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Fastest sailboat: Two wild designs
- mechhacker 3y agoHydrofoils have been exploding in popularity in watersports. It used to be seen as a thing to do on light wind days, because it lets you go faster than the board usually limits you if you can't get hydroplaning. Hydroplaning takes a lot more wind power than hydrofoiling. But, they've been pushing the windsurf gear to 40kts on hydrofoils. That's without adjustable control surfaces like these boats, just steering with body weight and sail trim. I personally have gone 23kts or so and it feels much much faster than when you're on a fin, and you are constantly moving your weight to keep from slapping the water or getting too high for the foil then crashing.
- leowoo91 3y agoThat is accurate, however, once within the same high wind and weight, hydroplaning gets ahead. That is due hydrofoil drag effect being so much higher than a regular fin. Same reason why windsurf speed record is 55kts while the windfoil record is somewhere near 37kts today.
- mechhacker 3y agoIIRC Thomas Goyard hit 41kts on the foil, but may not be "official". The speed canals where they hit really high speeds on fins are in special areas that most people will never be able to experience that have no wind disruptions and are very shallow canals to keep the chop down like in Luderitz, it isn't an open water speed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt3DQNUJXkc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt3DQNUJXkc The races, which have fin and foil against each other, have been in open water state (more real world for 99% of windsurfers), and in those conditions fin vs. foil are very competitive, with foils pulling ahead in the turns due to a lot less resistance and better ability to get back upwind compared to a fin. There's been a lot of debate on even allowing them to compete in the same races as they currently are allowed. They can both do 30ish knots in the same conditions, with the foilers getting away with smaller sails. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsUDkg2d5tE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsUDkg2d5tE
- mcv 3y agoDo I understand correctly that 40 knots is about 75 km/h? That sounds like a pretty dangerous speed on just a surfboard with no protective gear.
- mechhacker 3y agoYup, that's the speed. It can be dangerous. During races they are required to wear impact vests and helmets. Another innovation is a new kind of harness for the connection to the sail that releases above a certain force. A lot of the injuries are related to still being attached to the sail and being thrown into it during the crash, where you hit the hard carbon boom or mast instead of being flung clear into the water. That harness prevents that kind of catapult.
- hbarka 3y agoReal source: https://sp80.ch/ https://sp80.ch/ https://syro.co/en/speed-record/ https://syro.co/en/speed-record/
- brucethemoose2 3y agoNewAtlas kinda looks like a PR reposter at a glance, but they are actually a great site. They are proper journalists with a soul, who reach out to the sources, test things, hunt down leads, and generally write stuff like its not written by a LLM. What I am saying is that I don't feel bad about "skipping" the original source like most soulless cloners you see on the written internet these days.
- hbarka 3y ago1. No proper citing. 2. The site looks like a hot mess because of their use of Taboola links.
- brucethemoose2 3y agoIts just minor Google banner ads for me and a Taboola bar at the very bottom. That's about as good as it gets these days, even on sites like APNews.
- hbarka 3y agoYes, the Taboola hot mess is also on CNN. How did this awful clickbait platform become so ubiquitous even on sites where you expect a level of content scrutiny.
- brucethemoose2 3y agoWritten online journalism has been on the decline for like a decade because of video, social media, the ad/spam arms race, SEO exploitation and such. They have to use Taboola to pay the bills, they have no other choice.
- sand500 3y agoI wonder if it's possible to do a sailboat that lifts above the water entirely and stays in ground effect.
- binarymax 3y agoThere are already hydrofoil sailboats - is that what you mean? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_hydrofoil https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_hydrofoil
- dragonwriter 3y agoHydrofoils don't lift entirely out of the water.
- yread 3y agoI think they mean like flying as in not touching the ground/water. Sounds doable: these speeds are usually ground speeds so the applied wind speed (ground speed+wind speed) could reach 100kmh which is enough for a sail plane.
- DelaneyM 3y agoAs other replies have mentioned, you need to push against the water to position the windfoil to produce thrust. Otherwise you're just being pushed by air, and you're limited by windspeed. Sailboats can go many times the speed of the wind they're in.
