There is a guy, Dave Culp, who has been working for some 20 years towards supplying traction kites for ships. Big ships. To get to his dream, Dave has been supplying smaller traction kites to the sailboat racing and cruising folks. Since his kite is attached at deck level, and not up a mast, his traction kites are a natural for power cats, for downwind passages and, for getting home in the event of engine failure. Take a look at <http://www.kiteship.com> for specs. Don't be put off by not seeing a lot of pictures of Power Cats. Although kite sails are not quite simply a sky hook, they are wonderful for pulling a power cat in the direction of the wind, as well as any direction plus or minus 90 degrees to that down wind direction. Take a look at <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/outleader/> for a picture of a dismasted 50 ft trimaran that was delivered from St. Maarten in the Caribbean to Maryland on the US East coast. Read the message <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/outleader/message/69> for a description of that delivery trip taken in the very early days of kite traction using Outleader kites. The state of the art today is that there are a lot of single handed and double handed sailors who have taught themselves launching and kite flying for long distance racing. Contact Dave Culp <dave@dcss.org> for details. And no, I have no connection with Dave and his company. However, I have sailed on enough boats of various sizes with kites that I sure will get one for my own boat as soon as I get enough pennies scraped together....(grin)..... John -- My life seems to have evolved to be much like the "Words to Live By" from "The Wind in the Willows" "Believe me, my young friend (said the water rat, solemnly), there is nothing - absolutely nothing - half as much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing about. Nothing seems really to matter, that's the charm of it. Whether you get away or whether you don't, whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you get anywhere at all, you're always busy, and you never do anything in particular."

>John Foster wrote: >Take a look at <http://www.kiteship.com> for specs. Don't be put off >by not seeing a lot of pictures of Power Cats. Although kite sails >are not quite simply a sky hook, they are wonderful for pulling a >power cat in the direction of the wind, as well as any direction >plus or minus 90 degrees to that down wind direction. The power-cat specific link is <http://www.kit-cats.com/kite_sail.htm >. I first ran into Dave Culp about 25 years ago when I was promoting speedsailing races in California and he begged for me to let him demonstrate his kites. At the time, I figured he was nuts and I wasn't that keen on having his contraption at my event. Today, I must congratulate Dave for sticking to his mission, and making considerable headway in popularizing kite propulsion. --Georgs