14 DAY TRIAL // Thanks to fuel-powered engines, sailing ships have pretty much fallen off the means of transportation map, but rumor has it that environmental concerns having to do with pollution could bring these vessels back under the spotlight.
However, one must not work on the assumption that ships like those featured in “The Pirates of the Caribbean” will soon start showing up in harbors worldwide.
Quite the contrary: if sailing ships are indeed to make a comeback, wind power will undoubtedly be harvested with the help of state-of-the-art technologies.
According to some sources, a team of scientists from the University of Tokyo is already working towards developing a ship whose sails are made from fiber-reinforced plastic rather than from canvas.
In all fairness, more traditional fuels will probably still be used to a certain extent, so these ships will be some sort of an oversized equivalent of land hybrid vehicles, but all in all we're guessing that, at least from an environmental standpoint, this is good news indeed.