Sails typically bring to mind the high seas, but wind power has been used to move craft on land as well. Honoring this rich tradition, [Falcon Riley] and [Amber Word] decided to sail across Mongolia in “Moby the Land Sailing vessel.”
Built in a mere three days from $200 in materials they were able to scrounge up the week before, the cart served as their home for the 300 km (~186 mi) journey across the Mongolian countryside. Unsurprisingly, bodging together a sailing vessel in three days to traverse uneven terrain led to a failed weld to the front tire, but a friendly local lent a hand to get them back on the road.
Built mostly out of plywood, the fully-laden cart tipped the scales at 225 kg (500 lbs) and could still be towed by hand. Under sail, however, they managed 70 km in one particularly windy day. They covered the distance in 46 days, which isn’t the fastest way to travel by any means, but not bad given the quick build time for this house on wheels. We suspect that a more lightweight and aerodynamic build could yield some impressive results. Maybe it’s time for a new class at Bonneville?
If you want to learn to sail in your own landlocked region, maybe learn a bit first? Instead you might want to build an autonomous sailing cart or take a gander at sailing out of this world?
[Thanks to Amber for stopping by to suggest some corrections!]
Not fast by powered vehicle standards, but WAY faster if the choice was build a sail cart or walk the entire distance.
If you’re stranded at the beach and the only things you have is Opel Astra and porta-potty, would you use it to build a motor sailboat or just starve to death hoping someone will rescue you? I’d take my chances with building a boat…
That sounds way to specific to be random. ;-)
Faster? Hardly. You can walk 300 km in a couple of weeks. (I know three people who have each done it in one week, which is admittedly nuts). These took almost seven.
Exactly. At 6.5km per day, probably the winds were blowing mostly on the wrong direction. Or maybe they just wanted to travel slow and enjoy Mongolia :)
The crazy thing about it was that we could sail it even when the wind wasn’t blowing in the right direction. Didn’t make sense but I gave video to prove it! 😂
But it wasn’t distance we were after. It was the experience and the experience was had! We didnt even know if it would work! 😂
Not carrying 250 lbs you won’t…😆
Actually, walking would have been quite a bit faster, even an untrained person carrying a tent and food, could have easily covered that trip in 30-35 days by walking just four hours a day.
But given enough time and food, I would still choose to build a machine.
Former grunt (US Army “light” infantry). I agree. The build and trial would be fun, and I would choose the sore rear and loose fillings over blisters and bum knees any day.
We build the bed inside with 3″ foam which meant are rears were comfy…. BUT we didn’t have seatbelts and did hit a marmot hole which bruised my ribs. Accident and all… it was 100% worth it.
Reminds me of the neutrinos
http://www.floatingneutrinos.com/welcome_to_the_floating_neutrino.htm
https://alliancesail.org/blog/english/floating-neutrinos/
Walking would have been faster. Some days we pushed and that was even slower, not to mention… that thing was heavy! BUT we had two months worth of food and a very comfortable bed and a place to
Hide from the windstorms. I’d take Moby the land sailing cart over walking any day.
Reminds me of something kreosan team would do.
Landsailing has been done for many, many years, on wheels as well as on ice skates.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_sailing
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceboat
And you can get up to [sqrt (pi)] times wind velocity.
Four times wind speed for the most popular iceboat, the DN.
Land sailing isn’t a new idea. But Moby the Land Sailing vessel was also our home and storage. Most land sailing vehicles are just for speed and recreation.
An all-terrain version should probably trade speed for sturdiness, but professionally made versions of this can really book it.
It was a grand adventure! Moby the Land Sailing vessel was 100% wind powered and, contrary to this article, we could push him on the windless days.
Our “mechanical” issue was after a day of big wind and big bumps (not a marmot hole, though that’s how I got injured toward the end of the trip) and the weld to our front tire gave out. Luckily, a ger (yurt) owner who lived near the door that our tire fe off took Falcon to town to weld the pieces back together.
Falcon just built a water sailing vessel that is currently stored on a roof on Guam and having grown up on the ocean, I imagine he’d have a thing or two to teach if you end up making a class out of it.
My biggest takeaway would be… add seatbelts and make it four wheels instead of three.
Thanks for stopping by, Amber! I’ll go ahead and correct those errors!
Awesome build, BTW. Actually living aboard something is totally different than building a racer, for sure!
” Man in the Wilderness” (1971) had a land schooner
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_in_the_Wilderness
When camping we would quote Captain Henry (Johm Huston) when someone came back from gathering firewood or visiting the head “Is it Bass?” . In the movie it wasn’t Bass but a young scout who gets shot by accident. The answer we would give is ” I’m not Bass!”
Huh, I guess I’ll have to check this out
It was a grand adventure! Moby the Land Sailing vessel was 100% wind powered and, contrary to this article, we could push him on the windless days.
Our “mechanical” issue was after a day of big wind and big bumps (not a marmot hole, though that’s how I got injured toward the end of the trip) and the weld to our front tire gave out. Luckily, a ger (yurt) owner – who lived near the area that our tire fell off – took Falcon to town to weld the pieces back together.
Falcon just built a water sailing vessel that is currently stored on a roof on Guam and having grown up on the ocean, I imagine he’d have a thing or two to teach if you end up making a class out of it.
My biggest takeaway would be… add seatbelts and make it four wheels instead of three.
I want to know so much more but the Instagram link in the adventure article is broken. Do they stick to the roads or go cross country? Were they only able to travel with the wind or could they tack upwind?
Yeah. I closed down that Instagram account. The full story is on adventure.com We went cross country and came across roads from time to time but the deep grooves were far less ideal. We could tack upwind.
This was awesome, and wholesome, and thanks for sharing!
I made something like this back when I was a kid. I borrowed our dolly and tied a large tarp to it in a parachute formation. I sat on it with it layed down, and I was able to influence direction by trimming the chute with control straps and hopes.
I don’t know how fast we got up to on it, but I grew up in a desert with easy 60mph wind days. Suffice it to say stopping was the hard part.
And yes, my parents were pissed that I sandblasted their dolly. But they were even more angry that I let my sister take a turn 😂
Absolutely awesome, I rigged a sail on an old land rover once and sailed it up 90mile beach in New Zealand, winds perfect and beach sailing comfy as. Always thought it would be fun to do a trip a more remote and challenging! Good one for showing it can be done.
It’s like a combination of Treasure of Khan (traversing the Mongolian steppes) and Sahara (sailing a land yacht) by Clive Cussler! What an incredible experience!