Welcome aboard the latest episode of the SHIPSHAPE Podcast! Today, we have the pleasure of hosting Jorne Langelaan, the visionary CEO and founder of EcoClipper. Founded in 2018, EcoClipper emerged in response to the burgeoning sail cargo industry and aims to increase the number of sailing vessels transporting cargo around the world. But that’s not all – these vessels also offer passengers unique travel experiences and provide trainees with invaluable traditional maritime skills education.

In this episode, Jorne shares his captivating journey, starting from his childhood experiences with motor-cargo vessels to sailing on the sail cargo ship Avontuur in the 1990s. He also discusses the founding of Fairtransport, the company behind the renowned Tres Hombres, which continues to operate on trans-Atlantic routes.

Learn how Jorne’s diverse experiences inspired him to create EcoClipper and design a ship capable of carrying more cargo on various shipping routes worldwide. Join us as we dive into the story of EcoClipper, its structure, the passionate team behind it, and their unwavering commitment to revolutionizing the future of sustainable shipping and travel. Don’t miss this insightful conversation with Jorne Langelaan on the SHIPSHAPE Podcast!

Check out EcoClipper

Brought to you by SHIPSHAPE

 

Transcript ———————————

Farah [00:00:09] Hello and welcome to the Shipshape podcast, a series of podcasts where we meet amazing people and talk about their experiences, personal, technical and or related to the maritime world. Come and dive in. Dive in. Dive in.

Merrill Charette [00:00:37] Today on the Ship podcast, we speak with Captain Jorne Langelaan, founder and CEO of the Eco Clipper. A Sustainable Way of Shipping. Your two co-hosts today are Merrill Charette.

Talha Bhatty [00:00:55] What’s up, ladies and gentlemen? This is Talha Bhatty. And we have a great guest on today. Jorne, welcome to the show.

Merrill Charette [00:01:02] Where are you coming to us from?

Jorne Langelaan [00:01:04] So yeah right here and then held our in the well defenders of the north in the Netherlands. Yeah it’s actually a place where we are currently refitting the Tucker which is the first ship we are launching with the eco clipper company to start transporting goods emission free. It’s a sailing ship so totally propelled by wind power. I’m currently on a sail loft because it’s a nice quiet place to talk. But yeah, down here it’s the blacksmith workshop and out there is wood workshop and the ship is laying out there. More ships are there in the middle of the of the port here.

Merrill Charette [00:01:42] And before we get into your background of how you even got into this, let’s talk about the Netherlands a little bit. Netherlands is known for being such a marine related industry. Can you talk a little bit on the legacy that you come from?

Jorne Langelaan [00:01:59] Yeah, well, actually, the Netherlands, half of the Netherlands is below sea level. We have many ports here, many channels and many ships. I left for a little while in Ireland, in the west of Ireland, and decided to come back to the Netherlands. When I found that eco clipper because of the business environment in shipping and trading. Yeah. The Netherlands of course, has been somewhat famous for that. I guess it’s a minuscule country. It’s so small you can’t even think about it in the States, I guess. But but still, it’s it’s quite influential in the sense that it has like the largest European Port Rotterdam. And it basically it’s a country, but it’s also a port by itself. And then there’s the port of Amsterdam, of course, and there’s this huge history which yeah, not all the aspects we can be very proud of, but some of them are definitely. There’s huge history of sailing. Yeah. In the beginning of course, there was a lot of trading with the Baltic, but then later on, like in the 16th and 17th century, there was trading further afield to to the Caribbean and to Asia. Yeah, that’s some history where I guess the Netherlands is, is famous or infamous for.

Talha Bhatty [00:03:17] And so was history. I mean, history is one thing that maybe attracts more sailors is I find that in common. Right. But like, let’s start at the beginning of your history. Where where does this all start? Were you always on the ocean growing up? Did this happen later on in life? Where does it all began?

Jorne Langelaan [00:03:33] So yeah, it was really for me when I was a kid, I was really dreaming about this horizon. And also my family is kind of a family of seafarers and ship owners. So yeah, it would be on the birthday parties and stuff. My uncles would be there, they would be ship’s officers or captains or so, and I’d be hearing their stories. One of them I asked also like, would it be possible to take me along one time? Actually, it happens that when I was still going to school, I was like 12 years old or so. I called my father and said, I’m now in Rotterdam with my ship and I’m bound for Copenhagen. Runs through the North Sea, which you’re son be.

Talha Bhatty [00:04:16] Doing.

Jorne Langelaan [00:04:16] For a.

Talha Bhatty [00:04:16] Few way. How how old?

Jorne Langelaan [00:04:19] When I was 12. Oh, boy.

Talha Bhatty [00:04:22] This is like a great adventure age. Well.

Jorne Langelaan [00:04:24] Know. Yeah, it was like a small cargo ship. About 700 tons or so. Yeah, we were loading, loading like steel, but it was also I was still going to school, so my parents had to ask my schoolteacher if I was allowed to go. So they called him. And when he heard the story, he said like, Yeah, of course he should go do probably a little more energy than he was.

Talha Bhatty [00:04:46] 100%.

Jorne Langelaan [00:04:48] 100% me off.

Talha Bhatty [00:04:51] I love it. Okay, so that’s where it begins for you. You’re like, okay. And then but like, did you know it was going to become a lifelong passion at that point? Like, did it take over like that? Or were you like, Oh, this is cool, But I don’t know, maybe.

Jorne Langelaan [00:05:03] I wanted to become an architect.

Talha Bhatty [00:05:05] Right? Maybe become an architect. Right. Okay. Okay. So this happens then.

Jorne Langelaan [00:05:10] So what happened? I just joined because of the adventure. First night at sea, terribly seasick. Waves coming over the over the hatches and everything. Like, so different world. I couldn’t understand what this was going on. And it’s almost like a virus. You’re out on the ship and it’s just you are in a different world. And then we were going. To Denmark going through the killer canal. And it wasn’t mid-winter, actually. It was like freezing cold out there.

Talha Bhatty [00:05:39] The best introduction. Yeah.