- clort 3y agoNo, ground effect is (AFAIK) when the depth of the wing (fore-aft) is greater than the distance above the surface it is flying over. The leading edge of the wing creates a pressure wave that reflects back from the surface and provides lift to the whole wing. You can see it with birds like pelicans which skim the water for a long way without needing to flap at all. I don't know if this would enhance the speed at all though, there are presumably other effects involved with going faster.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
- wolverine876 3y agoI always wonder: At those speeds, the occupants risk life and limb. In the videos everything is fine, of course; they don't usually show the failures. But if you're an occupant, how do you know whether to trust the machine? It is new technology without a track record, on a bespoke machine without a track record. It's safety is unregulated and unresearched. The builder doesn't have the resources to do anything like the safety engineering, prototyping, testing, etc. that someone like Toyota or Airbus does. Even if the design is safe, the construction also lacks those resources. I can imagine taking the risk if I knew the risk. I could imagine doing it if someone else I relied on knew the risk (e.g., as a test pilot for a major company or military air force). I'm not risk-averse; I've taken more than my share, including risking life and limb. How does someone decide to ride one of these?
- medymed 3y agoPerhaps by riding other super-fast sailboats and surviving so far. Analogously that is the only way I could rationalize the Wright brothers attempting an airplane flight (after surviving many glider flights), which otherwise would seem an insane proposition.
- wolverine876 3y agoThe Wright brothers were developing a major advance for humanity; I might take more risks for that. Also, their airplane was moving quite low and slow - much less risk than these boats, I would guess. Finally, they were the engineers of their plane - they probably knew the risks well. Maybe that describes these watercraft pilots too.
- krisoft 3y ago> Finally, they were the engineers of their plane - they probably knew the risks well. Maybe that describes these watercraft pilots too. I think that is the key here. Don’t compare these to a reliable production airplanes, they are more akin to a prototype plane. With prototype airplanes we call the pilots a special name: “test pilots”. But that is just because with most airplane designs there is an expectation that they once will graduate out of testing and will be piloted by regular pilots. But some airplanes never do that. They were only ever meant to demonstrate some principle or explore some new frontier. Same with these sailboats, their crew are “test pilots”, and they perform a test program to gradually validate the performance and safety of the craft. And most likely they will be only ever crewed by the crew who did that program. So what does it mean that they are “test pilots”. They all probably have a lot of experience with all kind of sailboats and especially fast ones, and then they have a proven track record of having a good intuitive understanding of the physics involved. If all you ever did is to capsize a dingy on a local lake you are probably not getting this job. And then test pilots get access to the engineers designing the craft and they talk a lot about expected performance. There are all kind of curves and diagrams one can inspect to understand how the craft is likely going to handle. And then they don’t just leave the pier for the first time and run a world record speed. They first go relatively slow, and only when they are certain they understand how the craft behaves do they try to go faster and faster. This might also mean that they are initially very picky about the conditions they launch into, and as they gain more experience they can “expand the envelope” and try gnarlier weather. Then of course they prepare for adverse events. They wear appropriate personal protective equipment, have a plan what they do if they are thrown overboard or capsize, and they also most likely have rescue boats at the ready to save them if something goes wrong. And then on top of all of that they all probably have a psychological makeup where they value going fast, and being the first more than being safe. Even with all the safety precautions and mitigations and good design activities like these are risky. People who all above wish for a long and peaceful and slow life are probably not going to gravitate towards these jobs.
- mk_stjames 3y agoFor the one design, a supercavitating foil is mentioned. There have been torpedoes that use supercavitation sustained by onboard gas-generators feeding strategically located ports on the skin. But that begs the question- would that type of cavitation induction be considered 'cheating' in the sense of being used on a sailboat that is supposed to be solely powered by the wind? The gas bubbles wouldn't be providing thrust, but a stored bottle of gas or electric pumps or any other stored energy device is just that.... The line between what tech gets used and what isn't allowed in these completely unsanctioned 'record attempts' is interesting to ponder. In this case, it seems they are using a passive system (it is possible to get a foil to supercavitate without extra powered manipulation).
- trillic 3y agoA number of offshore records don’t allow the use of stored power not generated by a human. It’s common to see electric winches and hydraulic controls on 100 footers, with the diesel running the whole race to power the winches and hydraulics, saves on bodies. However the 100 footers designed to beat ocean records have more people and more winches as they must be entirely human powered. See Comanche. After she broke a bunch of records her winches and grinding pedestals got pulled and hydraulics installed.
- moffkalast 3y agoA lot of large ships use air lubrication systems to reduce fuel use, it's typically a system of compressors connected to ports with lots of tiny holes at the bottom of the hull. As I understand it, it reduces effective wetted area and thus surface tension drag. So if you used a wind turbine to drive the compressor then it's fair game I guess? Maybe that makes it more of a windmill ship than a sailboat though.
- MengerSponge 3y agoYou could just have a dude on an exercise bike powering the compressor too. A well-conditioned athlete can sustain 300 watts, which is 0.4 HP, or enough to drive something like 2.5 cfm?
