Project description
Plugging up hydraulic steering leaks
Most sailboats have standard built-in mechanical cables or chain steering. While hydraulic steering is becoming more and more popular, a major drawback is environmentally related. For instance, one drop of hydraulic oil leakage could damage 150 litres of drinking water and pollution clean-up has high associated costs. The EU-funded GREEN WHS project will render such leakages impossible with their advanced water hydraulic steering system for sailing boats. Its simplicity in terms of installation and maintenance requirements should increase market uptake by the sailing boat manufacturers and buyers.
Objective
A vast majority of the sailing boats currently sailing the world’s seas are being steered with a complex mechanical steering
system. A great disadvantage is in the complexity of the currently standard built-in mechanical steering systems with steelwiring,
intertwined with chains and transfers that is hidden in the boat’s hull that connect the steering wheel and the rudder.
Hydraulic steering/operating systems are currently used in a wide range of motor-operated vessels, whereas for sailing
boats such steering systems are not available on the market. The greatest challenge of all hydraulic steering systems is in
motor-operated vessels is environmental - hydraulic oil leakage. Namely, 1 drop of hydraulic oil damages 150 l of drinking
water and the cleaning of 1000kg of polluted soil costs around 2.000€. With the GREEN WHS steering system hydraulic oil
leakage is impossible, since the hydraulic medium in our case is water. GREEN WHS also addresses the environmental
issue of ‘dumpster marinas’, where old abandoned sailing boats decompose and burden water ecosystems many years; only
in Spain the communities are dealing with more than 10.000 such vessels (https://bit.ly/2MiypXb).
There are no currently known hydraulic steering system solutions for sailing boats available on the market. Currently
available steering systems on the market are based on mechanic principles. We see our business opportunity in offering the
market an advanced water hydraulic steering system for sailing boats that convinces the sailing boat manufacturers and
buyers by its simplicity in terms of installation and maintenance requirements.
We plan our initial market entry through the existing base of buyers – sailing boat manufacturers, OEMs and B2B business
partners. We are already in constant contact with all of them online and in face-to-face meetings.
The market share at the initial market take up we are aiming at is between 0,5% and 1% of the total boat steering market in
the EU.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
1000 LJUBLJANA
Slovenia
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.