Posted: Apr 20, 2018 - 06:00 AM
I’ve never sailed one but I did see them on the water quite a bit when I was a student at Florida Tech, where they were developed. My impressions: They have a lot of complex rigging (they run three sails plus all the controls for the foils etc. back to the cockpit). I never really saw them consistently foiling, especially compared to what you see on modern foiling boats (but maybe that was just due to there being a learning curve). When they were off the foils (which seemed like the majority of the time) the short hull length, large foils, and wide beam made them quite sluggish. I also saw one pitchpole once after tangling up in a crab trap, they had to get rescued by a power boat to get the boat upright.
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