- gumby 3y agoI assume that these are like the rocket motor cars* that race a straightaway on the salt flats. I.e. not steerable boats that can travel outside a narrow point of sail. Would be great if I were misunderstanding! * I struggled to find a better word than this obsolete phrase, but I’m talking about vehicles far beyond a stock car with a rocket attached.
- trillic 3y agoCorrect. Dont use them on anything but flat water. Check out the Foiling IMOCA 60s. They regularly top 30 knots in the middle of the ocean. Highly maneuverable. The 100 foot foiling ocean Trimarans are a bit faster with top speeds over 40 and 24 hour averages in the high 30s with a crew of 5 or 6, often sailed Solo.
- gumby 3y agoThere were attempts at hydrofoil windsurfers in the '80s but the materials technology wasn't yet good enough so they would usually break after one or two uses. Some good reports in SAIL back then.
- User23 3y agoAll spinnaker all the time. How do they go into the wind?
- hadlock 3y agoI suppose these are technically sailboats by some definition, but they look like oversized kite boards to me, with one having more structure to the "sail" than the other.
- zardo 3y agoIt's not actually a sailboat speed record, it's a sailing in water speed record. It's gone back and forth a couple times between boats, windsurfers, and kite boarders.
- jimnotgym 3y agoCan we finally get rid of those ridiculous Americas cup yachts? Using a bunch of humans on board to generate hydraulic power either by hand cranking or pedaling is plain ridiculous. One skipper, the rest of the crew 'grinding'... that shouldn't make me chuckle but it does. At least when they were pulling ropes it wasn't just braun involved.
- tharax 3y agoThe sport is much more interesting for spectators when the top speed is 50-70km/h than when it’s 10-20km/h
- mark_l_watson 3y agoAbout 30 years ago my Dad’s friend Nils Muench did this competition. He built a hydrofoil catamaran that would only sail on a reach, so a power boat would tow it into position. I think Nils’ sailboat got up to about 45 MPH.
- QuadmasterXLII 3y agoSail boats and trebuchets are two of the all time best constrained optimization problems. Such diversity!
- xarope 3y agoTrebuchets? Tell me more :-P
- efitz 3y agoI used to have a sloop (J/109) and once I got it up to 17 knots surfing* downwind. It was exhilarating but terrifying. There’s no way I would ride on a sailboat going 60kts+. * even displacement hull boats can surf - you let a wave come up behind you then you turn down the face of the wave and accelerate - it’s a blast surfing a 5 ton boat.
- mcv 3y agoIt also depends on the size of the boat. I've been on a large yacht catamaran[0] that did 16 knots. It was fast, but not terrifyingly so on a boat that big. I bet it could go quite a bit faster if the owner was willing to push it, but he wasn't because it was also his home. [0] 15m long and 7m wide.
- mcv 3y agoThat first one (the current record holder?) still looks surprisingly traditional, with a recognisable mast and all. A couple of decades ago I read about a record targeting "sailing boat" that really stretched the definition of both sailing and boat; it looked more like a glider plan on a central stilt that would flip over on every tack and was only able to sail upwind. (Perhaps counter-intuitively, these speeds are only possibly upwind; you can't go downwind faster than the speed of the wind.) So I'm a bit surprised to see the current record holder still looking recognisably like a sailing boat. That trimaran contender still looks pretty normal, although if it uses a kite, that's definitely interesting. But that Syroco! That's really pushing the definition of sailing and boat beyond recognition. It looks closer to kite surfing. Or a glider with a kite instead of wings that only seems to be touching the water because otherwise it wouldn't count as a sailing boat anymore but as a plane. Though I suspect that board/hydrofoil is still necessary to control the course.
- saberience 3y agoThis is incorrect, for a long time now the latest sailing yachts have been able to sail downwind faster than the speed of the wind, in fact averaging 1.8X the speed of the wind with peaks of 2.0X the speed of the wind. There has been considerable research in this area. See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-performance_sailing#Multihulls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-performance_sailing#Multi...
- mcv 3y agoIs that straight downwind or broad reach? Broad reach I can understand, because there's still a sideways component to the wind. If it can also be done straight downwind, I'd love to understand how.
- gcanyon 3y agoI doubt this is how sailboats are doing it (if they're doing it) but one way is (I think) to make the airfoil itself cut across the wind while the "boat" goes straight downwind. See these videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyQwgBAaBag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyQwgBAaBag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCsgoLc_fzI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCsgoLc_fzI