Danielle Doggett is the Executive Director of SAILCARGO, a carbon-neutral shipping company in the process of building the world’s largest emission-free cargo ship, Ceiba. The team uses high-quality wood and old-world shipbuilding techniques with the goal of transporting artisanal products from Central America to the US and Canada. In this episode, Danielle joins Alexsandra and Ross to discuss how Ceiba will be powered by wind energy and explain how it compares to traditional ships.
Full Transcript
Alexsandra Guerra: You’re listening to the Reversing Climate Change podcast by the team at Nori, the carbon removal marketplace. This is a show about the innovators and entrepreneurs developing solutions to climate change. Hello, and welcome to the Reversing Climate Change podcast. My name is Alexsandra Guerra, and I’m here with my co-host, wonderful Ross Kenyon.
Ross Kenyon: That was lovely last time. I’m wonderful this time. What am I going to be next time?
Alexsandra Guerra: Witty. Witty. Snarky.
Ross Kenyon: Okay. No, I don’t know. Well, sometimes. It depends on the day. Yeah. I try not to. Well, we have with us today Danielle Doggett, CEO of Sail Cargo and SEBA. Danielle, thanks for being here.
Danielle Doggett: Hi, thank you so much. So thankful to be here.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, we’ve been trying to schedule for a while, but geography has conspired against us because you’re in Costa Rica and traveling around and we’ve been busy too. So finally, it has occurred.
Danielle Doggett: Absolutely. Yeah, I’m really happy to finally connect on that level. Thanks for having me.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. Yeah. Our pleasure. Well, we heard about you through the Black Sheep episode that we did about permaculture. And then we heard about this cool company who’s building wooden ships to move artisanal products from Central America to markets in the United States. We’re like, we got to do a show on that. That is far out. Is that an accurate take on what you’re doing?
Danielle Doggett: Yeah, I guess you could say that. I definitely know the guys at Black Sheep, girls and guys there. They’re an amazing group and they are... Yeah, some people we connect with here in Costa Rica quite a bit. And SEBA, the ship we’re building here in Costa Rica, is going to be the world’s largest emission-free cargo ship when she’s launched, hopefully at the end of 2021. And we will be doing cargo out of Central America and up to as far as Alaska and Canada. So and then down the west coast of the United States.
Ross Kenyon: Listener, you can say that you understand now why I was into an episode like this. It’s visual. It’s cool. I don’t know anything else happening quite like this. So who exactly are your customers? How does sail cargo work? What’s your broad vision of what you’re trying to create?
Danielle Doggett: So we’re trying to inspire the shipping industry to eliminate or work towards being carbon neutral and We’re not the biggest ship in the world, so she’ll be 148 feet overall and capable of carrying the equivalent of up to 10 containers worth of cargo. So not actually shipping containers themselves. The cargo would be palletized and that would be up to 250 tonnes of cargo. And we basically add value to our clients products by eliminating the transportation carbon footprint that is associated with their transportation. So we’re essentially repairing the final broken link in their otherwise sustainable supply chain.
And we’re going to be bringing the world’s most important and impressive products to the world stage. And we hope to do so completely mission-free in a way that is socially, environmentally, and financially viable. So some of our, well, just to reference, you guys had them, mentioned them again, Black Sheep. I think they were episode 80. And they’re going to be exporting organic turmeric oil. So it’s an essential oil. And that’s going to be a very large cargo that we move up to the Port Townsend in Seattle area.
Alexsandra Guerra: Cool. So you’re doing this all through wind energy?
Danielle Doggett: Yes, technically she will be most of the time 100% wind powered. So we will have the traditional sails. So that’s her primary engine is her three masts and the sails. And then what we call her auxiliary or backup engine will be the largest marine electric engine of its kind in the world. So it’ll be A fully clean electric engine. And we’ll be storing power in the batteries when the ship is actually sailing. So when there’s kind of too much wind, I guess you could say that basically equates to an excess of energy.
And we can capture that when we’re sailing. So SEBA will have two underwater turbines, which are the ship’s propellers. And when we’re sailing using the actual sails, we can collect or capture electric energy using those. So we’ll be converting essentially wave And wind energy into stored electric energy, which we can use in the future whenever we want, meaning that Seba will be almost at all times powered by the wind.
