The most serious attempt as yet to develop Wing Sails was by Mr. John Walker, a British aeronautical engineer, with his company Walker Wing Sail, which was listed on the London Stock Exchange in the early '80's and failed in 1996. His first experiment was a catamaran called Plain Sail with a quadruplane wing sail in 1969. The idea was to develop the system for small merchantmen, the only specimen being a small coastal tanker with a pretty small wing sail on the engine exhaust stack.
This was removed after a short time. Walker Wing Sail then produced yachts for a quarter of a century until a couple of journalists from Yachting Monthly were lent a boat to describe it in the magazine. They refused instruction in the handling of the boat because they were very experienced yachtsmen, failed to sail the boat and wrote that it couldn't be sailed, ignoring the fact that the company had been living from selling such yachts for more than twenty years. The magazine was later sentenced to paying 100 000 English Pounds, but the company was lost.
The trouble with these and similar wing sails is that the designers start off from aeronautical wing profiles which are entirely unsuitable for this purpose unless the boat is very small. Also your speed sailor can wait for the right circumstances, a merchantmen or a fishing vessel can't. I have found it extremely difficult to free myself from the limits of aircraft thinking even while I started with the idea that I had to do so.
This was removed after a short time. Walker Wing Sail then produced yachts for a quarter of a century until a couple of journalists from Yachting Monthly were lent a boat to describe it in the magazine. They refused instruction in the handling of the boat because they were very experienced yachtsmen, failed to sail the boat and wrote that it couldn't be sailed, ignoring the fact that the company had been living from selling such yachts for more than twenty years. The magazine was later sentenced to paying 100 000 English Pounds, but the company was lost.
The trouble with these and similar wing sails is that the designers start off from aeronautical wing profiles which are entirely unsuitable for this purpose unless the boat is very small. Also your speed sailor can wait for the right circumstances, a merchantmen or a fishing vessel can't. I have found it extremely difficult to free myself from the limits of aircraft thinking even while I started with the idea that I had to do so.