Jorne Langelaan [00:05:42] Yeah, It was like a direct laugh there. But yeah, after that, I continued in the school holidays, then to sail with my uncle when like trips to Poland and to Sweden, it was like in the summer holidays then. But at a certain point I was kind of like, Yeah, but always sailing with your family. It’s not so serious. Like, I wanted to sail on a ship and the shipping company, which was not owned by my family. So I asked my father to call some other shipping companies then. And then I was like 15 or so. But he was calling like through all the different Dutch shipping companies, but they wouldn’t get me on board because I was too young. They were like, Yeah, it’s not allowed. When you’re 15 you can’t go to see in these times. Yeah, but almost at the end of calling through this booklet, the ad he got like a ship broker’s firm and they were working with a couple of ships who are foreign flagged and one of them was Cyprus Flag. And this ship was just loading a cargo in Rotterdam, then bound for the Mediterranean for Italy.

Talha Bhatty [00:06:50] And the sailing vessel is a sailing vessel.

Jorne Langelaan [00:06:53] This was a cargo ship. This was in the nineties. And in those days there were very, very few, almost no sailing vessels. I wasn’t aware of any sailing vessels back then. So it went into a motor cargo vessel ship and there and this one on the ship was frac was about 3000 tonnes which is like on the trucks ourselves, something like that. But we were made a very small crew there and my, my parents brought me to the Port of Rotterdam. Yeah. When I arrived there and the captain me was there and he really looked like a pirate. He had his work in clothes with all like dirty and kind of holes in it and all. And he was like the captain of this big, big ship. And he comes down and he looks at my parents. He first looks at me, and then he looks at my parents and he talks to my father and he’s like, Yeah, he’s really small and he’s really young. Are you sure he’s going to he’s going to join on this voyage because he needs to know that I don’t believe in seasickness. So if he becomes seasick, he just needs to continue working because we don’t have any people on board here as a passenger and they just need to continue working. So, yeah, my parents asked me and I’m like, Yeah, yeah, no problem.

Talha Bhatty [00:08:10] I go Day But you had some experience under your belt already, right? So you had you got seasickness? No, it all happened.

Jorne Langelaan [00:08:20] What happened? So here we go out to Sea Rotterdam. Beautiful, beautiful weather. A summer day. Hi. It’s. It just became a school holiday and we. Well, he’s done very well. We motored out and the summer weather. But we are going through the North Sea. It was not getting night, so I was going to bed. And then the next morning I woke up and we were in the English Channel motoring south. And it was beautiful weather, like blue sky all over the place and the nice sunshine and there was like a real gentle swell. So the ship was moving gently on the swell and I was really seasick.

Talha Bhatty [00:09:00] I have to go there, but I guess it wasn’t bad in the mind. Okay then.

Jorne Langelaan [00:09:07] No, it wasn’t so nice. So then. Yeah, then what actually happened? Yeah, I just had to continue working. But it was like this. That’s the working hours. Where, like something like from eight in the morning till ten. And then there was a 15 minute coffee break and then at 12:00 there was lunch time for an hour and then we would work till 3:00 or so for another 15 minutes coffee break and then till five or 530 or so and then the working day was over. So what I did, I would just work during those working hours and do rest, chipping and painting and whatever I needed to be done, being really seasick. But then when I had to break a coffee break or a lunch break or whatever break, I would go into my bunk and be seasick. So after a few days here we are crossing the Bay of Biscay. Beautiful weather. But then I’m seasick. But in a few days I woke up and I’m like, Whoa! They didn’t wake me up for work. I need to run for the deck. So I ran to the deck and I’m, like, passing the mess room. And then the crew is sitting all in the mess room. They’re like, having a drink or watching some movies. I’m like, What’s going on? Is there no work to be done? They’re like, Well, yeah, but it’s 8:00 at night. So because I had continued, like sleeping so much and trying to. You see? Think I totally mixed up the hours. But I think you’re being sincere until you find it.

Talha Bhatty [00:10:44] Did working. Take your mind off it. Do you still like Seasick while working as well?

Jorne Langelaan [00:10:48] Yeah, well, this is actually a good question, because the captain, he, of course, was this old shellback, and he had a very good idea for me to get rid of my seasickness. So he gave me two buckets and he sent me with those buckets into the engine room. One bucket was to puke in, and the other bucket had some gas oil in it, some submarine, this oil and the brush so I could clean the big engine filters with this marine diesel oil sitting next to the engine. And I give.

Talha Bhatty [00:11:20] You it’s.

Jorne Langelaan [00:11:22] Like 2000 kilowatt engine. And here I am with two buckets, one bucket of puke and one bucket.

Talha Bhatty [00:11:29] Clean this filter. Here’s something to keep your mind off it. Yeah.

Jorne Langelaan [00:11:34] But this was just the beginning, of course.

Merrill Charette [00:11:36] And. And you, you managed after all of this to continue being in the shipping industry. So what? What is the.

Jorne Langelaan [00:11:43] Question? I wanted to stop it, of.

Talha Bhatty [00:11:45] Course, by.

Jorne Langelaan [00:11:47] Dragging me in. So after this voyage. Well, I was actually I was going to go to not go college, but when we arrived in Italy, I called my parents and said, Well, no, not go college for me. I’m maybe cancel that school. I’m going to do something else. Wow. And then, of course, I wanted to leave the ship in Italy, but the captain said, No, you can’t leave here because you’re signed on to the ship’s articles and I see you cancel to get you from board. It’s not possible with customs, etc.. So you stay on board. So that was done. And so I continued with him back to the Netherlands again. But the nice thing was, and this was kind of like a game changer, I could say, is that I kind of got used to the seasickness a little bit better. So I started when I was sitting in the wheelhouse. Wheelhouse was kind of like a living room on these small coastal cargo ships. We would be sitting in the wheelhouse and I would have paper with me and I’m drawing like sailing ships because these sailing ships I saw in books of my father and my father was like really collecting like maritime books and stuff. So I was quite inspired about sailing ships. I really wanted to sail on sailing ships, but I didn’t know that that existence still to work commercially. There was making drawings of these sailing ships. And this captain came to me one day and he said, like, Well, it seems like you’re not so comfortable on motherships here, but, you know, there is like a fleet of sailing passenger ships who operate from the Netherlands. They also look for mariners. And maybe that would be something for you, because if you’re on a sailing ship with the sails, kind of steadying might be a bit easier. So, yeah, I didn’t forget that. And when I returned to the Netherlands, I kind of did some different schooling. But when I was 18 and I was done with the schooling, yeah, the sea was longer, of course, but I remember that there were these sailing ships. And it is true that in the Netherlands that’s about 400 well back then and maybe was even a bit more, about 400 big steel sailing barges will sail with passengers. They’re like converted old sailing cargo ships converted to passenger use within the Netherlands. It’s quite a small country. So the town I was born was is Delft and one of the ports where these sailing ships operated from is Harlingen. And it’s about it’s a couple of hours drive to the north. So I hitchhiked to Harlingen and walked along the keys to talk to the different skippers and captains of the sailing vessels to ask if they had a buffet and for some sailor. And then I found the ship, which was my first sailing ship actually, to sign onto.

