooper , who is the CEO of BAR Technologies , a company that is at the forefront of maritime innovation.  Cooper joined BAR Technologies as CEO In October 2019, swapping automotive technology for mar...

We are back this week to welcome Martina Reche Villanova , a naval architect and maritime engineer, with a special focus on aerodynamics, green shipping, and digitalization. Though originally from Spain, she finished her Master’s degree at the Denmark University of Technology in Wind-Assisted Propulsion Systems.  Villanova currently works at North Sails in Denmark, an international sailmaker and s...

In this week's episode, we welcome Miles Keeney-Ritchie and Satchel Douglas , the founders of ALOFT . This startup champions wind propulsion and was founded in 2021. They aim to retrofit current ships with wind propulsion and optimize operations to significantly reduce shipping supply chain emissions.  Our guests are creators and well-experienced in the technical field. Satchel is a naval arc...

In today’s episode, we are delighted to host James Rhodes , the Chairman, CEO, and Co-founder of Magnuss , a maritime technology firm. Rhodes brings over 30 years of experience in maritime shipping, renewable energy, investment banking, and management consulting. Magnuss delivers onboard systems that reduce fuel consumption and emissions for today's global shipping fleet. Rhodes joins us to t...

We are delighted to receive today one of the early partners of Wind Support NYC,  Guilhem Gaillarde, calling from  Utrecht in the Netherlands. 

In today’s episode, we are delighted to receive Ami Daniel, the co-Founder, and CEO of Windward: a maritime data and analytics company. Daniel is an entrepreneur and a driver of technological change and is the recipient of the Israeli President's Award for Social Activism and The Ilan Ramon Award for Leadership and Excellence. Windward is a Predictive Intelligence company that is digitalizing...

This week we take a step back from our usual topic of wind propulsion and decarbonization of the maritime transport to promote a fairly new documentary: “Maiden.”  This documentary tells the story of the first all-woman crew to race around the world on a sailboat named Maiden and how they challenged the male-dominated world of sailing. This endeavor begins with Tracy Edwards who recruited a 12-wom...

This week's guest is Yves Parlier, a legendary sailor and an individual with a passion for innovation. During the Vendee Globe 2000-2001, Parlier, after a devastating dismasting, completed an ingenious repair to his ship’s wing mast and still managed to finish the race. This achievement, among others, has placed him in the public eye as an extraordinary sailor. He has since then switched care...

Our guest this week, Geraud Pellat de Villedon, Head of CSR for the supply chain at Michelin, joins us to bring a new perspective on the shipping industry. Michelin, the French  tire manufacturer,  is one of the largest shippers worldwide, transporting 240,000 TEUs per year. This company has been a leader in innovating ways to be greener since they introduced their green tire technology in the ear...

This week we welcome Dr Harilaos Psaraftis , a professor at the Technical University of Denmark.  He completed his undergraduate studies in Greece and received a diploma from the National Technical University of Athens. He later received two M.Sc. degrees from MIT, the first in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering and the second in Shipping and Shipbuilding Management. Shortly after, he acqui...