Why the hull matters more than the solar panels.
Honest decomposition of where the fuel savings actually come from on a hybrid-solar supply vessel. The numbers, not the marketing.
Insights
Field notes from a route
Field notes from a route
nobody studies.
Short essays on the technical, commercial, and regulatory mechanics of decarbonising domestic shipping in Small Island Developing States. Sourced from inside an operating route, not from the brochure.
Topics
A working archive. We publish slowly, source from measured data, and prefer the uncomfortable explanation to the smooth one.
Technical
Battery sizing for an anchor-window duty cycle.
Why a vessel that spends two-thirds of its life moored does not need the biggest battery it can carry — it needs the right one.
Parallel hybrid, serial hybrid, and the duty cycle that picks for you.
The architecture choice between parallel and serial is usually presented as a technology debate. In domestic SIDS shipping it is decided almost entirely by the operating profile.
Commercial
The fuel cost flows to the wrong actor.
In Maldives resort logistics, fuel is paid by the resort, not by the charter operator. That single contractual fact dictates which decarbonisation models are commercially viable — and which are dead before they start.
All-inclusive charter as a decarbonisation mechanism.
A note on contract structure. Until the operator captures the fuel savings, no amount of technology makes the unit economics work.
Policy
A regulatory gap, used well.
Domestic shipping in SIDS sits outside MARPOL Annex VI. The reflex is to treat that as a problem. We argue it is also an opportunity — if a voluntary class-equivalent framework is built into the first vessel.
What the IMO mid-term measures will and will not reach.
The 2027 carbon-pricing mechanism, read against a Maldivian atoll supply route. Where the levy bites, where it doesn't, and what that means for domestic operators.
Operational
A week on the route.
Two round trips, eighty-one nautical miles each, in a year of Indian Ocean weather. What actually happens between Monday morning and Saturday evening on a supply vessel.
Cold chain on a moored vessel.
Refrigerated containers, anchor-window energy budgets, and why we kept the standard ISO reefer format rather than reinventing it.
Mailing list
We publish slowly. You will hear from us when it matters.
No newsletter cadence, no marketing automation. A short note when a new piece is published, when a milestone is reached, or when something in the SIDS shipping policy landscape genuinely warrants attention.
Get in touch