Talha Bhatty [00:14:36] The.

Jorne Langelaan [00:14:36] Name of the Kohinoor. She was called.

Talha Bhatty [00:14:39] Kohinoor and that’s nice.

Jorne Langelaan [00:14:41] Well she was originally built as sailing cargo ship in, in Denmark, maybe in the north of Germany. And she was built out of steel from old boilers of big steamships. So yeah, here I was on the, on the Kohinoor, which was basically just sailing in the Netherlands, but also sometimes going on the North Sea. And I noticed on these sailing ships, this was my first time sailing. I actually didn’t really get so much seasick anymore. So that’s that was a good start. And we’re.

Talha Bhatty [00:15:14] For me, with some water as soon as you made the jump so your body was telling you, there’s enough for you, there’s enough, been enough for you. And then you get in tune with the waves on the sailing vessel and life is good. No, no.

Jorne Langelaan [00:15:28] It’s essential that you would say so.

Talha Bhatty [00:15:30] Really? Zero. Just for, like, everyday seasick did. No. Seasick?

Jorne Langelaan [00:15:35] Well, yeah, actually, the past 20 years or so, I’ve never been seasick.

Talha Bhatty [00:15:40] Wow.

Jorne Langelaan [00:15:42] Yeah, I got some storms.

Talha Bhatty [00:15:43] Gosh, you. You should get the Nobel Prize for sailing or something. No, only for figuring that one out. Nice.

Merrill Charette [00:15:50] Okay, so let’s start talking about how you came up with Eco Clipper. So what was the progression that made you realize this opportunity?

Jorne Langelaan [00:16:00] Yeah, actually, I continued sailing. So like a documentary about sailing cargo ship, which was still operating in the Caribbean, the Schooner album tour.

Talha Bhatty [00:16:12] So you it was more about a schooner. What’s a schooner?

Jorne Langelaan [00:16:15] So schooner is a sailing ship with at least two masts. And usually the for mast is slightly lower than the main mast. And you can have schooners up to seven masted schooner, which was the biggest ever. So actually one of those schooners to Mass. The schooner was still trading in the Caribbean in the nineties under the command of Captain Paul Island. And somehow I got onboard there as well so first hand I could experience the possibility of using Sail power for transport. And this was also because when I was sailing on this Kohinoor schooner, I really liked the sailing, but the passenger part and just kind of sailing from A to B with just people. Yeah, I didn’t really see the point of it so much. Yeah, I just like to carry cargo.

Talha Bhatty [00:17:08] What sort of credentials did you need to sort of land this job in this giant on the giant sailing vessel.

Jorne Langelaan [00:17:13] This was. This was last century, huh? Yeah. You could just still sail without any papers like that, especially in the Caribbean. And there was, like, many ships just trading. Just trading. And you could just come to a ship and you could say, Well, okay, I’d like to become a crew member and maybe work first a little bit to show that the crew had the right hands and then, yeah, you could just go. But nowadays it’s totally different. It’s like everything is regulated and it’s a lot a lot more difficult, of course, to land a job on a sailing vessel. But there is many dock ships nowadays and you can book like a trip on there and kind of then you pay actually to get experience and then enter.

Talha Bhatty [00:17:59] The other side.

Jorne Langelaan [00:18:00] We have done that for a while then. Yeah. Then you might have the possibility to to start sailing somewhere. They’re still kind of the short track and that would be to go like in spring time to the Netherlands and try to find a job on one of these passenger sailing vessels who are sailing in the Netherlands. And then you are not really sailing at sea because usually they stay in the inshore. What are some of the big lakes in the Netherlands? But it’s a very nice place to learn sailing and to get experience. And then we have done that like half a year or so. Then it becomes a lot easier to find a job on a seagoing ship. Also with works really good as joining a refit team and just go on a refit of a sailing ship and helping out. And then at a certain point the ship needs to go to sea and sometimes there’s still some berths available. And then if you are lucky and if you are the best, then the captain might choose you to join.

Talha Bhatty [00:18:58] And that’s a good tip as well. So this actually is what you just spoke about was like sort of where you ended up. You figured it out or could see things for me and figured out I want to do cargo and then you still haven’t like built your own first boat or any of that. That hasn’t started, right?

Jorne Langelaan [00:19:13] No, I sailed on some some other ships in between. And then in 2000 I was well, I also went to Moscow College. Then there’s a beautiful, really nice now school college here in the Netherlands. It’s called the Enclosure Save our tour already and goes on now to college. And nowadays they also give like classes in English. So it’s possible for international students to go there as well. And it gives like a course of about 20 weeks, the winter time that the sailing ships are sometimes laid up anyway. And then you get like your your license for a mate on coastal sailing vessels and you can do a second year and then you get your license for a mate on our master on the oceangoing sailing vessels. So this actually the, the course I did and when I was going to that school I actually ended up on a three master Barque Europa crossing the Atlantic Ocean from Cadiz to Bermuda and then to Norfolk, Virginia. So this was like an ocean crossing. And after that there was like the tall ship events along the East Coast. I kind of joined those and jumped ship in Halifax and there was another ship there and I signed on to the Picton Castle. Maybe you’ve heard of her as she’s quite famous because she. Yeah. She still go? Ready? Like, I don’t know, like ten times around the world or so. She’s pretty messed up, Bark. You might be asking, what is a bark? It’s like a ship with minimum three masts with the aft mast fore and aft wrecked and the main mast and the four of my square rig. And if you have like a tree, massive bark. And then the four masted bark would be a ship with form. I would ask mast for an asterix. And then the main mast, the basically the other three mast square rig.

