Sailboat Café

Canadian coffee roaster Café William announces first cargo sailboat set sail from South America.

Move over Starbucks. These roasters are using a big, beautiful sailboat to bring in their beans. The journey will take approximately one month, and transport 160,000 lbs of green coffee. Café Williams is a Canadian company with the mission to provide zero emission coffee, and announced that their first shipment set sail from Columbia, bound for North America. The beans are aboard Vega, a Swedish built, three-masted, square-rigged cargo sailing schooner. Vega was based on traditional Scandinavian ship designs, with White Oak framing, Douglas Fir deck timbers, and copper sheathing added to her hull for safety and longevity. Her total dry goods capacity is approximately 82 tons of coffee.

Vega is owned and operated by Sailcargo, who are leading the pack in traditional wind powered shipping. They are currently building a fleet of cargo sailing ships that will transport goods out of South America. Under construction in their Costa Rica shipyard is Ceiba, a 46-meter, top-sail schooner that will carry 250 metric tons of goods.

And if you’re in the mood for some carbon friendly Canadian coffee, you can check them out here.

Race Updates

ARKEA Ultim Challenge is under way for the six skippers sailing solo around the world on Ocean 50 class trimarans. Below are some of our readers most common questions about the race, answered.

Size: All of the boats are within a maximum size of 32 meters length, and 23 meters width. Besides that, each boat’s foiling systems are unique. The top speed of the boats is over 50 knots, but the average speed will be 30 knots, fast enough that they will be able to out run some weather systems.

Obstacles: aka, what are they doing about hitting stuff in the ocean? There is a virtual exclusion zone being imposed around ice, as well as known whale breeding areas. Each boat has obstacle avoidance tech ranging from AIS, to mast mounted object detectors.

Sailing: Each skipper has a 24/7 team on land, helping them with every aspect of navigation and routing, as well as autopilot for most tasks underway. Tacking or jibing have to be done manually, and can take up to 30 minutes after sheeting in the sails, and raising and lowering the foils and rudders. Changing a headsail can take up to and hour, and weigh 265 lbs; skippers will be given three course options - from most efficient, to easiest, depending on their energy level.

Ocean Globe Race pack leader Translated 9 has been issued a 172 hour penalty after sending 3 sails off to to be repaired, without previous authorization. Occasionally, teams will use the penalty in exchange for new sails as a tactical advantage, but it is unclear what happened here. The captain has resigned, and is being replaced.

Leg 3 of the race kicks off this coming Sunday, with fair winds expected for the Auckland departure.

Sailing Snippets

Carbon Baltic Boat: She’s big, she’s fast, she’s (mostly) electric, and named after the Caribbean god Zemi. Check out the newly released pics of the carbon-composite world cruiser, complete with teak decking and plenty of modest table lamps to spare. After all, what is a mega yacht without those table lamps.

Barbie Boat: Speaking of Baltic, they’re also building an 80’ custom sailing yacht with a…pink hull? Apparently, this is a new trend we missed. Looks like there will be some colorful regattas in store. Check that out here.

Ice Boat: This mysterious sailboat showed up, dropped anchor, and never left. Now, she’s iced in for the winter. The local land dwellers are puzzled, and just a little worried. The spring ice break-up has been known to tumble massive boulders, and push trees up river. Will she be a hazard for snowmobilers on the lake? Check out that local story here.