The Oil Drum

Cousteau was indeed a great innovator and advocate for global environmental awareness.

However, his venture into an innovative form of wind propulsion, as manifested in his ship, the Alcyone, was based on an entirely different form of wind technology than these 'kite' type systems reported in the above article. The Alcyone used a patented 'Turbosail', which essentially consisted of a fixed rigid tower of ovoid cross-section. There were slots built into portions of the sides of the tower and a large exhaust fan on the top of the tower, which sucked air into the sides of the tower, thus creating a low-pressure zone and also allowing for better vortex shedding. I recall that the slots could be adjusted to accomodate wind strength and direction, thus allowing the thrust of the sail to be shifted without actually moving it.

Evidently, it was a very efficient 'sail', but for various reasons, I think partly having to do with structural problems (a large fixed tower on a ship in a bad storm is subject to tremendous stresses), it never really caught on. Perhaps with some improvements it could get a second life.

In general, while these modern 'sails' could concievably give merchant ships a nice boost of power and help conserve energy, I doubt they could be all that effective other than in sailing pretty much directly downwind, as a large merchant ship running on both propellers and sail power would not be very conducive to tacking, a practice which would both lengthen the distance travelled and increase the duration of the voyage, the latter being a real no-no in these days of just-in-time inventory.