‘ Thank you and all of the MARIN team for your hard work and hospitality. I can speak for all IWSA members saying that we really appreciate all of your efforts.’


Gavin Allwright, International Windship Association (IWSA)


and that incentives from government and harbour authorities may be necessary to boost the market.


Another fascinating part of the programme dealt with the challenges and solutions in the offshore wind sector. These sessions were chaired by Bob Meijer from TKI Wind op Zee. This showed how dynamic the market is, and gave the audience a chance to get a glimpse of the challenging technical issues that need to be solved before the vast potential of offshore wind can be realised.


on the regulation side, governments and the European Commission are looking for ways to sustain the upcoming development of natural propulsion.


A workshop dedicated to the ‘Peace Boat’ project was organised, dealing with a possible partnership to set up a zero-emission cruise vessel in the coming three years. Several groups also discussed and summarised the showstoppers hampering the development of wind in shipping. Topics included the clear need to simplify and adapt regulation


The Seminar closed with a session concerning blue technology at sea, illustrating the ways oceans can and should be cleaned. The huge potential of sustainable farming of seaweeds was another interesting discussion point, showing the route towards blue growth.


At the end of the day, there was the chance to pitch new Joint Industry Projects. Develop- ment of marine platforms to grow seaweed was the theme of the Seaweed proposal, which aims to optimise the anchoring and damping systems used. The installation and engineering of gravity based structures for


the installation of offshore wind turbines will be considered in the GBS wind turbine foundation JIP. And then there is another potential JIP looking into the dynamic effect and influence of the design of electric cables within the ACDC initiative brought by AMOG from Australia. Finally, two initiatives were presented to further develop wind propulsion. The WISP JIP was on the macro scale and aims to make shipping companies aware of wind propulsion’s potential for their current fleet, and on the micro scale, the Cargo Prao JIP is looking to create simple and accessible wind propelled, autonomous transport within developing countries lacking harbour infrastructure.


The location and date of Blue Week 2017 will be announced before the summer, so keep an eye on www.blueforum.org to get the latest news and to make your proposals for next year! On the same website, the presentations for the 2016 sessions are available and will hopefully inspire even more people to join next year.


Wishing fair winds until the next edition of Blue Week!


report


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