Talha Bhatty [00:21:04] So this is like one of those classic sort of iconic pictures almost that you can imagine right now. It’s like, yeah, yeah.

Jorne Langelaan [00:21:10] It’s it’s kind of the final transition of the most efficient sailing cargo ship is a Bach. Yeah.

Talha Bhatty [00:21:17] Really interesting.

Jorne Langelaan [00:21:20] So I joined this Barque Picton Castle Inn in Halifax. And then, yeah, we did the Great Lakes tour actually going all down the St Lawrence Seaway and up to the Lakes and then, yeah, ending up in Chicago and we jumped ship there. I stayed for about half a year there and build another boat in.

Talha Bhatty [00:21:43] To building boats. Did you get into that part like what caused you to that? Was it just like, Oh, this is what I going to do now? Like what will happen there?

Jorne Langelaan [00:21:50] Well, yeah, if you really want to know it. Yeah. So we were actually on the Atlantic Crossing and that well which became to friends and later companions and or like co-founders, but those two friends, one of them, when we arrived in Norfolk, he hitchhiked to South America, to Peru because he had a friend there and he needed to help to build a youth hostel there on the beach. And we stayed on the ship, but we were kind of dreaming about sail cargo because we thought, okay, that would be a cool thing to build a sailing cargo ship maybe in South America because plenty of wood there and you can go on the beach and it would be kind of an awesome thing to do. But yeah, we need to go there. And we were kind of brainstorming what the best way would be to go down to South America. And when we arrived on the Great Lakes, we were already on the Arctic Picton Castle, and we were thinking, Well, maybe we can actually join her for a round the world trip. But it didn’t really work out. And we thought, Well, maybe we should go overland somehow to South America. And we were thinking about getting horses to go down. Yeah, as far as possible. But then we realized when we were entering with the Picton Castle in South Michigan, there was like a maritime museum there and the Western and very friendly people. And we met some of the local managers of the W and they were like, Yeah, we’re cool what you guys are doing and we’re kind of telling our stories. And then we thought, Well, maybe we can just build a raft and sell them to Mississippi because then we’re all the way south already and we, we proposed that to them. They’re like, Yeah, right. That might be a good idea. Our daughter just left home. We have a room available. So if you guys want to stay here to build your raft, then you’re very welcome.

Talha Bhatty [00:23:49] So when you say steps away draft, I mean.

Jorne Langelaan [00:23:52] Like, like some, some wooden structure which floats.

Talha Bhatty [00:23:55] So you can look down the river or.

Jorne Langelaan [00:23:58] So and.

Talha Bhatty [00:24:01] So we.

Jorne Langelaan [00:24:02] We couldn’t leave the Picton Castle right away because yeah, you can just say, okay, well bye bye. So we had to go and out of port. So we went to Chicago and there we jumped ship and we took the Greyhound back to South Haven and we actually stood on the doorstep of these people and we were like, Yeah, we are going to build this.

Talha Bhatty [00:24:21] Right here to visit.

Jorne Langelaan [00:24:23] And they’re like, Yeah, well come, come in. And then we went to the local maritime museum and we asked them, Do you maybe have a workshop? We need to build a raft to sell down the Mississippi. And yeah, they had a beautiful workshop where they built like canoes and stuff, the Padnos Boat chat, and we were invited to make use of it. And when we saw this workshop, we’re like, Wow, this is big.

Talha Bhatty [00:24:49] Because you make more than a raft. Yeah.

Jorne Langelaan [00:24:52] Yeah, exactly.

Talha Bhatty [00:24:53] Yeah.

Jorne Langelaan [00:24:54] You’re right on my paycheck. So we we’re measuring these doors and we are like, Yeah, we are not going to build a raft. We’re going to build a boat here. Said the doors were like 12 feet wide and 12 feet tall and stuff, so we were like, Well, we can have this will be the beam, this will be.

Talha Bhatty [00:25:10] There, and then we will just erect a massage chair and boom. Wow. Sure.

Jorne Langelaan [00:25:15] And yeah, we are like kind of investigating the size and I’m making drawings and we are thinking like, we can build like a nice boat, but maybe, maybe it would even fit to build like, a cargo boat in there, like a little cargo hold and a hope so for the crew and. In for a for ourselves. So yeah, we started actually building this replica or kind of replica of a Dutch flat bottom cargo barge in South Michigan.

Talha Bhatty [00:25:43] You still need like, lots of materials. So how are you funding this?

Jorne Langelaan [00:25:46] Well, actually, I’m an artist as well as I make drawings. And with this tall ship fence, I have made, like, drawings of the ships there and sold them. So we got quite some money from that because there’s a fence. There’s millions of people coming. Now, want to take a souvenir? I was selling like this prints. And so we had quite a bit of money. Maybe something like $10,000 or so.

Talha Bhatty [00:26:12] Nice and crazy. This is that same thing that you said way back that you were just like growing sailing vessels and you’re the old captain. Wow. That’s what this turned into. Very cool.

Jorne Langelaan [00:26:24] And then yeah, so then we we basically made a drawing of ship we were going to build, precut. Everything we built like a big model to show local people how we’re going to build it. And then like, a local sawmill came in. So we launched this boat the 2nd of April, and we christened the Piraeus Magnus, which is like a crazy. Well, in the Netherlands you have Friesland, which is in the north. It’s kind of like a separate country, but it isn’t a separate country, but it’s kind of like with England and Scotland. And England and Scotland. You have, like, Braveheart and stuff. And then in Friesland you have got a pier, and that’s like the big pipe areas. Magnus So we called the boat this way and then we. Richter And I think it was May or so as we did our maiden voyage to the Tulip Festival in Holland, Michigan.

Talha Bhatty [00:27:20] And so this was a cargo vessel. How big was this? How, how big do you guys go?

Jorne Langelaan [00:27:24] So she was about think she was about 35 feet oh, for the hull and about 52 feet overall. And she could take about ten tons of cargo. So she had like a foxhole with two bunks and a stern cabin with two bunks. And then she had like cargo hold to stand on as rig with one mast with a square rake on it as well, like a square Topsail square course. And then she had the main sail and a couple of ships. So quite quite a little nice sail. Yeah. In the end, those two of my friends, they crossed the ocean with it, so. Yeah. Must be. She must have been some seaworthy little vessel. Yeah, but no engine, so.

