Centrale Nantes announced, Tuesday, December 17, the opening in spring 2025 of continuing professional training in sail propulsion engineering, with the support of the Maritime Intervention Fund (Ministry of the Sea and Fisheries). It is aimed “at all players in the maritime sector: charterers, design offices, shipowners, equipment manufacturers, insurers and financiers”, indicates the engineering school, which specifies that “it aims to support professionals already active in these various fields who wish to retrain or deepen their knowledge in the field of sail propulsion. The training will last 15 days and will be organized around three modules.
Centrale Nantes has set itself the objectives of “creating a common culture around sail-powered maritime transport”, “providing the necessary tools to design and integrate high-performance sail propulsion systems” and “responding to the growing needs for skills in a sector in full development”. Participants will learn to “define the conditions of use of a sail-powered vessel”, “write technical specifications for propulsion systems”, “integrate these systems into existing or new vessels” and finally “evaluate the predictive performance of these technologies”.
A webinar presenting the training “Managing the design engineering of sail-powered ships” is organized this Wednesday, December 18, at 5 p.m., indicates Centrale Nantes, on LinkedIn.
Wind propulsion assistance systems for ships are in full development, particularly in France, to decarbonize ship propulsion. In August, the classification society Lloyd’s Register estimated that wind propulsion was close to a “tipping point” with the proliferation of installations of these systems, whether for retrofits or new construction.
Some “1,600 ships could be equipped with sailing solutions by 2030, creating 4,600 direct jobs in France across the entire value chain,” writes Centrale Nantes. “This dynamic, confirmed by sectoral studies (VENFFRAIS, CAPVENT), highlights the urgent need to train engineers specialized in R&D, naval architecture, structural calculation and even aerodynamics.”
Training for these new systems is an increasingly important subject. Recently, the Ecole nationale supérieure maritime (ENSM) announced that it would integrate wind propulsion into its training to meet the growing demand for qualified flying officers capable of using these technologies.
© An article from the editorial staff of Mer et Marine. Reproduction prohibited without consent of the author(s).
