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Sail freight comes to the 21st century!
For the past few years, filmmaker Jon Bowermaster (After The Spill) has watched a singular sailing boat being renovated in various ports along the Hudson. The original purpose of the Schooner Apollonia, a 64-foot, steel-hulled sailboat built in the 1940s was to carry and deliver up to 20,000 pounds of cargo by sail. Their team of ambitious, young adventurers, led by Captain Sam Merrett, have been working steadily to restore the dilapidated hull, overhaul its engine and sails, carve new booms and mast and return it to the water.
The Apollonia has been trawling ports from Hudson to Kingston, Beacon, Newburgh, Poughkeepsie, Piermont and Ossining, its hold stuffed with all kinds of Upstate goods headed south – and products made in Brooklyn and Manhattan returning back north – using only sustainable energy – sail power and/or vegetable oil!
Red oak logs, pumpkins, hundreds of thousands of pounds of malt headed to the boom-market of craft brewers, finely-made barrels (and whiskey), honey, hot sauce, and on and on, finding increasingly bigger markets in Red Hook, Brooklyn and the South Street Seaport as savvy shoppers get used to the boat’s once-a-month deliveries.
At a moment when global shipping is in the news every day for its Pandemic-spawned slowdown, and as people consider the carbon footprint of those overnight Amazon orders, shipping by fossil-free sail freight makes more and more sense.
39 minutes
SDH Captioned
Produced and Directed by Jon Bowermaster
Editor: Chris Rahm
Original Music: Aled Roberts
Cinematography: Devin Pickering, Chris Rahm
An Oceans 8 Films Production
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"This is an interesting, inspiring film about a not-so-crazy idea. Shipping cargo can be highly polluting to air and water. WINDSHIPPED shows how one person's dream could be part of the solution for all of us."
"WINDSHIPPED is the story of an emerging sail cargo industry that revives a time-tested model for a more ecological global supply chain. These are mariners of the future, rebuilding the vessel of civilization under different architectural principals, while building community and having fun. Students and educators will be inspired by this thriving example of a community putting into practice the famous saying, 'think globally, act locally.'"
Evan N. Shenkin, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Linfield University