Talha Bhatty [00:28:17] Oh, and what sort of sailing rig did you guys give her? Was it a bar?

Jorne Langelaan [00:28:20] So like a like a square sloop.

Talha Bhatty [00:28:24] Basically, it was about a sloops. We’ve had Barclay. Her schooner Sloop is.

Jorne Langelaan [00:28:29] The sloop is one last. Usually a sloop is one mast without the gear boom, I think. And the cutter would be like one mast with two had sails or more and like sloop would be with one. That’s I guess that’s termination.

Talha Bhatty [00:28:45] So small and simple. Yeah.

Jorne Langelaan [00:28:48] Well we had about eight sails or so but yeah, if you’re interested in ideas. Yeah. I wonder if you can find it. But. But there is a little YouTube movie about building this boat and sailing it the way it’s like 20 years old. So you see all these people, like with their hats and with like, yeah, it’s. It’s a nice little movie.

Talha Bhatty [00:29:13] Cool.

Jorne Langelaan [00:29:14] I could send you the link.

Talha Bhatty [00:29:16] Sure, sure, sure. Or put it in there.

Merrill Charette [00:29:18] And so you, you have this successful building of the boat and you built this thing to carry cargo. So your mind’s on that. Now, what happens next? How do we get to Eco Clipper?

Talha Bhatty [00:29:29] Oh.

Jorne Langelaan [00:29:30] I love happens next. At a certain point, I jumped ship from this period, Magnus, because we thought we were going to be two captains, but that didn’t work out. So I decided to go. In the meantime, I met somebody in Grand Rapids and we moved in together. Since I’m an artist as well, I did some art shows there and stuff and yeah, moved on. Basically my visa ran out and I had to go anyway, so yeah, moved on and went back into working on motor ships because I needed.

Talha Bhatty [00:30:01] To.

Jorne Langelaan [00:30:02] Earn some money to actually to come back again.

Merrill Charette [00:30:06] To support your Spartan lifestyle, huh?

Jorne Langelaan [00:30:09] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I was working bit on the motor cargo ships and then, yeah, the certain point I went, I was back home with my parents and I went, like, to a movie theater with, like, a movie about the explorer Shackleton, who went, like, to the South Pole, like, around the chance to go or sell. And when we came out of this movie theater, I’m like, Wow, I really, really would like to go down to Antarctica. And then about a half an hour later, when I was back home, the telephone rang and it was Captain Glass, the captain of the Park Europa. And he’s like, Yeah, I remember two years ago you crossed the ocean with us and you were actually making really nice drawings. And I’m looking for a ship’s.

Talha Bhatty [00:30:58] Artist.

Jorne Langelaan [00:30:59] To join the Bach Europa on the voyage from San Diego to Easter Island, Rapanui and then around Cape Horn to the Falkland Islands and from there to South Georgia and then back to the Figo. And from there, an expedition to Antarctica.

Talha Bhatty [00:31:18] What would you like to add, Luke, in that? Wow, that’s the universe. Any of us is right there.

Jorne Langelaan [00:31:25] Nice. Yeah, it was really amazing. I’m still thinking about this, but in the meantime, I also, like, I have applied for the Royal Art School in The Hague, and I was actually invited to come there, so I had to choose or I go to art school or I go sail around Cape Horn.

Talha Bhatty [00:31:45] So. So for the artists in our community, Liquid, what is a gig like that first one you mentioned? Yeah, the on board artist. What does that look like? Like you just have to design a drawing a day or.

Jorne Langelaan [00:31:56] Yeah, I was actually supposed to make, like, drawings for a book about square seamanship, so basically a seamanship manual. He was going to write it. I was going to make the drawings. That. That was kind of the idea. Yeah, I would just join the watches. But instead of doing my entrance or such, I would be making drawings. And then when, when there would be some sale handling or some climbing, the rigging or anything like that, they would hold me on the deck too, to help them. But in the meantime, I’d be making drawings. So I did this trip and I came to America. And this was also with all kinds of biologists and researchers. And then it really hit me. It hit me right there that the world is so beautiful. But the way we are treating it as humans is kind of the way we are spoiling it and the environmental damage and all this. I really thought, I want to do something about that. And then it kind of all linked together. Like, okay, one of the few things I know is, is sailing and working on ships, so why not really, really make this change happen of transition from mother to sail and just go and do everything what is possible to get rid of these mother ships and. Yeah, and this really it’s all the cargo in the world with sailing.

Talha Bhatty [00:33:21] Ships and seem like a giant plan right then. And so how did you go about it? What did you do then?

Jorne Langelaan [00:33:30] I kind of ended up on other ships again, making a living. But at a certain point I was so fed up with it and I got in contact again with my old shipmates who had by then crossed these little areas, Magnus, across the ocean. We said, okay, we are actually going to take this on. We’re going to bring back commercial sailing ships on the high seas. It was 27 then. In the meantime, I had also built like a little 30 foot sailboat for myself because I was kind of done with the industrial civilization and just wanted to go away from it and just set sail and just go fishing or whatever. But yeah, then I came together with my two old shipmates and we decided, okay, we’re going to do this. And then we started the company Sail Transport, that was 27, and the first thing we were going to do was build a new sail cargo ship, a big one. So maybe like 50 tons of cargo or 100 tons of cargo.

Talha Bhatty [00:34:34] And then small is like giant for most people. Yeah.

Jorne Langelaan [00:34:40] Well, I mean, like Pier is Magnus was small, like a ship off on the Thames. It’s really small. Like, like the one we are now. We are now working on the Tucker. She she can carry about 70 tons of cargo ship by itself. It weighs about 220 tons. She has a length of hundred and 20 feet and she’s in the shipping world’s really small.

Talha Bhatty [00:35:04] In comparison need.

Jorne Langelaan [00:35:08] She will sail with five professional crew and 12 paying guests. Yeah.

Talha Bhatty [00:35:13] So. Right. Wow. So back to the story. Yeah.

