Oceanwings® is a fully automated two-element wingsail developed by VPLP Design. Aboard the cargo vessel Canopée it has published fuel savings of 25–50% on transatlantic routes across two years of Atlantic service, with 99.6% availability. Wind Voyage builds its 80–120m explorer yachts around three to four of these wings, targeting 40–60% fuel reduction under wind.
Every builder in the superyacht market now gestures at sustainability. Almost none can point to an operating vessel and published numbers. This page is the technical case, using the public record.
Two elements, like an aircraft wing. A main element and a flap, with camber adjusted continuously to the apparent wind — generating thrust efficiently on most points of sail, not just downwind.
360-degree rotation. The whole wing weathervanes to any wind angle, and feathers to neutral when de-powered.
Automatic reefing. Wing area reduces automatically as wind strength rises; the system protects itself without crew intervention.
Bridge-managed, not crew-handled. No canvas, no rigging watch. The control system trims continuously; the bridge team supervises.
Canopée — built to carry Ariane 6 rocket components across the Atlantic on a fixed schedule — is the reference vessel for the entire technology. Her published operational results across two years: fuel savings of 25–50% per transatlantic voyage; average savings on the order of 1.3 tonnes of fuel per wing per day across all conditions, with recent crossings above 2.2 tonnes per wing per day — roughly two megawatts of equivalent engine power across her four wings; and 99.6% wing availability.
Those numbers were earned on commercial schedule-keeping duty, where the ship cannot wait for weather. An explorer yacht, which routes with the wind rather than against the calendar, starts from a better position than the vessel that proved the system.
Wind Voyage's range — the 90, the 110 flagship, and the Yacht Support shadow vessel — is engineered by the same VPLP Design practice that co-developed Oceanwings®. Three to four wings depending on the hull, a diesel-electric hybrid plant, and two systems the cargo ship does not carry: hydrogeneration, where the freewheeling propellers drive the motors in reverse under sail and cover the full hotel load above eight knots, and photovoltaic surfaces feeding the battery bank. The design target across expedition profiles is a 40–60% reduction in fuel burned — and under wind alone, zero cavitation noise, which matters in the ice, around wildlife, and to everyone sleeping aboard.
A 110-metre expedition yacht under power burns in the order of 400 gallons per hour with hotel loads running. At twelve knots, that is the meter running every hour of every passage. Routed with the wind and the currents rather than against them — planning that takes seasonal wind patterns and currents into account — 50 to 80 per cent of a long passage runs on the wings. The engines are not the primary propulsion; they are the reserve.
| Passage | Distance | Conventional burn | Fuel saved under wind | Cost avoided |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Atlantic crossing — Gibraltar to St Maarten | 3,450 nm | 115,000 gal | 57,500–92,000 gal | $259k–$414k |
| Pacific — Panama to Tahiti | 4,650 nm | 155,000 gal | 77,500–124,000 gal | $349k–$558k |
| Global circumnavigation | 28,000 nm | 933,000 gal | 467,000–747,000 gal | $2.1M–$3.4M |
Assumptions: 400 gph including hotel loads, 12-knot average, marine gas oil at $4.50 per gallon. Savings range reflects 50–80% of the passage under wind, achievable with routing planned around seasonal wind patterns and currents. Actual figures vary with routing, weather, and fuel price at the point of supply.
One circumnavigation pays for a great deal of yacht.
Fuel is the visible number. The larger one is what happens to the machinery.
Every hour under wind is an hour the main engines are not turning and the generators are not loaded. Hydrogeneration and solar carry the hotel load above eight knots, so the gensets shut down too — not idle, off.
On a circumnavigation that is between 1,150 and 1,850 engine hours never accumulated. On a yacht running 2,000 hours a year, a 65 per cent reduction takes annual running hours to around 700 — an overhaul interval that would have arrived in six years arrives in seventeen. That means longer intervals between top-end and major overhauls, extended service life across mains, gensets, and driven equipment, fewer and shorter yard periods, lower lube-oil and consumable spend across the life of the vessel — and stronger machinery hours at resale, the survey line every buyer reads first.
Overhaul costs on machinery of this size run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars per engine. Deferring that cycle by a decade is a larger number than the fuel.
Propeller cavitation and engine vibration are the dominant sources of man-made underwater noise, and the damage to marine mammals is well documented — masked communication, disrupted feeding, displacement from habitat. A large yacht under power is heard for miles. Under wind the propellers freewheel and the engines are off; the vessel is effectively silent below the waterline.
That matters three ways. It is the right thing to do in the places this yacht is built to go — polar waters, sanctuaries, breeding grounds. It makes the vessel a credible platform for acoustic research and film work, which a conventional yacht cannot be. And as sanctuary and polar noise restrictions tighten, it keeps the yacht welcome in waters that will start turning others away. Guests notice it too: no engine drone, no vibration through the hull, and whales that do not leave when you arrive.
On Canopée's published record: roughly 1.3 tonnes per wing per day on average, above 2.2 tonnes per wing per day on recent transatlantic crossings. Voyage-level savings ranged 25–50% depending on route and season.
VPLP Design, the French naval architecture practice with four decades of performance-sailing pedigree, from America's Cup programmes to the cargo vessel Canopée. VPLP Design is Wind Voyage's design partner on the entire range.
Two years of Atlantic commercial service at 99.6% availability is the published record. And every Wind Voyage hull carries a full diesel-electric plant sized for 8,000 nautical miles without the wings.
In principle yes, and commercial operators are pursuing retrofits. In practice the gains come from designing the hull, rig positions, stability, and hybrid plant together from the first line — which is why Wind Voyage builds are clean-sheet designs.
Under wind alone there is no engine, no generator, and no propeller cavitation. For expedition itineraries — whale grounds, anchorages, the ice — a silent ship is a different experience of the sea.
Three to four Oceanwings®, hydrogeneration, photovoltaics, and a diesel-electric hybrid plant — engineered together from the first line by VPLP Design.