The remarkable first race for wind-powered vehicles

The earliest text describing the Chinese use of mounting masts and sails on large vehicles is the Book of the Golden Hall Master (written in 552 AD) which describes a "wind-driven carriage" able to carry thirty people. There was another wind-driven carriage built in about 610 AD for the Emperor Yang of Sui as described in the Continuation of the New Discourses on the Talk of the Times. Robert Temple describes such vehicles in his book “The Genius of China: 3,000 Years of Science, Discovery, and Invention” (ISBN 0671620282), as does Joseph Needham in his landmark work “Science and Civilisation in China”, and given the recent book “1434” by Gavin Menzies, which demands a reappraisal of history, there’s every reason to believe that China’s thinking influenced the development of this motive force in Europe.

Current Eurocentric history credits 16th century Flemish scientist Simon Stevin with the precursor to the modern land yacht which was invented under the patronage of Prince Maurice of Orange, and subsequently used by the good Prince for entertaining his guests.

In 1898, the Dumont brothers of De Panne, Belgium, developed a land yacht whose sails were based on contemporary Egyptian sailboats used on the Nile River. The first races were held on the beaches of Belgium and France in 1909. Land yachts were also used in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to transport goods on dry lakes in the United States and Australia. The modern land yacht, a three-wheeled polyester/fibreglass and metal cart, often with a wing-mast and relatively rigid (full-batten) sails, has been used since 1960. (see Wikipedia)

And for the latest incarnation of the Land Yacht, check out the Blokart.

RACING AEOLUS 2008 - a landmark event

RACING AEOLUS 2008 was a landmark event nonetheless – in the same way that new attempts to capture more of the wind’s energy with clever sail systems (as used in the Maltese Falcon and Project Greenjet) are giving the once unfashionable sail power a second chance, events such as the Aeolus Race will breed a new type of “can do” engineer who will bring new thinking to an ancient art and perhaps yield far more efficient capture of wind-power than we ever thought possible.

According to Professor Gustav Winkler, PhD, Fachhochschule Flensburg and mentor to the competing team from the Flensberg University of Applied sciences, the invention of the headwind bicyle, or rather headwind quadricycle, dates back to fifteenth-century Italy. Four hundred years later, a patent application by a Bavarian for a true headwind bicycle was refused, not because the idea had been known before, but because "it obviously couldn't work". Winkler harboured his own headwind bicycle design from an early age, finally demonstrating it in the early nineties.

RACING AEOLUS 2008 was organised by Wind Energy Events as part of the festival surrounding The Tall Ships’ Races 2008 from August 20 to 23, 2008 in Den Helder, in Holland.

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