Jorne Langelaan [00:35:17] Yeah. So then we yeah, we built this we actually refitted this vessel truss on us and we refit that to become a brigantine. Which is to match that ship with one foreign left. Rick, The mastermind masked and the four masked square Rick. And actually, the first thing we did when we purchased this hole, which is story by itself. But the first thing we did was take the engine out to really make statements.

Talha Bhatty [00:35:49] Make a point.

Jorne Langelaan [00:35:49] To sell the ship.

Talha Bhatty [00:35:51] Wow. So most people, they need an engine at least to like dock and undock. What happens in those situations?

Jorne Langelaan [00:35:58] Yes. So. Well, when the situation is right, you can actually fill in and fill out.

Talha Bhatty [00:36:05] Yeah, I agree with that. It’s all about timing. Okay.

Jorne Langelaan [00:36:10] Now it’s it’s circumstances. It’s whether it’s timing and it’s location. Like not all locations are. Yeah. Make it possible. Some do. But the more the more you come to more what they call first world countries, the harder it becomes.

Talha Bhatty [00:36:29] Really interesting. Interesting. Okay, so then you pull the engine out.

Jorne Langelaan [00:36:35] Yeah, we pull the engine out, and we started refitting there. We had planned that it would take about a year and took in the end, two and a half years. And then we. Yeah. On the maiden voyage, we sell to the climate conference in Copenhagen. And it was a huge success. She. She sailed like a witch.

Talha Bhatty [00:36:54] Really? Really. Sailing with her dad was a guru. Yeah.

Jorne Langelaan [00:37:00] Then and. And yeah, then. Then we were there. We had this beautiful brigantine sailing cargo ship, which could take about 40 tons of cargo. But we did not have any cargo logistics systems on this world where and ready for sailing cargo ships. So then maybe you remember the earthquake in Haiti in 2010. And then we decided, okay, if we don’t have commercial cargo, we’re just going to do something different. We reached out to some NGOs to ask what was needed there, and then we loaded the ship full with tents and with hospital materials, medicines, whatever you could think of. And yeah, the winter of 2010, we we set sail for Haiti. That was like a story by itself, of course. But after arriving, we did another voyage from Port au Prince to Jacmel with a cargo for the World Food Program, because in Jacmel, the roads all had been damaged, so it could only be distributed by small cargo ships. So there’s some sailing there. And then from there to the Dominican Republic. And we still didn’t had much more cargo. So we decided to buy our own cargo. We also had not much money. So I stayed behind and I called our our investors and arranged some money to buy cargo for them. And we sailed that back across the ocean and that became the dress Hombres rum, the famous dress. And I started selling that. And and that’s that has become kind of a tradition. The tourism is still every year sailing a cargo of rum from the Caribbean to Europe, but also other cargoes like coffee, like cow, like things like this ship has been sailing for about 15 years now, I think.

Merrill Charette [00:38:55] And so at one point here, you mentioned that you had investors and I guess that kind of gets into this next point. It’s like, you know, it seems that the shipping industry is very much kind of focusing on technology and it’s like, what is the new technology that can make something sustainable where when we look at you, it’s like you’ve gone back in time. It’s like, okay, this is sustainable. Can you talk on on that side of things?

Jorne Langelaan [00:39:21] Yeah, it’s just using common sense, huh? You just look a little bit further into history and you just see thousands of commercial sailing ships who operated and actually arranged like a perfectly zero emission logistics system. Why wouldn’t you use that again? And actually, those ships, they were, like, built throughout the knowledge of hundreds of thousands of years.

Talha Bhatty [00:39:50] Maybe that’s what we’ve lost, right, is that we.

Jorne Langelaan [00:39:54] Haven’t lost it. We’re only not using it. It’s still there. The wind the wind is still blowing there. It will continue blowing. Like this is one of the first questions people always ask me, like, yeah, but sailing, is it slower and slower?

Talha Bhatty [00:40:10] Mm hmm. How much slower? They’re like, like now. Now they’re touting stuff like carbon fiber, this and sales that and the engine.

Jorne Langelaan [00:40:19] Okay, But that’s very nice to make things lighter. But that doesn’t work for cargo ships because the cargo ships, the whole game is, of course, to carry weight, not to. Be as light as possible. But if you really look how long it takes to form fossil fuels, then all of a sudden sailing becomes really fast. And actually, even if you look at the passage times, then nowadays when you transport like a container from Asia to Europe, it is about 30 or 40 days. If you are lucky, because there might be big traffic jams in congested ports, etc..

Talha Bhatty [00:40:59] Anyway, and you might be in that spot for another 30 days. Right. Yeah, exactly.

Jorne Langelaan [00:41:05] And like the fastest clipper ships in the 19th century, they could sell that same route in 70 days or even a longer route because they wouldn’t take the shortest channel. If you really want to go with the Paris Climate Accord, if you really are serious about climate change or the other, the plastic soup or any of these crises, then you only have one choice for your logistics. If you want to continue using foreign goods and traveling to foreign lands and sailing ships, it is.

Talha Bhatty [00:41:40] And so what would you say? Like a large fleet of smaller vessels are investing in bigger sailing vessels was a bigger sustaining vessel being built.

Jorne Langelaan [00:41:47] Nowadays, the biggest sailing vessels there might be like a couple of thousand tonnes. The biggest sailing vessel boats was maybe the pros and I show them while the biggest square big one at least, and could carry about 8000 tonnes of cargo. I’d say that was built in 1904 and 1902, but nowadays of course there could be the bigger, I guess the average container vessel is like 50,000 tons, so that’s quite a bit bigger. But really what I propose and this is something it’s a bit weird maybe to hear from a ship owner is to ship a lot less cargo. About about 30%.

Talha Bhatty [00:42:28] Of.

Jorne Langelaan [00:42:28] All the of all the commodities shipped over the world, of all the tons ships. It’s fossil fuels, 30% of what we send over the world.

Talha Bhatty [00:42:38] I was going to say definitely and.

Jorne Langelaan [00:42:41] It’s fossil fuels that’s being brought by tankers, bulk carriers.

Talha Bhatty [00:42:46] I believe.