Alexsandra Guerra: I think that is so cool. But you must lose some time on your delivery, though, if you’re moving slower because you’re allowing the propellers to move with the water to spin these and charge the battery, no?
Danielle Doggett: Yeah, so they will be really quite high-tech propellers, so they’re called feathering pitch propellers, and we can adjust how much drag we want to have or have no drag. So if it’s light wind conditions, we can basically eliminate that drag and continue sailing along. Now, that’s not to say that she’ll be the fastest boat in the world, but the propellers won’t cause excess drag if we choose to put them in line with the way we’re going.
Ross Kenyon: I’d like to get a sense of scale here. So when I think about what you’re doing, part of the reason I get excited is because I have this sort of image of the Victorian days. I see clipper ships, you know, rounding the Cape. I think that’s very cool. How big were those ships relative to Saba?
Danielle Doggett: What’s a clipper ship? A clipper ship is a ship that would typically trade tea and other spices from very long distances. So the clipper ships, especially the extreme clippers, We’re some of the fastest in the world. So you have the Cutty Sark, some people have heard of.
Ross Kenyon: The Cutty Sark, I think you can still visit. It’s on the Thames.
Danielle Doggett: Yes, you can. Yep. Yeah, so they’re bigger than Seba. They are not quite twice the size, but they’re actually quite large boats. And so Seba will be about 150 feet overall, where they could be up to, that’s on the bigger side, but up to 300 feet.
Ross Kenyon: Cool. That makes sense to me. Then that’s a good place to sort of ground it. And then if you’re carrying, I believe you said 150 tonnes. Is that what you said Sabah’s carrying?
Danielle Doggett: 200, 250 tonnes.
Ross Kenyon: 250 tonnes, my mistake. In Seattle here, we drive by the port to go to the airport all the time. So I see these giant Maersk ships. How many tonnes are they carrying?
Danielle Doggett: Well, I’m not sure exactly the tonnes that they can carry, but a comparison I can give is that Sabah will be able to carry to 10 containers worth. And some of the largest ships in the world can carry up to 22,000 containers.
Alexsandra Guerra: Jesus.
Danielle Doggett: Yeah, so we’re barely a drop of water in the ocean when it comes to sheer scale and size.
Ross Kenyon: It’s like a little, it’s a nice boutique artisanal option if you don’t want to use them.
Danielle Doggett: Yeah, but it is, if you want to picture it, it’s like 350 square pallets more or less is what we can load. So in terms of small producers, it’s a pretty considerable amount.
Alexsandra Guerra: And you keep saying that Seba will be. So is this ship still under design, under construction, or is it sailing now?
Danielle Doggett: She is currently under construction. If I were to just turn around, I can take a look. This past Friday, we hoisted the 23rd frame. So in total, she has 56 frames, and the framing is some of the most technical and difficult parts. So we’re about 41% done the framing, which is really exciting. We hope to get her in the water at the end of 2021.
Ross Kenyon: Cool. We can hear, I’ve heard a couple saws go off.
Unknown speaker: I know.
Ross Kenyon: The birds we forgive just because that’s just...
Danielle Doggett: The guys that are working overtime.
Ross Kenyon: Working overtime. Yeah, that’s great. Where do you find people who know how to work on tall ships and deliver stuff like this? Where do you find these people that would populate and work this vessel?
Danielle Doggett: Well, we have a really interesting crew, a varied crew that have come from over 25 different nations, and so we’re quite international despite being kind of a young project. We maintain having around 50% of our workforce from Latin America, so we definitely want to provide job opportunities right here in our community. But in terms of bringing in skilled and experienced shipwrights, they’re going to be coming from a lot of places such as Northern Europe, Canada, United States, and Australia, because that’s the type of Shipbuilding that we’re doing. And yeah, we’ve had people come from, I don’t know, many different places.
Far reaching is Denmark, Madagascar and Australia.
Alexsandra Guerra: This is a pretty big project. I think it’s wonderful, obviously, because you’ll be providing a really good service with little to no carbon emissions, which is fantastic. How are you funding this? I mean, you’ve been working on this for how long? You still have until maybe the end of 2021. Can you tell us a little bit about your business model?
