02/05/2025

FRIDAY | MAY 2, 2025

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Sustainable sailing o British start-up offers experiential alternative to ferries

T HE crossing may be “a bit choppy”, Captain Andrew Simons warned a dozen of his passengers waiting in the French port of Boulogne to cross the Channel with only wind to get them to England. SailLink is a British start-up that aims to offer sailing as a low-carbon alternative to ferries. It recently made its first paid crossings of the English Channel on its catamaran, a route that will soon become daily. Despite the swell and icy gusts, Johannes Schneider, 67, fully enjoyed the crossing in the catamaran. He paid £85 (RM491) for the privilege, more expensive than a pedestrian ferry crossing. “Really interesting to really be able to live it, rather than being on a big ship, where you see nothing, or a plane, where you see even less,” he said. SailLink’s catamaran is 17m long and can carry up to 12 passengers. To compensate for sometimes rough seas, the crew offers its passengers mint tea to combat motion sickness, and pastries and blankets in the cabin, where they can shelter from the spray. Experiencing sea SailLink was born in the summer of 2019 when Simons, who was about to board a ferry to England with his daughter, looked at the Cherbourg marina in northern France and SEATED on sandbags in a knee-deep grid dug in South Africa’s Sterkfontein caves, where one of our earliest ancestors was found, Itumeleng Molefe swept ancient soil into a blue dustpan, each brushstroke hunting for hidden clues. Nearby, visitors marvelled at the weathered limestone rocks hanging from the ceiling of the caves, millions of years old. Located 50km northwest of Johannesburg, the caves closed nearly three years ago due to flooding and reopened last month with a new experience bringing tourists closer to the scientific action. The complex is housed within the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site, a rich source of artefacts for palaeontologists since it was first discovered. “My aim is to find important bones here,” said the 40-year-old Molefe. His most prized find since joining the excavation team in 2013 was an early human hand bone. His father was part of the team that uncovered South Africa’s most famous find, a skeleton dubbed “Little Foot” in the caves. Deriving its name from the size of the bones first discovered in the 1990s, it is the most complete specimen of a human ancestor yet discovered, estimated to be between 1.5 million and 3.7 million years old. Little Foot is from a branch of the human family tree called

use a motor to move away. Navigating one of the busiest seas in the world is no easy task, with about 700 to 800 commercial vessels and around 1,400 fishing boats using the strait every day. SailLink still managed the crossing to Dover from Boulogne-sur-Mer in less than four hours. That is faster than the scheduled five hours, but much longer than the 1.5 hours ferry journey – excluding waiting time. “It is a new relationship with speed, a new relationship with the landscape,” appealing to fans of “slow travel”, said researcher Sylvain Roche, who saw “a direct link between the resurgence of sailing boats” and that of “night trains”. While only marginal for the moment, sail-powered transport could grow in coming years. Today, sailing is the only real alternative to fossil fuels, said Roche, as other technologies for decarbonising maritime transport, such as hydrogen, are currently “absolutely immature”. Maritime transport accounts for nearly 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the International Maritime Organisation. But a ferry journey still emits almost three times less greenhouse gases per passenger than a plane, according to the European Environment Agency. – AFP

wondered why its moored little boats could not be used instead for the crossing. He found ferries polluting and impractical with their out-of-the-way terminals. Simons imagined a new mode of cross-Channel transport “offering that experience of the sea to people who are not travelling with a car”. His initial idea of a co-navigation platform – a sort of BlaBlaCar for boats – proved too complex to implement. So Simons modelled his approach on the existing ferries, offering pedestrians and cyclists a fixed, daily route with set schedules. He had to raise €500,000 (RM2.4 million), including €350,000 to buy the boat, which he raised from a handful of private investors “who really believed in it”. Sail passenger routes already exist in France. Sailcoop has run a route between Saint-Raphael on south coast to the Mediterranean island of Corsica since 2022. Another company Iliens has since 2021 run a route between Quiberon, on France’s Atlantic coast, to the little island of Belle-Ile-en-Mer. Only real alternative A few kilometres before reaching the English coast, a container ship blocked the catamaran’s way and Simons and his team had to briefly

To compensate for sometimes rough seas, the crew offers its passengers mint tea to combat motion sickness. – PEXELSPIC

South Africa’s ‘cradle of humankind’ caves reopen to public

opportunities to engage with active live science and research, all happening in real time,” said the professor. At their peak before the Covid-19 pandemic, the caves received up to 100,000 tourists a year. The closure had left a lingering feeling of sadness, said Witwatersrand archaeology professor Dominic Stratford, recalling busloads of schoolchildren and inquisitive visitors. “Everyone felt like we were missing something,” he said. A temporary exhibit of the fossils has been set up at the museum, where visitors will also get a chance to see “Mrs Ples”, the most complete skull of an Australopithecus africanus , found in South Africa in 1947. Guiding helmet-clad visitors through the 2.5km of caves bathed in soft blue LED lights, Trevor Butelezi gestures toward a shadowy passage that leads to an underground lake. “It is actually a beautiful cavity,” said the 34-year-old tourism graduate, his voice echoing gently off the walls. “Africa gave rise to humanity and it is not a small thing,” he said, paraphrasing a quote from the South African palaeontologist Phillip Tobias. For now, those hoping to glimpse the original Little Foot will have to wait for heritage month in September. The skeleton, which took two decades to excavate and assemble, is only displayed on special occasions. – AFP

The complex is housed within the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site. – AFPPIC

of the Witwatersrand faculty of science, which manages the caves and the nearby museum. “Visitors now have unique

Australopithecus , Latin for “southern ape” – considered the ancestors of modern humans, with a mixture of ape-like and human characteristics.

“This reopening represents a significant evolution in how we share the story of human origins,” said Nithaya Chetty, dean of the University