Cool, but not really new, been around since the mid 1920s. It’s good to see them in such a large commercial ship though.

Kinda reminds me of the turbosail used on the Cousteau ship Alcyone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbosail 

Oh wow, a schooner! 

Wasn’t Jacques Cousteau using a ship with these in the 80s?

You can build a model airplane out of KFC Buckets with this weird effect:

Fun fact: the Flettner Rotor was invented by German inventor Anton Flettner (1885-1961) in 1924. The first ship, built at that time, was the Buckau. They typically use electric motors powered by on-board generators to spin up the rotors.

They’re sails. The propulsion comes from the direct action of the wind on the sails, without a transfer of energy to another system.

that accent tho...

Psh, that’s an auxiliary sail on a motor vessel. That’s like calling my sailboat a motorboat because it’s got a little outboard hanging off the transom.

This is really counterintuitive, and it took my brain a while to sort of understand it, but did you know that with conventional sails, the fastest direction to travel is actually not parallel to the wind, but at an angle? Apparently, certain types of sail-powered craft are actually able to travel faster than the wind…

A 2-cylinder sailboat. Neat.

You had me at space wiener.

Let’s cut to the chase: is the boat named Saily McSailyface, or something like that?

There was something at the end of the article stating that some Canadians filed a suit over it but that was it

Correct. If you’d like a longer introduction, we’ve got that too:

Just so I’m clear... this isn’t a real article?

McSting?  Did he do Fields of Golden Arches?

Thank you so much, Kevin, for this article. Please post more Lucky Peach!

YAN UPDATE

Good stuff. Always liked Yan Can Cook.