Athena

Athena

One of the most beautiful and impressive yachts built in the recent past. Built in the Netherlands by the founder of Netscape and couple other companies in Silicon Valley. Impressive. Gracious. Just a pure beauty. 90m of immense power. One of the largest sailing yachts.

These are just a couple of words or sentences to describe the Athena. I have always been very impressed with this Dutch built yacht since I first heard of her many years ago and she was extensively covered in every sailing and boating magazine.

Currently she is for sale if you are interested. Have a look for yourself. You have to promise to invite me if you buy her though… It is not like you don’t have enough space to invite some friends.

So why would this boat be considered a green boat? She is not as green as the Ecolution, which was built with sustainability in mind. Athena was build as a very comfortable sailing yacht. As a result, the power to keep this yacht going, even under sail is massive. Air-conditioning, toys and entertainment, cooking and cooling food and Athena
drinks, basic comforts, well, they all add up significantly to the energy needed on board this beauty.

The question is what it takes to make a super yacht like this run without having to burn fossil fuels. Athena has 2660 square meters of sails to The Ecolution is producing electricity from her propellor when she is under sail. Of course this slows her down about one knot, but do you really care if you are crossing an ocean and you are on holidays? If you were in a hurry, you would take a plane anyways.

So what is the energy consumption?

If we look at the engines and generators on board the Athena, we see a massive range of fuel consuming stuff. She has the following diesel engines onboard.

2 2000 HP main engines, fuel use about 300 – 550 l/h
3 generator sets, about 400 HP each, fuel use about 80 l/h
1 emergency generator set, about 140 HP, fuel use about 33 l/h
1 bow and 1 stern thruster, both 275 HP

There is no alternative way to generate power on board, so all power needs to generated by the generators. If you see the list of communication equipment, entertainment systems, cooking and cooling equipment, internet, toilets, water systems and other systems, it becomes clear that the energy on boars Athena use is huge.

Renewable energy on board

This shows the problem with renewable energy on board. We require a lot of power for all our comfort and safety systems. But there is just not enough space to generate the electricity or the battery power to store the electricity for when it is needed. So there is still a long way to go, especially for yachts like the Athena that want to be as independent as possible. It is just not the same as an electrical city car like the Car 2 Go in Amsterdam which you can plug in a charging station every kilometre.

As a result the requirements are very different. And they are not ready yet for electrical requirements like on board the Athena. I am curious to compare the Athena to the design of the Ecolution, to see what a super yacht can learn from the Ecolution.