| Future Sailing: Winged Ferries |  |
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| Kimball Livingston |
| Sunday, 13 March 2011 00:02 |
The people behind a plan to launch winged, wind-assisted ferries on San Francisco Bay have already carried thousands of passengers under sail. That would be Jay Gardner, Pam Simonson, and Hans Korfin of Adventure Cat Sailing Charters. They presented their winged-ferry concept last week to officials at Golden Gate Transit. I figure it’s an idea whose time has come. With San Francisco Bay’s seasonally-reliable winds, it would be possible for such a ferry to cover certain routes at certain times entirely under wind power. For the sake of maintaining schedules, however, the proposed new ferries will have propulsion, and for the sake of keeping everybody calm, we’ll be calling them “wind-assisted” for a projected forty percent reduction in fuel cost and emissions.
Not to mention, they would become an iconic focal point of San Francisco Bay. “If Auckland is the City of Sails, San Francisco could be the City of Wings,” Gardner said. With wing-powered America’s Cup boats coming to the bay, we’re halfway there already. |
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