You may recall a reference here last week to a three-masted schooner story emerging from the haze. Thanks to PortSide NewYork, I learned about a project
to ship cocoa by commercial sail. And as a TWIC-carrying PortSide volunteer, I was invited into Red Hook Marine Terminal to blog for the unloading of cocoa from the schooner. Black Seal, a 70-foot Colvin “Sea Gypsy” design with the biggest cargo hold and steel pilothouse, has been the 25-year building project of Capt Eric Loftfield. Tugster has featured many fotos of two other Colvin boats: samples at Rosemary Ruthand the misguided Papillon. On her maiden voyage, Black Seal traveled from Falmouth, Massachusetts to Puerto Plata, DR . . . to Red Hook, New York. With cargo. Twenty tons of organic cocoa beans,
285 bags of over 150 pounds each. And how much fuel was consumed in the 30-seaday, 3000-mile voyage? Answer appears later in the post.
The cocoa represents about a year’s worth of Dominican beans used by Mast Brothers Chocolate. Click on the 8.5 minute clip for some background.
Before containerization, this is what port work looked like.
According to Rick Mast, this voyage is partly about R & D, figuring stuff out like
the pricing, the efficiencies.
This cargo was loaded in the Domincan Republic in two hours and unloaded in Red Hook in
–because it meant fighting gravity–four.
By noon today, the hold looked like this; I wish the blog could convey the heady aroma of chocolate that lingered. I could sleep here and dream of flavonoids.
According to Capt. Loftfield, a Cook Inlet pilot in Alaska, the total amount of fuel used, including motoring out of and into port as well as running the generator and galley was
less than 50 gallons. Assuming 3000 miles, that’s better than a Prius!
Here’s what 12 pallets of cocoa looks like on the dock within sight of
Some inspiration for using commercial sail to move cocoa from the Caribbean can be traced back to Ross Gannon and Nat Benjamin of Gannon & Benjamin Marine Railway. Ross Gannon is the uncle of PortSide New York‘s founder and director Carolina Salguero. Gannon & Benjamin has received their own cargo (wood) by sail. Some other examples of current commercial sail projects include Beth Alison, Tres Hombres, Kwai, and Albatros. I’d love to hear about others.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who is ecstatic to witness extraordinarily-prepared people learning how to do extraordinary things by . . . jumping in–when the time is ripe– and doing them.
Challenges abound; the story of schooner John F. Leavitt illustrates the risk of jumping in prematurely, of not being extraordinarily prepared.
For the Wall Street Journal version of the story, click here.
10 comments
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June 14, 2011 at 6:11 pm
Andrew Willner
This is very exciting stuff. Thanks for the post and to the crew and the chocolate makers vision
June 14, 2011 at 7:19 pm
bowsprite
hooray! ship and be happy!
we are happy you shipped!
congratulations to Black Seal and to the Mast Bros! Bravo!
June 14, 2011 at 7:51 pm
Voytec
The Albatros is not involved in the active trade since 2008: The Albatros makes its last commercial sailing trip with guests in July. From then on the sale of real ales and pancakes becomes a full time all year round business.
June 14, 2011 at 10:03 pm
Theresa Danks
Too bad she doesn’t have square topsails. If she had square yards, they could have rigged yardarm and stay tackles and wouldn’t have needed the crane, thus saving on both fuel and rental for the equipment.
June 14, 2011 at 11:00 pm
Elizabeth
I love the harkening back to pre-containerization. Helps me remember the harbor as its former self. Also, did you bring home any samples?
June 14, 2011 at 11:10 pm
tugster
mais bien sur
June 14, 2011 at 11:10 pm
tugster
actually, she DOES have square sails, coarses, although it wasn’t clear to me how they would be set.
June 15, 2011 at 2:20 pm
bonnie
This is fantastic! I already loved Mast Brothers chocolate anyways – a bar of their Brooklyn Blend is my kind of affordable luxury. This makes it even better.
June 18, 2011 at 7:44 am
Cocoa Arrives, By Sail - SailNet Community
[…] […]
June 20, 2011 at 10:51 am
Tom
I never would have guessed commercial cargo by sail at this point! Fantastic!