Danielle Doggett: Absolutely. So our business model is really the foundation of everything we’re doing here. There’s a lot of romance. There’s a lot of storytelling, you know, with the jungle shipyard, the life at sea, tall ships. But really what makes it happen is the business model and saying, yes, we can turn a profit. Yes, we can ensure that our shareholders are happy. So we are funded by people investing in shares. They can purchase stock in the ship and own the company that represents the ship herself. Yeah. While we do offer, and we’ve projected, we put a lot of effort into our numbers, we will offer a financial return on investment.
We’re also really focused on offering social and environmental returns as well. The whole project will cost about, is estimated to cost $4. 2 million US, and we’re about 25% funded at this time. We do say that we’re, I think it works out to around 36% of funding has been Secured or allocated and the difference there is that we count so some of our crew including myself are compensated by by getting shares in the company. So we can say that funding is essentially secured or we don’t need to go find it.
Ross Kenyon: We kind of skipped ahead of this a little bit, Danielle, but how does one find oneself in Costa Rica building a wooden ship? How did this happen by you to you? What led you there?
Danielle Doggett: By her.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah.
Danielle Doggett: Yeah. Well, I mean, my personal story, I started sailing on the St. Lawrence 2, which is a nonprofit brigantine. It’s a youth sail training camp up in Lake Ontario in Canada. And when I was 13, it really just inspired me and I stuck with it. And that’s been my career choice ever since. So yeah, I kind of ran away to sea, I guess you could say. But making the shift to working for not just sailing, for my own enjoyment and for working as an environmental company was definitely inspired by the company from the Netherlands, which is called Fair Transport.
And their ship, Tres Hombres. So that’s an engine-less brigantine that does cargo from the Caribbean up to Europe every year. And just to give a sense of skill, we can take 350 tonnes and Tres Hombres can take about 35 tonnes. And yeah, they’re just a very inspirational company. And I worked for them and saw a lot of things, great, really great inspirational things on how to make things go really well. And then I saw things, well, maybe we can make this a bit more financially viable. And which basically resulted in a larger ship for our purpose at this time.
Yeah. And just said, let’s do it. And I do want to, I do want to jump in and just give credit to my co-founder, Lynx Kimond. And Lynx is from Quebec and he has lived in Latin America for more than well over a decade and including right here in Costa Rica for about eight years. He’s a figurehead carver. And when our initial friend group was looking around, trying to find a nice place to work, mainly not Northern California, He said, come to Costa Rica. Costa Rica has not only two oceans.
It’s one of the most peaceful countries in the world. It has no army. It’s environmentally forward thinking. And it has not only all the wood and timbers that any shipbuilder could dream about, but they’re properly protected. So you know that you’re getting morally conscious wood as well.
Ross Kenyon: And then you were also, we almost met up in person because you were in Haida Gwaii. That’s how you say it, right?
Danielle Doggett: Yeah, Haida Gwaii.
Ross Kenyon: Haida Gwaii, which is what, indigenous nation off the coast of British Columbia. That’s an island group. And you were there checking out timber too, for similar reasons, I suppose. You’re very concerned about how you’re sourcing these materials and procuring them.
Danielle Doggett: We went up to Haida Gwaii, which is essentially almost a sovereign nation. It feels like a sovereign nation. An island group off of BC. It’s a height of people. And the reason we went all the way up there, it’s halfway between Vancouver Island and Alaska. And the reason we went all the way from Costa Rica up to this little island group is because we want to find not only the highest quality wood, just searching for the masts of our ships specifically, not only the highest quality wood, but also have environmental standards and social standards that we knew were the best quality in the world as well.
So this will be the only wood not sourced in Costa Rica. Everything else is locally sourced here, right in our little country. But these masts are world-renowned. British Columbia and the West Coast are world-renowned for some of the best spars. It’s what they’re called, mast material that you can get. So we definitely wanted to source it from there. And then one thing led to another, and we were introduced to the people from Providence, which is a little tall ship up there. And the North Pacific Timber Co. And they have one of the only Haida-owned logging companies in all of Canada.
Family owned. So yeah, we reached out to them.
Alexsandra Guerra: So you’re doing something really different from what the rest of the maritime industry is doing. Can you tell us what is wrong with the existing shipping industry currently? And what are you trying to improve on?
