HOW WE DO IT: HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL
CO-CREATING ACROSS HORIZONS
Western students work together with Pacific Islanders in boat building projects
at the front line of climate change
Project Windvinder works with islanders in South East Asia and Oceania, encouraging people to revive their sailing culture, to become independent of fossil fuel. Since we are having the same problem in the rest of the world, we are also busy at the high tech end of the scale, in the development of industrial wind propulsion for the cargo ships of tomorrow.
Why is it so difficult to make it happen? We have more knowledge, more capital, better technology in the world than ever before. We know, for example, that carbon-free shipping has been possible since thousands of years.
And this is where Project Windvinder to move the ships of the future with where it all starts: how to move people.
In 2014, we launched the International Windship Association. Our aim is to create a global network to for the development of wind propulsion in commercial shipping. It's fascinating to see how many people from all over the world are busy with this - engineers and NGO's, naval architects, universities, huge companies... ambitious, highly innovative shipbuilding projects.
How can we make it happen? Bring it from the computer screen to the ocean, turn the few forerunners which already operate at sea into a global reality?Technology is well underway. The problem is how to get the people on board. And this is, basically, what Windvinder is doing: bring people on board. Let people experience with their own hands that they are able to move.
Western thinking starts with the barriers says Albert Einstein. We have to step out of this circle, and look at the bigger picture.
Is it necessary?notIs it possible?
How about this:
Imagine we would start, for a change, not with the barriers, but with what is possible?
This is not a fairytale. Shipping is by definition something that happens between here and there.
Ten years ago I built the original Windvinder, first ship of a growing fleet of border-crossing expedition vessels, to explore the world beyond our limited horizon. The unmanned research vessel is operating on the Pacific Ocean since 2008, steered by wind alone and driven by headwind
Part 2 of Project Windvinder starts now - bringing western students together with Pacific islanders in the further development of this experimental training fleet, to help revive a culture of sailing, encouraging the building of seagoing sailing canoes in Oceania: fishing-, cargo- and passenger vessels. The same as what we need here, only in another culture.
Why should we support a fleet of canoes at the other end of the world, instead of concentrating on our own problems? Obviously we are having the same problem. We need to get independent of fossil fuels, and first of all we need to experience that this is possible.
I suggest to start where it is feasible
These people know that things have to change, and that there is no time to lose. They are the most resourceful people with the finest feeling for wind that I have ever met. The old ships are lost, but the essence of the ancient knowledge is still there, deep in the hearts of the islanders. This is the moment to build something new.
On some islands they do build new sailing canoes. Great and proud vessels. But why does it not spread across the whole ocean? I have worked with tuna fishermen in the West Pacific.
Very little is necessary, and these islanders can show us the way. Communication, more than anything else.
Winged Canoewhere the wind comes from.
What IS this? It doesn't catch fish, it doesn't transport anything, it makes no money - it needs no money - What then???
Windvinder is free and underway, and NOTHING ELSE.
THREE STEPS OF FINDING WIND -
TURNING HEADWIND INTO A BRAINSTORM
FIRST GENERATION: The original Windvinder - making contact
Windvinder invites his finders, the Windfindersthey can do it Windvinder one of them,while it turns victims into wind experts again.Windvinder is a pure idea, no people on board. He offers a sheltered space where you are allowed to think what you would not dare to think in your normal surrounding.
Can you do that?
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THIRD GENERATION: Sailing fleets continue to grow and become a normal sight, helping to inspire a global network of sailing cargo ships and fishing vessels
WindvinderHow can we make it happen on a global scale? People all over the world have to make it their own project. They have to know they can do it, they have to know how, and why.not to build canoes for the port of Rotterdam, or space ships for remote islands, but to find out how much more is possible (and indeed, already happening!) than each one alone could imagine before.
Why do we spend our time with experimental headwind vessels, if what we need is a fleet of hardworking real ships?
People on both ends of the scale need a broader view, a global, long term vision. We need ideas from beyond our barriersand beyonda neutral territory where islanders and engineers can meet on a same level.
a parallel world laboratory as a place where we can meet, where we can play with ideas and new perspectives, learn to listen and build trust without losing our face.
And then the real ships: canoes and freighters.
What is different now? Just the perspective: This time we start with what works
Voyage and building projects on the ocean will be accompanied by talks, workshops and a traveling and interactive exhibition on land about the growing swarm of Windfinders.
If you are interested in the exhibition or other events, please 
contact us .