PALERMO - 18th Waypoint

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Being Sicily's administrative capital, Palermo is a centre for much of the region's finance, tourism and commerce. The city currently hosts an international airport. Palermo's economic growth over the years has brought the opening of many new businesses. The economy mainly relies on tourism and services, but also has commerce, shipbuilding and agriculture.

The port of Palermo was founded by the Phoenicians over 2,700 years ago together. From here ferries link Palermo to Cagliari, Genoa, Livorno, Naples, Tunis and other cities and carry a total of almost 2 million passengers annually. It is also an important port for cruise ships. Traffic includes also almost 5 million tonnes (5.5 million short tons) of cargo and 80,000 TEUs yearly.

Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea and one of the 20 regions of Italy. It is one of the five Italian autonomous regions, in Southern Italy along with surrounding minor islands, officially referred to as Regione Siciliana.

Sicily is located in the central Mediterranean Sea, south of the Italian Peninsula, from which it is separated by the narrow Strait of Messina. Its most prominent landmark is Mount Etna, the tallest active volcano in Europe, and one of the most active in the world.

[Left] Sergio Mattarella OMRI, OMCA is an Italian politician, lawyer and academic serving as the 12th and current President of Italy since 2015. 

[Centre] Giuseppe Conte is an Italian jurist and politician serving as the 58th and current Prime Minister of Italy since 1 June 2018.

[Right] Sebastiano Musumeci is an Italian politician. Since 18 November 2017 he is President of Sicily. He previously was a Member of the European Parliament for the Italian seat Islands, where he was a member of the Union for a Europe of Nations parliamentary group. He sat on the European Parliament's Committee on Fisheries and its Committee on Industry, Research and Energy.

Palermo is a city of decay and of splendour and, provided you can handle its raw energy, deranged driving and chaos, has plenty of appeal. Many of the city’s treasures are hidden, rather than scrubbed up for endless streams of tourists. Be prepared to explore: this giant treasure-trove of palaces, castles and churches has a unique architectural fusion of Byzantine, Arab, Norman, Renaissance and baroque gems.

Our Trustees believe that it might be useful to anyone interested in progressing low carbon transport, for us to plan a route for the Elizabeth Swan, such that if it is deemed a worthy cause in the battle to tackle climate change, that we have a plan in place to demonstrate clean ocean transport is not as far away as one might imagine, should the political will crystallize to accelerate sustainable technology after COP 24 in December 2018.

If the Foundation were to support the initiation of such a challenge, it would be in a dual format, also being designed as  an ocean awareness campaign to attract a global audience to gain the highest potential media coverage.

18TH LEG - The eighteenth leg of this zero carbon voyage is approximately 170 nautical miles from Palermo, Sicily to Naples, Italy. At a cruising speed of 7 knots average cruising speed this leg of the awareness campaign campaign would take 1 day to complete. At 6 knots the journey would take 1.5 days.

We must add the cumulative total of the transit time in days for each leg to the media and PR sleepover in port to find the average circumnavigation speed. It will be interesting to see how closely any actual voyage matches the route planning estimations.

Hence this is a theoretical exercise to determine what might be possible in the world of cargo and passenger transport if future ships were to use a power formula derived from the Elizabeth Swan and SeaVax platforms, to increase voyage speed for zero carbon shipping such as to be commercially viable and non polluting.

The following then is a contingency plan to be ready should the Foundation or any Government, Organization, ocean literacy associate or collaborative research partner decide (jointly) that we are in a suitably robust position to mount such a challenge to be worthwhile in awareness terms, including advancing climate control knowledge.

The above does not preclude the possibility of  responsible commercial associates enjoining - being a most welcome prospect, perhaps when the Foundation is further along the R&D line and any proposed circumnavigation presents less of a technical risk share to potential contributors and end users, such as ship builders and fleet operators. Such partnerships might accelerate project development considerably.

OCEAN AWARENESS - PROVISIONING & MEDIA STOPS

We are making allowance for nineteen (19) provisioning and Public Relations stops of three days duration each. This adds an extra 57 days to the expedition in the interests of furthering awareness objectives. Hence, the passage would not be an outright race, unless any consortium providing financial incentives decided not to stop for photo opportunities by way of a condition in accepting support. If a race was decided on, provisions for a 3-4 person crew would need to be stored on board. Being solar and wind powered there is no need for conventional refueling.

RECORD HOLDER - On the 4th of May 2012, history was made, as Raphael Domjan, at the helm of a giant of a catamaran powered only by solar panels crossed the finishing line at Monaco to become the first electric boat to sail around the world. MS Tûranor PlanetSolar, known under the project name PlanetSolar, was (@ 2018) the largest solar-powered boat in the world. The vessel was launched on the 31st March 2010, also going into the Guinness Book of World Records with a time of 584 days to better by any contender. The project was mostly financed by Immo Stroeher, the owner of the boat. Though a magnificent endeavour, PlanetSolar was not designed at the outset to take full advantage of energy from nature, but was rather a very much modified ferry design.

FOSSIL FUELS - The Cable and Wireless Adventurer was built for the purpose of circumnavigating the world in less than 80 days. This was successfully accomplished in July 1998 in 74 days, 20 hours, 58 minutes, traveling more than 22,600 nautical miles (26,000 miles or 41,855 km). This achievement set a new Guinness World Record for a diesel powered vessel. The nautical mile or knot, is a unit of speed equal to approximately 1.15078 miles per hour on land (1.852 km). Solar power cannot compete with diesel engines. This boat is though one of the links in the evolution, or archaeology of efficient hulls.

CIRCUMNAVIGATION MILESTONE EXPEDITION ESTIMATES

CLIMATE CHANGER - The above table illustrates one of the most likely ocean awareness expedition routes, known as the 'Sunshine Route,' showing the time elapsed in days for 7 knots average cruising speed, including times for 5 and 6 knot averages - allowing for 10% downtime and 36 days in ports. Hence, although the objective is to reduce the current solar circumnavigation record from 584 days, the event in not an outright non-stop yacht competition in the offshore racing sense. It remains to be seen how accurate such a prediction might be. In this table we only allowed 36 days for provisioning and PR but added a 10% contingency for servicing, that could be used for additional time in ports. As a Climate Changing event, performance is one of the main criteria, especially concerning the possibilities for a transition to low carbon shipping and the contribution this might make in combating global warming.

USE THE LINKS ABOVE TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE PROPOSED WORLD ROUTE WAYPOINTS

LINKS & REFERENCE

https://www.planetsolar.org/

http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/first-circumnavigation-by-solar-powered-boat

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