New UK designed and built foiling catamaran

You can have a

T

foil without it being a

moth style foil

The key to the moth technology is the wand used to control ride height via lift. This has been adopted by both the whisper and the Stunt S.9.

YEA -- i see what you're talking about now !!

Wait...I think I felt the earth move...Bille is worried about liability?

Wands aren't just for T foils, there are also wands controlling L-ish foils on Long Shot, TOP SPEED = 43.59 knots

Longshot is a hydrofoil trimaran with a biplane rig. Two curved foils are mounted beneath the outer hulls, and a third foil forms an inverted T at the bottom of the rudder. The angle of attack of the outer foils is controlled by surface sensors attached forward of the outer hulls with flexible struts.

The wands on Whisper appear to be very slick. When they put the boards down there were no connections to make between the levers and the boards, and it looks like they fit into the trunks. On a moth and stunt there is a lever connection point mounted forward. Also a moth can't raise the foils, so there seems to be some interesting engineering on the Whisper.
Based on the video, the whisper seems to foil in the light stuff very easily. It seems like there would probably be too much foil area for the heavy winds if this works anything like sail area does. Time will tell on that speculation, but have seen moth videos where they said that it was too windy to get downwind. That could be just from too much sail area, but it could have something to do with foil size as well.

Not completely sure WHY you would say That ?

If i were actually Selling Fast Cat's ; then Yes i would be
worried about liability in this sue Crazy USA . Crap -- every
other advertisement on radio or local TV , is about some Lawyer
trying to talk people into hiring them !!

Bille

From Kite boarding, i know that Both foil aria and Sail aria
must be balanced , to match the riders weight and speed he
wants to go, for the wind that day.

And that brings up another question :

why are so many
cat sailors, so Reluctant to reef a main sail, to match
the power of the wind on any given day

?

you mean these days are gone?
but seriously it does make some sense to make a boat that gets up and goes in the lighter stuff.

Oh-oh...Don't let the lawyers see that picture of a Hobie without a comp tip!

I like that the mainsail is reefed...

YES !!!!!!!!

I was kite boarding on lake Mohave a few years back ; there was
a Hobie regatta going on that day , with 50 + cats on
the beach. They were ALL looking at the 30+ mph wind
and nobody was actually out on the water but one guy and
his daughter, (and they were tearing it up) !!

As a kite boarder i had No problem with that wind, because
i simply matched the sail-aria to the power needed for the day.
I did the Same with my buddy on our Hobie 20 ; if it was
blowing 30+, we reefed the main to the size of a Hobie 16
for the day, (Or even sailed without the main, and just used
a jib).

I do NOT understand why most cat sailors won't
reef a main and match the sail aria to the wind conditions
for the day ; it seams beyond DUMB, to me ? !!!

Bille

No hardware for it on new boats.
Mainsail shape is ruined when reefed as the luff curve dont match the mast.
If racing and the windspeed changes, you loose if reefed.

As the boats today are mostly racing oriented. They are simply not ready.

Now back to the brit foiler?

This.

Upwind isn't the problem. Diamonds maxed, downhaul maxed, rotation back, sheeted hard and drop a couple of inches of traveler and you're there. You're spilling so much air, and the sail is so flat that unless you had a way to properly make use of your downhaul, you'd probably be making more unwanted power than if you made use of what you've already got. Floppy masts and squaretop mains have an amazing amount of control.

Downwind though, better bring the beef.

and yes, back to the Limey Flyer. <img src="<>/grin.gif" alt="grin" title="grin" height="15" width="15" />

The modern rigs also de-power pretty well. I don't know about 30+ I've never encountered that much wind. If I lived in an area with conditions like that I might give it some more thought.

In a straight line - I'll buy that a little...but maneuvering (tacking / gybing) with a reefed rig is MUCH easier.

This.

What do the trailing wands do?

Sense the boat's height above water and use it to control the amount of lift generated by automatically adjusting either angle of incidence or flap angle.

Bring enough gun to the fight.

I was originally thinking of reefing for long-distance type races where conditions deteriorate during the race. Sure, going out around the buoys when it's 30+ may not make sense in the first place, but in a controlled area it may be worth finding your

limit

.

Now, based on the conversations, if there were an easy way to reef/unreef I think you'd see more people take advantage of that in longer races.

The time you spend reefing/unreefing (if it's a straightforward process) would more than make up for the time spent sideways.

My roller-furling boom makes reefing a snap: Three cranks and two grommets (downhaul and outhaul) and it's reefed. Even easier if I don't need to shape the sail (just roll and go). Un-reefing is the reverse.

Perhaps this could be adapted to smaller boats, as I have teardrop rotating/canting mast just like you short-boaters.

Let's stop hijacking this thread and start a new thread specific to reefing, as it is an underdiscussed topic. I'll create the topic thread under

Reefer Madness

. See you there.

Back to the original dream of owning a boat that will cost more than my house!

sure thing. Thanks

BUT, would this speed demon need to be reefed in heavy air to reduce the chance of the foils ventilating?

I'm sure at some point you'll have to depower, even if it's at 40 kts boatspeed rather than 30.

Between jib and main this boat has 15 to 16 m2 of sail ........final spec being decided as we speak

Would the hit of the extra weight of a wingsail work since its not pitching around? I think being able to depower was a huge plus for wings?

Southampton boat show report.....

Southampton boat show report

Hey, I'll be in Southampton next Saturday (my son is starting at the other university there), anybody knows if this boat will be visible somewhere around then?

[Mmm, the southampton boat show will still be going then, but £20 to see one boat is pretty steep!]

That looks nice but it seems to be built on an A-cat chassis. If you had your druthers about which boat you'd like to foil in ocean conditions, would you take this, the Phantom, or the FCS20?

The boat is based at Weston Sailing Club on Southampton Water post the show......please pm me for more details of how to see it and possibly test sail.....

The platform you see at the moment is a fresh built platform (not an A class although very similar in lines) that was constructed to test foils and foil control theories.....all up sailing weight is 78kgs......final platform will be radically different in its construction and will come in at around 65kgs all up sailing weight.....first customer boats available late january/early february 2015....this prototype boat has been tested on Southampton Water and the Solent (which can be quite lively!) in quite varied conditions as well as being put through the big wake off the back of the ferries that travel between Southampton
and the Isle of Wight and has performed magnificently.....can understand your pessimism but have to say it has outperformed everyones expectations involved in the project....how it compares against the FP and the FCS in full 'ocean' conditions.....time will tell.....

Sure, but what if you don't plan on sailing

ocean conditions

with your future boat?

Kind of like me considering snow tires in the tropics...

For future reference, snow tires work pretty f-ing awesome in the dirt.

Interesting, Karl. How about sugar sand? Seems that's about all we have here...