Danielle Doggett: There are so many things that could be improved with the shipping industry. It’s almost shocking. Just to list off kind of quickly to give the scope, I like to talk about the cradle to grave or lifespan. If you want to look at the lifespan of a ship from today, modern shipping to call it that, is where is a ship born? So these giant Goliaths are born in iron ore mines, the largest of which are in the Brazilian Amazon forest. So they begin with deforestation and mining and a lot of impact associated with that.
And then moving forward, they go into their full lifespan, which creates a considerable amount of bioacoustic pollution. So they’re extremely noisy. They’re directly sided with disrupting whale communication, marine mammal communication. So that’s the sound of their engines and their turbines and all these things that are creating noise can even cause mass strandings. And they have invasive species. So these ships use ballast water to stabilize the actual ship itself. And so They’ll be carrying alien species across the entire planet and dropping them off in other places. So that’s invasive species.
Ross Kenyon: Is the Saba, I imagine you probably just have like a blue water full keel, but is that not the case for these large shipping vessels? Are they, they’re using some sort of ballast rather than using a keel or am I misunderstanding? Am I marine engineering here?
Danielle Doggett: No, you’ve hit the nail on the head. Yes. So we’ll have a full, Ballast keel, which is a long, deep keel. And then most of these cargo vessels, they do have a keel and they do have ballast, but they have dynamic stability as well. So when they take different cargoes of different weights, they’ll take water as well, just to help stabilize that. Okay.
Ross Kenyon: Sorry. You were going through a nice litany of grievances here. So please continue.
Danielle Doggett: Well, I was just talking about oil spills, and I don’t need to go too much into that. I think we all know the effects of oil spills at ocean marine areas. There’s also air pollution, which I could get into in depth. And accidents at sea are a really big deal as well. It’s not only the loss of containers and the whole ship itself, but then also the fuel that’s on board. So that was the lifespan. That was the active life. And then moving into the... Cradle to Grave, moving into the grave or end of life of these ships, almost all of them end up with ship breaking on the beaches in Bangladesh, which the International Labour Organization has cited as one of the most dangerous jobs that any human does.
Yeah, the shipping industry just doesn’t really adhere to the same laws that the rest of the world seems to.
Alexsandra Guerra: Well, is it because I imagine it’s really difficult. So we see this with like a KO and IMO, so International Civil Aviation Organization, International Maritime Organization. When you’re traveling these international waters or international airs, how do you even set laws? I imagine that can be quite difficult, but I want to actually get into something that you said, which interests me more. I’m so selfish. I’m a selfish host.
Unknown speaker: It’s okay. Yeah.
Alexsandra Guerra: You mentioned fuel use and air pollution. Now, a lot of people might not realize, but most ships have to run off of diesel, which is incredibly dirty. There’s a lot of sulfur and other particulates that are generated when you burn diesel. But there has been some effort from the UN International Maritime Organization, as mentioned earlier, to limit this. You guys kind of got a free pass. Are you at all dealing with IMO or other regulators to prove that you are building something that will be completely emission-free?
Danielle Doggett: So we have not worked with the IMO yet to date. I’m not sure if that’s entirely true. We did get to present twice at the COP23, I believe it was, in Germany. And so we were able to present in front of the United Nations upon invitations. Since then, we’ve not really worked directly with the IMO. That’s something that will very likely happen once the ship is a little closer to being fully constructed. So their goal is to cut 50% of emissions by 2050 of shipping emissions. And I’m frankly not really sure if it’s going to happen because, as you mentioned, they don’t have the same regulatory body.
They’re out on the open ocean, so they don’t have These kind of laws or police force or army or there’s no courts out on the sea, you know. And so while they do have to adhere to national laws within the 12 nautical mile range, which is 14 miles, 22 kilometers, they have to adhere to laws within territorial waters. It kind of goes out the window in the middle of the ocean.
Alexsandra Guerra: So how did those, that’s really cool. You were able to present this at COP23. What was that like? And what was the reaction?
Danielle Doggett: Well, it wasn’t me personally. It was our representative from Costa Rica, Luis Perez. And he was able to go all the way to Germany and do that. We did offset his flight by planting trees. And it was an incredible experience to be invited to present there in such a formal stage. Because at the time, two years ago, we had not even laid the key of the ship. And I think that speaks to the efforts that we’ve put into our business plan and making this a very solid business plan and saying, this is going to happen.
