Wave Rider

From Forbes.com: Technology News:

Waves can be used for a lot more than surfing. The Suntory Mermaid II is a 10-meter (33-foot) catamaran (a type of two-hulled boat) currently slowly propelling itself across the North Pacific solely using wave power. The boat is captained by Kenichi Horie, a 70-year-old Japanese marine adventurer who is attempting to sail it over 4,400 miles from Hawaii to Japan. The Mermaid is the first wave-powered boat ever to set sail, and Horie hopes to arrive in Japan in the next few weeks after about 14 weeks at sea. Wave propulsion systems are still in the early stages of development, but there is enormous potential for them to one day be used as an alternative energy source for much larger ships. A typical container ship--the sort that carries everything from automobiles to bottled "Fuji" water across the world's oceans--burns up about 270 tons of fuel per day. That translates to over 100,000 tons of fuel in a year, or about $50 million per ship. If wave propulsion could even make a dent in that fuel bill, the savings would be huge.

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