Wave-Powered Boat Team Looks to Make a Big Splash

March 15, 2008 — -- In 1982, Kenichi Horie was steering his boat across the Pacific when raging waves flipped his vessel over. But now, on Sunday, the Japanese native plans to harness this untamed force to fuel a voyage from Honolulu to Japan.

By attempting the 4,350-mile route to his homeland, Horie hopes to set the Guinness world record for the longest distance traveled by a wave-powered boat, and, along with it, raise awareness about an oft-overlooked, renewable power source.

The success of Horie's boat, the Suntory Mermaid II, rests on a propulsion system nestled under the bow. His partner on the project, Yutaka Terao, designed the engine, which utilizes two parallel fins that kick up and down as incoming waves pass through. It is the force of the dolphin-like kicks that will propel the boat across the open ocean.

The 69-year-old sailor isn't new to difficult adventures on the high seas. Horie navigated from Hawaii to Okinawa, Japan, 14 years ago in a foot-paddled boat, setting the world's distance record for feet-powered sailing. In 1996, Horie also set the world record for being the fastest to race a solar powered boat by crossing the Pacific in 148 days.

"He asked me to design him this boat because he's sailed on every kind of boat out there already, and wave powered boats was the only thing that hasn't been done yet," said Terao, an engineer and professor at Takai University in Japan. "He wants to be a pioneer of every kind of voyage."

Long the runt of renewable energy technologies, wave energy has begun to garner interest in some European countries. Last year, an Irish company named WaveBob used a buoy-like machine to convert the ocean's motion into electricity. And in Portugal, officials have moved forward on construction of the world's first offshore wave farm.

But in the United States, the attention given to the technology is dwarfed by investment in solar and wind power. Under the proposed 2008 Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act, $10 million worth of government funds would go to developing water power technologies such as wave energy. But a hefty $170 million would be provided to solar energy projects.