You should start listening right now. And I don’t know, for me and for the company, I think for Luis, I think it was just really, really an amazing experience.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, that’s amazing. It’s all very exciting. It’s nice that you have support. Seems like a project that is appreciated down there. That’s good to hear. One question I have with this is I read a book a while back called The Locavore’s Dilemma. Yeah. Which I thought was interesting. Although I am not technical enough to weigh in on any one side of an issue like this. But one point in there was it was argued that transoceanic shipping. For food products is actually a very small amount of their footprint by unit, primarily because the scale of transport is so large.
In fact, in some cases, I think driving to the grocery store to buy that product and then consume it takes up more than that food unit of having moved across an ocean. So is that wrong? Is it missing something or is it right and you’re doing something else with the other types of benefits that come along with what Saba and Sail Cargo are doing?
Danielle Doggett: So to answer that, I’d like to open with an often quoted statistic. The 15 of the largest ships put out more pollutants, specifically nitrogen and sulfur oxide, than all of the world’s cars combined. Another way to say that is that one single of the largest ships contributes as many of these specific emissions as 50 million cars. Put that in perspective, there are currently around 50,000 cargo ships at sea. So while I’m not too familiar with the particular book, Or exact reference that you’re making, I will say that this question has been posed to me on several occasions, often bringing in the aviation industry as comparison.
So I will not say this statement is untrue, that driving can contribute less. However, I will say, or can contribute more, sorry. However, I will say that it is both a misleading and I think even slightly manipulative comparison or statement. By taking one single factor and comparing it without considering variables that are necessary to provide or produce the end result, I think we’re left with a figure that does not represent the whole truth. And so I believe what this statement is saying, driving to the store emits more than crossing an ocean, refers to the economy of scale, as you said.
These ships can be longer than four football fields. They’re massive. And therefore, they are capable of transporting large volumes of cargo, which does result in a low rate of emissions. But what does this statement emit or emissions even refer to? Something that is, we did touch on earlier, but something that is not often understood is that cargo ships burn the least refined fuel available in the world. This results in black carbon and high sulfur emissions, which is associated with up to hundreds of thousands of premature deaths annually. So going back to the comparison of driving to the store, think about the fuel that you put into your car.
It’s clear. It’s free of impurities. You can see that. You can look at it. The fuel these ships use is thick and black. You can’t see through it. At colder temperatures, say around zero degrees Celsius or 32 degrees Fahrenheit, the viscosity increases. It gets even thicker. In some accounts, at these cold temperatures, you can even walk across the fuel. And it’s actually just a byproduct of the oil industry.
Ross Kenyon: This is called bunker fuel, right? That’s the term for this?
Danielle Doggett: Correct. Bunker fuel. Yeah. So it’s not even diesel. It’s heavy bunker fuel. It’s the lowest grade that is used in the world. And another aspect that is not included in comparisons like this are the known unknowns. So the illegal and unrecorded actions. Shipping fleets operate out of sight and out of our minds. Did you realize that they also, as I mentioned, operate outside of territorial waters? So they’re not governed the same as cars or other terrestrial forms of transportation. And outside of that range, national laws don’t apply. The oceans don’t have their own police force.
There’s a lot of illegal dumping and burning that goes on. And the sludge of impurities that has to be scraped away and cleaned out of the fuel tanks of these ships are often simply burned in barrels out on the open deck. And the International Maritime Organization has stated that they know it. Is that taken into consideration with the comparison of driving to the store? It’d be impossible to. Geez.
Ross Kenyon: Wow, that is a very thorough smackdown. Okay, so I don’t know. I don’t have a dog in that particular fight. So that very well could be the appropriate retort.
Danielle Doggett: Well then, and I don’t want to go too deep into this because it’s a little bit of a different thing, but a final consideration or another consideration that’s not included in these tidy little comparisons is that there are so many other factors. Untreated sewage is simply dumped straight overboard into the oceans. That’s legal. Or the fact that modern slavery still exists on board the ships that move your goods. According to one inspection society, there was evidence of the crew drinking seawater for up to 10 days. That was just two years ago.
So I don’t know if people’s lives have been considered because that’s part of it. Should their lives be ignored or considered when speaking about emissions? So I guess what I’m trying to say is that ships and their global industry are a unique beast that we cannot simply compare equally to other forms of transportation.