Jorne Langelaan [00:42:46] Then of the rest, of course, 90% of of the rest, what’s what is being shipped. It’s only being ships because it’s for manufacturers. It’s easier to produce it in some Asian countries because there’s no environmental laws, there’s no labor laws, there’s nothing like that or made or a lot less standard than we have in USA or in Europe. So that’s that’s of course, the reason a lot of our industry went abroad, because they’re shipping, especially with container ships, is so efficient, is so cheap. Nowadays. Garbage is being shipped all around the world to be sent to Africa.

Talha Bhatty [00:43:30] So and it’s not because Africa shows.

Jorne Langelaan [00:43:32] Already how ridiculous.

Talha Bhatty [00:43:34] Dealing with garbage is is because that’s the new dumping site. Right. And so what are you recommending, though? Is everybody like I was reading this thing about like New Zealand, honey, and they they charge like 100 times more than any other honey or whatever. I don’t remember the name, but is something like that. Like everybody just picks a super niche and just sticks with it, Is that what you’re saying? And everything else that you can grow, you just grow?

Jorne Langelaan [00:43:56] Yeah, of course. We need to be localized way more.

Talha Bhatty [00:44:00] Much more localization. And this kind of you’re saying we can’t ship the trash for resources to do it? All the trash? Yeah. Where do we put it? Like maybe to consume less. Maybe.

Jorne Langelaan [00:44:13] Maybe we could eat the trash. What about that recycling or.

Talha Bhatty [00:44:18] Right. Well, composted. Right. That’s something they’re coming up with.

Merrill Charette [00:44:21] So obviously, it seems that the, you know, the shipping side and use in the fossil fuels is quite entrenched into kind of the modern day logistics. So in terms of, you know, sailing cargo ships, where is the clipper industry now? You know, what would have to happen in order to scale that industry? And you know, I guess going off that, how you see this sailing cargo happening over the next 5 to 10 years.

Jorne Langelaan [00:44:51] Yeah. So first, like after we launched Transformers, that was kind of like a pioneer and then many new projects followed. So maybe now there’s about 15 sailing cargo ships sailing around and even more went to assist ships. So they have like they still have engines, but they also use wind to have like less fuel use and less emissions. And also about maybe about ten years ago or maybe a little bit less, the International Wind Ship Association was formed and this is like a market organization for the industry. It has its main office in London. And now I think they. Has about 100 members. And that’s not only small companies like our company, like Eagle Clipper, but also, yeah, big companies, big shipping companies who are looking into using wind power. Yeah, I think actually the the yeah, if we are serious about the environment, if we are serious about climate change, then this is the only way forward. So that will if we really act upon their look on all that, then we are in for some sailing ships. But it can also happen that the kind of business as usual where we kind of say, okay, we really find green importance, but in the meantime we just fly all over the place. That’s the most likely thing. What will happen? And we see it happening all the time. Of course, since the movie Inconvenient Truth came up.

Talha Bhatty [00:46:22] And around, Greta Thunberg goes around in sailing vessels to the plan conferences. Yeah, it’s climate. Yeah, right.

Jorne Langelaan [00:46:28] So that’s a great example.

Talha Bhatty [00:46:30] Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. And it’s really goop. It sort of is Again, it’s just showing the world we like what Where we rushing to? Like where we going. Yeah. I think it’s like just enjoy the passage there.

Jorne Langelaan [00:46:42] Whatever you see, you definitely see a change of course, but it’s still neat, huh? But I must admit, about 15 years ago when I talked to somebody about sailing cargo ships, people were like, Well, well, 90% of the people are like, You’re absolutely nuts. You’re absolutely crazy. This cannot happen. And now I’m actually on your podcast.

Talha Bhatty [00:47:03] So we had this.

Jorne Langelaan [00:47:06] Exchange, huh?

Talha Bhatty [00:47:07] It is. Is it? But just podcast then?

Jorne Langelaan [00:47:10] I don’t know what you think. Of course. Yeah.

Talha Bhatty [00:47:13] I agree. That’s it. I mean, there’s a lot of people like, say somebody wanted to join a board like this really sort of gets them all invigorated and they’re like, Oh, I’m gonna to change the world too. I want to say the board is feeling better. I think what might freak out some of them is that, but it’s so dangerous or something, right? Compared to like but is that true compared to like a motor vessel or would it be the same sailing experience anyway?

Jorne Langelaan [00:47:36] I think it’s safer.

Talha Bhatty [00:47:37] Safer? Oh, I love to hear this. I mean, more quick.

Jorne Langelaan [00:47:41] Well, you can look at the scientific papers, but at the multiverse where you have an engine, which is a huge cause of fires on board.

Talha Bhatty [00:47:51] 90% of fires start in engine rooms. Yeah, it is true that.

Jorne Langelaan [00:47:56] About I think about 60% of the fires on the vessel, they start in the engine.

Talha Bhatty [00:48:01] 60.

Jorne Langelaan [00:48:02] But anyhow, when you have a good, well fun sailing vessel, you can just ride the winds to work with the nature and instead of against it when you lose power with the motor vessel, yeah, you’re really lost. But with the sailing vessel, even if it’s a sail, there’s you often have more sails. So it was not for nothing. That’s in the 19th century when the steamships came up. It took about 70 years or so that even steamships were obliged to still have sails because it wasn’t deemed safe to just go to the sails.

Talha Bhatty [00:48:36] That’s interesting.

Merrill Charette [00:48:37] And why do you think that people have made such a shift from, you know, obviously it started off as sails and then, you know, it moved to steam and then it moved to diesel. And, you know, talking to people in the shipping side of the industry, how they describe it as it’s like right before the advent of steam, like trying to figure out how to exactly do anything to make anything sustainable and new forms of transportation.

Jorne Langelaan [00:49:03] Sorry, what is exactly the question?

Merrill Charette [00:49:06] You see, that’s the problem.

Talha Bhatty [00:49:08] Basically. Yeah.

Merrill Charette [00:49:11] You know what? The trends of sustainability in shipping, how does that impact like the wider economy? How does sailing cargo ships impact local economies?

