We've all seen articles about massive container ships of the future using kites to supplement their engines, but I suspect a really solarpunk future would look a bit further afield, or perhaps further back in time for their ship designs.
I think in any future with humans and continents, people are going to be trying to cross the ocean. There might be less shipping in a world without our abundance of cheap energy, or more of a focus on reducing consumption and producing necessities locally, but people will still trade goods and travel. So what might the ships look like? Return to tallships? Solar panels and electric motors? I love reexamining traditional technologies to see how they can fit with modern engineering and design principles, safety features, and electronics, but I don't know much about ships, and especially not much about modern sailing.
So what do you think will be bringing back holds full of old world fashions harvested from the Chilaen desert?
First of all local shipping will be a thing in solarpunk socities as well. Shipping is amazing at transporting huge things very cheaply and ferries will be around as well. Those might run electric to not be dependend as much on wind.
For ocean going vessels, I would bet on large sailing vessels using the trade winds, but also having solar, batteries and electric motors to cross areas with no or bad wind. We would likely still have weather satellites and run weather forecasts. The advantages of that are massive not just in shipping, but also for agriculture and many other things. So the ships would go for the best wind available for long journeys using that data. For going into ports electric motors would be used as well, to make it easier.
As for sailing themself, it likely would use sails connected to electric motors with some sort of micro controller making it easier. The sailing ships of old had to have a lot of sailors for the hard work of changing sails and so forth. That should not be needed in a solarpunk future. As for the masts they need to be collapseable or they need to use kites. This makes it easier to move around in port and allows for easier loading and unloading processes using containers, as the cranes need to be able to get them out of the ship. So old school tall ships would propably not be the ultimate solution.
I really like the mix of sails and electric motors for maneuvering and drive in poor wind conditions. The tech like weather satellites, GPS, and radio really would make a huge difference.
I hadn't considered the use of cranes in port, but that would be a big thing to loose. Really, containerized and palletized shipping are huge advantages we'd want to keep. I wonder what ship designs would look like, if you wanted something like a tallship in terms of size (so smaller than a massive container ship) and sail... volume? But able to access the cargo in a somewhat modern way. Maybe they really would spend some time outside the port stowing the sails and collapsing the masts before maneuvering in on electric power, maybe they'd build with a longer design or a missing mast for easier access to the hold. Thanks for talking through these!