Alexsandra Guerra: Totally. I love the way that you put it. That is just like a completely... Trying to make comparisons from these different statistics or metrics is pretty dangerous because to say, oh, well, yeah, we will be emitting more by driving to the store to buy that apple or that good than is spent to get them there. Well, wait, so now we’re just adding more emissions. Like it doesn’t negate the fact that it was still shipped, that Apple was still shipped from New Zealand to New York City or not even New York City because we’re talking about driving to a grocery store or somewhere else, right?
It was shipped to your grocery store. Then you’re driving to your grocery store. So it only makes it even worse. And then you have like – so – You gave really good statistics. And if you look at the total amount of emissions from international maritime, it’s about 2. 2% of our global emissions. That’s significant. It’s about the same for aviation. It’s pretty significant. So I’m not getting against you, Ross. Like, I know you read this book. You’re like... Co-hosting a podcast, trying to start cool conversations. But those stats in general, when I read them or hear them make me also very perturbed because it’s such a small view of it.
And it’s like, oh, okay, because this thing is worse. Yeah, that other bad thing is not so bad. But then they totally diminish and reduce the impact of that other bad thing by making it super vague and making and just it’s very reductionist. And I wish we would stop doing that in general with everything.
Danielle Doggett: Well, and my other kind of comment about that is people say that, well, you know, shipping is so efficient compared to things like aviation. But I say, look at the fuel, just like we did with your car. Look at the fuel. So they’re so massive, the shipping industry. If they decided to improve their fuel quality, think of the emissions that could be cut. And that’s what the IMO is trying to work towards.
Alexsandra Guerra: Yeah. Maybe we should stay away from the IMO and their 2050 goals because I just haven’t looked in the last maybe three months because we’ve been in Denver with this program and like all sense of what’s going on in the world has been lost on me. But I was following them closely for a while along with ICAO and I don’t understand what at all their plan is. And it’s almost 2021. And to try and slash your emissions in an industry that’s only growing at a compending rate of 6%, I don’t understand how you would do it.
Danielle Doggett: Well, I mean, they could do it if they just, I guess, and I don’t know the statistics on it, but used cleaner fuel or just upgraded to diesel. Diesel itself would be a huge upgrade. I don’t want to speak too deeply about that because, yeah, that’s not my place, I guess. I’m a sailor.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I’m amazed that you’ve made a whole career out of this. This is what a crazy trip that you’ve had. Okay, well, I feel thoroughly eviscerated.
Unknown speaker: It’s not you, Ross.
Ross Kenyon: I’m going to lick my wound. I’m like, I read a thing. I thought it was kind of interesting. What do you guys think? Ten minutes of detailed destruction? Yeah.
Danielle Doggett: But there are interesting points. So I’m not somebody who just says only eat local, right? Of course, I wouldn’t be. I mean, I want to do long, long range transportation. I mean, eating local is great. I support that 100%. There’s so much to be said about that. But as someone who’s from Canada, am I going to give up coffee, chocolate, rum, vanilla, avocados, coconut oil?
Ross Kenyon: No.
Danielle Doggett: So then we kind of say we have needs and needs. Then we have wants that are basically almost needs, coffee. So how are we going to move them? Yeah.
Ross Kenyon: Well, fair enough. Well, I guess what is the big vision of what you’re trying to do with sail cargo? Do you imagine that international shipping is going to go electric? Or do you think even getting them to upgrade from bunker fuel to diesel is a big Is this a proof of concept and then maybe the second vessel will be much longer? Are you headed towards a renaissance of the clipper ship days? Is that going to come around?
Danielle Doggett: Well, I think that there are so many opportunities right now and it does feel a little bit like a technology race. I won’t say arms race, but it feels a little bit like a technology race at this moment because there are so many different options from electric, cleaner fuel and solar, wind, so many options on how we can improve even going into autonomous shipping. So not having people on board. It’s just a really rapidly expanding and changing industry. And hydrogen fuels, I honestly don’t really know. Our goal is to inspire the shipping industry to change.
And I’ve personally advised and been contacted about much larger, more modern projects. And I think that electric does have a spot there. I think that wind power, more modern versions of the sales we see today, do have a place there. And I think the immediate change would be just put cleaner fuel in your boats, guys. That’s a very possible one, very attainable. It’s expensive for them, but...
