Slow boat to Amsterdam ships cargo using sail power

Gliding into the port of Amsterdam under full sail with a cargo of 40 tonnes of Caribbean rum, coffee and cocoa, the twin-masted Tres Hombres looks like something from the heyday of 17th-century piracy.But this 32-metre brigantine has a much nobler mission than the pirates of old: sustainable goods transport using the energy from wind captured in its sails. "We have almost no emissions because we sail without an engine," said Sabine Fox, the 51-year-old boss of Fairtransport, the firm that operates the Tres Hombres.Every year the ship, whose name is inspired by the three men who founded Fairtransport in 2007, sails some 7,000km across the Atlantic, bringing goods from the Caribbean to Amsterdam. "We choose products which are not produced in Europe because we didn't want to be in competition with local markets," said Fox. "How many things do we import from China that we don't need?"