Jorne Langelaan [00:49:23] Well, it can have a huge positive impact, actually, but it all depends how you work it out. Of course, with sailing ships, we are able to actually work on and on in the old tradition in shipping, which can be done actually with smaller vessels, and also asking the true ecological price for freight for a transport. We’ll kind of sift through what cargo should be really transported and what cargoes are actually ridiculous to transport. They are not works to be transported, so you just will have less transport but only valuable cargoes who are or worth to be transported. And then what could actually happen if we organize it politically? Well, is that small ports become actually commercial ports again. And instead of having like, well, what happened after the Second World War is that our governments, they decided to invest heavily in road transport against waterborne transport. And if we could change that around, actually we could take some traffic jams off the roads and we could actually. I have some way more efficient, less energy use by moving transport to ships and also having like small ports become economical centers again where there is thriving business. Like you see a lot of small ports here in Europe. I don’t know how it’s in the USA where the old warehouses are turned into apartment buildings and that of course needs to be reversed again to make actually the parts working parts again. And also the cities have people work and live at the same place and not having to commute for like an hour or so because it just doesn’t make sense in a time where where we talk about climate change. But even more maybe because climate change is also kind of a in a way a psychological thing, Like people can just kind of say like, wow, look how it storms. It’s well, look how cold it is. It’s not really happening. And that’s kind of the general idea. I guess I’d be happier to change this, but I’d also be surprised. But what will happen is that the price of energy will go up and it will keep going up. That’s something you cannot just say, okay, well, look, it is snowing and nothing is happening. Now. You see how much of this then you want to do something different and maybe you actually want to stop using fossil fuels and you sailing vessels.

Talha Bhatty [00:51:50] To me, as an investor, how much say I want to get into, you know, sailing vessels, sailing, shipping vessels, What are the best places to start? Is is it like country specific or some countries are better at it than others. You know, how much capital would somebody need for their experience or somebody need to get into this?

Jorne Langelaan [00:52:06] So for investors who are looking for investing in sailing cargo vessels, well, you can always, of course, send eco clipper line and.

Talha Bhatty [00:52:15] Exactly. Exactly. Because we are also.

Jorne Langelaan [00:52:18] Looking for investors, although there is something here I need to tell and I haven’t found out the way yet, but in the Netherlands, there are some sort of law where it’s harder for U.S. or Canadian investors to invest in Eco Clipper. So sorry, I’m still looking for a solution there. But there is of course other projects like for example, there is this great project in Costa Rica, so cargo and they are actually building this 350 foot, 350 tons schooner on the beach in Costa Rica. So there’s projects like this you could invest in. There’s more projects around the world. Just go online and look for sail cargo or look for clean transport or well, eco clipper, of course. And then of course, I would invite people to start their own sailing cargo ship companies. But there’s also a disclaimer, because it is quite some work, it’s quite intricate, there’s a lot of different things you have to think about. So if you want to start a show cargo company, it’s probably better to start as Mariner first on different sailing ships to kind of learn the trade, maybe sail on a couple of sail cargo ships. Nowadays you can just book a trip on, well, on our ship, but also on other ships like tourism brochures, like the Avon Tours, like Holland, like there’s many ships sailing around now where you can just book a berth and just try it out. Even better, of course, is just go work professionally on as many ships as you can. Just get a career in shipping, learn about ship broking and learn about maritime economics and then go into it. And I think then you are really paving your way to a great career because yeah, there’s no way around it. Sooner or later the logistics will will change to wind power because we want to continue long distance transport and travel. That’s the only feasible solution.

Merrill Charette [00:54:17] We had a discussion with this one guy, Drew Oriental, and he was basically he had done a program and they had the design of a cargo ship and they were like, okay, can you put sails on this thing? Like, you know, Jerry rigged this thing. And clearly that was like a no. And so it’s like a situation in which a lot of boats would have to be built. Do you foresee these major shipping companies being like, okay, you know what, We’re going to go with the we’re going to start making some moves, start building out some sailing ships. Are they just going to invest their money into like alternative fuels and whatnot?

Talha Bhatty [00:54:53] Yeah.

Jorne Langelaan [00:54:54] There is actually some some shipping companies, they do invest in sail, but it’s only a few. And I’m afraid most shipping companies and big shipping companies are just missing the turn here and they start thinking about biofuels or so which which is of course a huge drain on agricultural land.

Talha Bhatty [00:55:15] But it’s coming from the same place that caused the problem, right?

Jorne Langelaan [00:55:19] Yeah. So it can work. And then this course, the Yeah, the idea of selling electrical but that’s a huge problem with well how to store it so. It’s also not feasible. Then there’s the idea of using hydrogen, but hydrogen. You need to somehow make it. It’s basically an energy battery, so you have to still produce it and to produce that. It cost a lot of energy. Yeah, of course you can use green energy. So then what you’re doing, you’re actually putting down windmill farms. You’re making electricity off that wind. Then you make hydrogen, all of that electricity. Then you somehow get the hydrogen on the ship, and then you start sailing with it. Then, well, if you look at efficiency, that’s that’s about the worst efficiency you can find when you put mass on a ship right away. But somehow the coin isn’t really calling yet. But it can come at any moment. Shoot, We’re not all you know.

Talha Bhatty [00:56:20] When you’re ahead of the curve that way. So good luck to you. I mean, this sounds like quite an adventure you’ve been on. And these last 20, 30 years more. It’s really cool to hear all those stories than anything. You’d like to leave our listeners with Any top tips from all your experience?

Jorne Langelaan [00:56:37] Well, I would say yeah, really, really find ways to start making use of sailing vessels. So for charterers, look for sailing vessels to to put your goods on if you want to travel. Look for sailing vessels to travel with instead of using an airplane. If you’re interested in investing, look for sailing cargo ship companies to invest in. I think that that is definitely the way forward, of course, on the industry of long distance logistics.

Merrill Charette [00:57:07] So where can people find you and read more about what you’re doing and check out everything that you’re working on?

Jorne Langelaan [00:57:13] Yeah, so it’s eco clipper. You can find it on online of course. Eco Clipper or because our website we we’re on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Even on the website you can find my telephone number and give me a call and I’m happy to discuss any ways to make the transition to sail faster.

Merrill Charette [00:57:34] Plus, Sean, it was great talking here and hearing all these stories.

Jorne Langelaan [00:57:38] Thanks. Well, thank you so much. Thank you for for hosting me here. And fair winds.

Talha Bhatty [00:57:43] I do.

Farah [00:57:46] Please check back every Tuesday for our latest episode and be sure to like, share and subscribe to ship shaped up for.