Modified Tunnel Hull Design

[Jon916996748]

Hey, I'm a student working on a Solar Splash boat. We are considering a new hull design and I have a few questions in general about our idea. The competition basically consists of a Sprint and Endurance. Our current hull is a hybrid mix between a displacement and a planeing. The current top three teams have the same relative setup. So we would like to make a boat completely different from their designs. Our idea is to take a Tunnel hull, make the sponsons fairly narrow to reduce drag in the endurance and place a hydro-foil on the rear driveshaft to push the back end out of the water so effectivly the boat is only pushing the sponsons. As for sprint, a tunnel hull already seems to be one of the more stable and faster hulls. We have and would like to use a surface piercing drive system. Also we would like to do an inboard design to get slightly better weight distribution. Does this idea sound fairly competitive from a hull design standpoint? I am more involved in the electrical aspect and no one on our team has any experience with hull design.