Ross Kenyon: How much more expensive is it and how thin are the margins for shipping right now? Do you have any sense of that?
Danielle Doggett: I wouldn’t be able to speak to improving the fuel quality or choosing to put in better fuel, but I can give a bit of a range. What I could do is share a bit about how much it will be to ship emission-free with us. The shipping industry, what we’ve looked into, can be as cheap as one cent per ton per mile. To ship goods, that’s bottom. And then it can go as high as $1. 60 per ton per mile. That’s more like niche things and inter-island cargo and things like that.
And for us, it’ll be 20 cents per ton mile. So fairly affordable at this rate, but I think that it could be, it’s just, you know, when technologies get to a place where they’re actually more accessible and they’ve emerged and grown into something that can be replicated, then the price goes down.
Alexsandra Guerra: Yeah. You need to achieve the economies of scale or get that learning curve. It seems to this is really cool to get that range of one cent to 160 cents per ton mile. And then you guys are fairly low on the 20 cents per ton mile. And this is just at the beginning. So tonnes of room to improve. But in my mind, it’s almost like apples and oranges. And tell me if I’m wrong. Are your delivery times different? Like, is there a limit to the types of goods that you can transport because of what I’m assuming and totally based off of assumption, really nothing, that it’s going to take longer for you to deliver goods than a typical ship?
Danielle Doggett: Yeah, so we definitely will have restrictions based on size and our type of vessel. And I’m hesitant to say that in the end, we will be slower delivery time door to door, but we will definitely have a slower average speed. Comparably, maybe 20 knots is what some of these large vessels cruise at, and we’ll be probably cruising at 12 knots. So definitely a difference in speed there. But the place where we may be able to make up more time is in the ports, in the logistics end of that, because the containerization of cargo has kind of gotten out of control, and the ports are now the bottleneck.
So you’ll have vessels waiting in ports for up to two weeks before they can unload because they are dependent. On the cranes in these ports to unload the containers, whereas we will be self-sufficient. We can unload either using the cranes in the port or using our own ship’s rigging. So while I definitely will say we’ll be slower at this point, I kind of have my fingers crossed that maybe we can tie or I don’t know if we’ll actually beat their door-to-door delivery times for large ships like that.
Alexsandra Guerra: Well, I’m rooting for you. I’m cheering for you on the sidelines. We’ll see. You know, when Ross asked you that question of like, where do you see this headed? And you’re like, not really sure, maybe autonomous. I just have to say it. Like, have you guys seen that episode of Silicon Valley where Jared gets stuck in an autonomous car and then stuck on a...
Ross Kenyon: Like a Seastead? Yeah.
Danielle Doggett: Oh, no, I haven’t seen that.
Alexsandra Guerra: Oh, you have to see it. It’s Danielle. It’s priceless.
Ross Kenyon: That’s the future. I’d like to make an unsolicited business suggestion.
Alexsandra Guerra: Oh, me too. Wait, go.
Danielle Doggett: I think I know what you’re going to say.
Ross Kenyon: I’ve seen some of your content already and this is so visual. I’m sure you know, I just saw this the other day, Sailing La Vagabonde, the Australian couple, they’re taking Greta back across the Atlantic. I don’t know. I think what you’re doing is so visual and unique and cool. I’m not sure what you have planned for adding a media arm to what you’re doing, but I think you could be quite successful at it. I don’t know.
Danielle Doggett: Ross, I thought you were going to say monetization of the decarbonization.
Ross Kenyon: Oh, yeah. We could talk about that, too. Let’s do that offline.
Alexsandra Guerra: We’ll have to get some methodology. Well, Nori only does carbon removal.
Ross Kenyon: But the trees that are used to build the ship are stored. Oh, yes.
Alexsandra Guerra: Gosh, duh.
Danielle Doggett: We also say that we want to take away... Business from the existing industry. So rather than creating a niche market, we’re taking away business from those cargo ships. So we take the liberty of saying that we’ll offset those emissions. It’s a bit of a reach, but I think it’s something to think about. So we have YouTube, we have Instagram, we’re on all those social media channels with at sale cargo. But I think once the ship is actually sailing, a proper documentary might be in order. It’s going to be a really amazing first trip.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I would watch that. Yeah, I think there’s a lot of potential there for sure.
