Rick. It takes lots of sophistication to design a boat as Tams-8 that is such a marvel of simplicity. The boat you discuss in this thread would be like a Tams-18: roughly weighing in at 4T of which 1T for the solar electric drive system at a cost of below USD 50K.
This is already quite competitive with most sailing systems. Solar electric systems will not drop in price as fast as Moore's law but do you see any reason why such system at this scale discussed would not drop in price by about the average 3% per year estimated for most of its components? This would give a good indication how fast sails&masts will be outcompeted over the coming years.
Of course it is also not easy to forego the temptation of taking advantage of a good wind. What are the chances that a kite system like the kitetender could be devised that would not compromise the Tams design too much? Maybe Rob is on to that too?
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Posted by: lucjdekeyser@telenet.be
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