It’s a scene that’s played out in the Vitters shipyard over two dozen times since the Dutch team built its first sailing yachts in the early 1990s: the bustle of activity as a hull is painted, an interior fitted out and tested, an operating system installed. When a project nears completion, what was once a sketch on paper both slowly and suddenly transforms into a tangible reality.
Yet this time is unlike any other in the history of not only Vitters, but yachting overall – because, this time, the vessel in question is no ordinary yacht. It’s the extraordinary Zero – a 69m aluminium ketch that, finally, is proof that zero-emissions sailing is possible.
Vripack’s co-creative director, Marnix J. Hoekstra laughs, “The end is nearing, sometimes quicker than we all want it to be”. Zero is on track to be in the water for sea trials and systems, commissioning “before the second half of the year”, adds project manager Eduard van Benthem. As he states, building a “significant vessel” operated purely by harvested renewable energy for extended periods of autonomy without compromising onboard comfort is “no small task”. In fact, more than 60,000 hours of research have been invested in the project.
However, for Vitters Shipyard, Vripack Yacht Design and Dykstra Naval Architects, the trio of players charged with the job, it’s never been a question of not succeeding. “We’ve focused our mindset on what we internally call the ‘how might we?’ question, rather than asking ‘can we?’, which can quickly be deflected by ‘no’,” says Hoekstra. “That’s how we have opened our minds up to finding solutions.”
The primary source
There was no bigger question than exactly ‘how might they’ power a boat capable of circumnavigating the world using purely renewable energy sources. One resource emerged above all others. “Hydro-generation as the primary source of energy has become instrumental for the success of Zero,” explains Mark Leslie-Miller, partner at Dykstra Naval Architects. “Early on, it was one option among many, but it quickly became clear that if Zero was to sail the world, energy independence couldn’t be an afterthought.”
That decision, Leslie-Miller continues, unlocked a cascade of engineering challenges as they sought to balance efficiency, drag, reliability and redundancy in constantly changing conditions. “Hydro-generation forced us to design the entire system around motion, making continuous sailing not just a goal, but a technical necessity,” he says. Hoekstra concurs. “Hydro-generation of the boat while under sail is very, very sophisticated,” he says. “It’s on a whole other level due to dimensions, solutions, even the pitch of the propeller and the forward-facing position of the thruster, itself at the front of the keel. It’s all really different.”
The other concept that has emerged as crucial to the success is the separation between thermal and electrical energy in harvesting, conserving, storing and managing the energy flow, says Leslie-Miller.
“We’ve developed multiple sources with both innovative PV-T panels and an onboard heat recovery system, incorporated heat storage with heat batteries that use phase change material, and combined thermal insulation with cooling panels in the walls and deckheads [which] all contribute to maximising power generation while minimising energy consumption and waste,” adds van Benthem.
“A quiet force”
For Hokestra, what has slowly become central is the open-source philosophy driven by Foundation Zero’s core mission: to openly share new ideas, design, data and learnings to promote the use of renewable technologies. “The freedom to speak about everything has sped up conversations as we weren’t bound by NDAs and didn’t lose weeks and weeks on legalities,” he reflects. “It has allowed us to enter into communications with bigger groups of people outside of our industry. It has really become a quiet force.”
From the start, the foundation resolved that elements from the project – such as control system code, hardware design and operational data – should be shared to show the Superyacht sector, and beyond, that a different approach could lead to different results. As a result, the Zero team is already seeing others reference their findings, adapt specific solutions and test parallel ideas in their own contexts. “In that sense, Zero is no longer just our project; it’s becoming part of a wider, shared learning process around sustainable ocean technology,” says Leslie-Miller.
The technical papers the team have released have been “well received by the industry”, he continues. “That helped establish credibility early on. Now that the project is in physical build and moving toward proof of concept, there’s a real sense of anticipation,” he says. People are genuinely eager to see the results from operating the yacht and the data that will come out of that.” In an industry where ambitious concepts either fade away or stay highly secretive, Zero’s open-source approach, combined with a large and diverse team, has made it “a project the industry actively follows to see what’s being developed and learned,” he shares.
Just the beginning
Of course, the team has run into their fair share of what van Benthem describes as “dead ends”: harvesting heat energy through the deck, for example. “When we ran simulations that modelled the amount of heat from the sun hitting the deck at different times of the year, it became apparent that the cost and complexity of installing a heat harvesting system far outweighed any benefits for the small amount of heat energy such a system could harvest,” van Benthem explains.
For Leslie-Miller, however, such impasses are among the moments to celebrate. “Especially in an open, knowledge-sharing project, learning what doesn’t work can be just as valuable – sometimes even more so – than a clean success,” he says.
The team tested ideas like electricity-generating kites flown from the stern, internal hull-mounted water turbines for hydro-generation and solar cloth integrated into the sails. “These are examples of ideas that didn’t prove viable, but sharing those outcomes helps others avoid dead ends and move faster. That mindset is something I’d like to formalise earlier if we started again,” continues Leslie-Miller.
Zero may be nearing completion, but it’s actually just the beginning, says van Benthem. “Launch and delivery are only the start points for the project, because this is when actual data will be generated and can be gathered and analysed in earnest. It’s when the team can start validating, sharing, improving and inspiring,” he says. “We’ll be honest about our findings, as our ultimate goal is to build a knowledge-sharing platform together with others, contributing to a sustainable future for yacht building and the maritime sector.”