Alexsandra Guerra: Are you sure you wouldn’t quit and just go on sabbatical and be like, hold on guys, I’m going on this trip?
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, do you need a comms expert?
Alexsandra Guerra: Ross is obsessed with it.
Danielle Doggett: Yes, we do. And you know we’re going to be sailing up to Port Townsend.
Ross Kenyon: Oh, we would love to meet the crew and we could probably even do a follow-up episode on this. This is so wild. We have to do it.
Danielle Doggett: That’d be awesome. Yeah.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, okay. Alessandro, what’s yours that you screwed up?
Alexsandra Guerra: That was fun. I’m actually glad that you said at the same time. Cruise lines. So luxury cruises that are only wind powered. I think you could find a very niche market of very affluent individuals who are very supportive of climate action, particularly here in this area of Seattle, who would pay a good dollar for going on a completely emission-free cruise up to Alaska.
Danielle Doggett: Undoubtedly, because... The other thing we have is that we are silent. Sailing ships and electric engines, especially with our enlarged propellers, which reduce significantly the noise associated, are silent. So think about up in that neck of the woods, whale watching, interacting with those marine mammals and not disturbing them, getting much closer. So I worked for an amazing company in northern Iceland called North Sailing, and that’s what they do, sustainable, respectful whale watching. And you do these long cruises up to Greenland, Which I had the amazing opportunity to do. And with this electric engine, that’s where we got the prototype idea from.
So you just do not disturb the wildlife. It’s incredible. So you have better wheel watching experiences.
Alexsandra Guerra: I will never sail the seas again until I can sail a ship like that. Okay.
Ross Kenyon: She was just lost and whimsy for a second there.
Alexsandra Guerra: I was. I was imagining. I grew up in the water, but I grew up with my Tio Papo taking us on the boat every Sunday the intercoastal, but it was like one of those speedboats. And if you sat in the back, you could always just breathe in the fumes of the engines.
Ross Kenyon: Not nearly as elegant as something like this.
Alexsandra Guerra: No.
Danielle Doggett: I bet it was fun, though.
Alexsandra Guerra: Yeah, I was always sunburned and I was a very happy child. I would jump from like the top of the fishing towers from the boat and like clear the side of the boat into the water and then we would swim up to the shore and come around in circles all day long. Like five of us would do that. Nice.
Ross Kenyon: Well, Danielle, if someone wants to support what you’re doing, get involved, or just absorb your content. Also, if you’re listening right now, there will definitely be pictures. I will link to those so you can see exactly what we’re talking about. But how can someone keep up with you and what you’re doing?
Danielle Doggett: So I definitely say check out our website, sailcargo.org. And our Instagram is one of our most active social media, also at Sail Cargo. But really almost any media platform, Facebook and YouTube, And you can also just email me directly if you are considering becoming a fellow owner of this ship. You can email me at info at sailcargo.org.
Ross Kenyon: The idea of buying a share in a wooden sailing ship just seems like, yeah, 19th century London coffee shop, waiting for it to come into port and see if you lost all your money or not. I don’t know. I love that it’s both looking to the past and the future simultaneously. You guys are weird in the best kind of way.
Alexsandra Guerra: I think it’s- He says that with a lot of admiration.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, no, I do. It’s strange. I love it.
Danielle Doggett: I know that a lot of our investors, our investors do come from around the world, but a lot of them are from the West Coast of the Americas. And I know that they are excited about seeing their ship come into port with coffee, you know, fresh from the farms here. And I think it’s going to be a real full sensory experience.
Ross Kenyon: Great. Well, let’s stay in touch. Links in the show notes too, if you’d like to follow up on any of those platforms, websites, emails, all of that. Well, thank you so much for being here with us, Danielle. That was a lot of fun.
Unknown speaker: Thanks, Danielle.
Danielle Doggett: Thank you. Yeah, thank you both so much. Really appreciate the opportunity.
Ross Kenyon: It was our pleasure. How could we not? It was just such a unique pitch, a unique introduction. I had to say yes to this one. So thanks for finally scheduling with us that we could do it. And if you like the show, please rate and review it in iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher. Tell your friends this is a cool episode all about sailing, sailing vessels, international trade, what’s not to like. Send it to someone who might like something like this today. And thank you so much for listening.
