Fastest Sailboat on the Planet!

[frosh]

Interesting to see Antoineb make a positive statement regarding windsurfers in the midst of all the hype and publicity regarding Hydroptere. Not to take anything away from the technology, or designers of this remarkable craft, but it is amazing that something as simple as a "surfboard" with a small sail attached by a universal joint (or piece of rope for that matter would do the job) still holds the outright 500m record.
Just to put it into perspective that sailboards can maintain high speeds over distances much greater than a 500m speed course I would like to relate the details of a premier windsurfing race held in my home city Perth in the 1980's.
This was the Perth to Rottnest Island and return race held annually.
This was in the heyday of the sport and there would not be the numbers or sponsorship to support such an event today.
The deal was that all sailors that had a proven racing record, were invited to enter. Typically at least 100 starters commenced each year. The first leg was almost directly upwind for about 2 klm. through a second starting line.
Typical Summer conditions was 22 knots of sea breeze and seas varying from about 1 m high inshore to two and a half metres 10 kilometers out to sea.
The first 50 sailors going through the second start line were allowed to continue out to Rottnest Island 20 kilometres away through unforgiving open water. The remainder were disallowed to proceed and forced to return to shore.
International super stars of the era such as Anders Bringdal, and Bjorn Dunkerbeck were regular entrants. The race was then pretty much a beam reach for 20 klm out from the second start line, around a buoy just off the northern tip of Rottnest, and then straight back to the beach at Perth. A total distance of around 42 kilometers. From memory a winning time of around 50 minutes was typical. Considering the upwind leg and a beam reach, (not a broad reach as on a speed course) and size of the seas this comes to around 50 klm/hour average speed which is 27 knots.
(one nautical mile= 1.852 kilometres)
The technology of windsurfing equipment has moved on considerably in 20 years and it would be almost inconceivable that the speed today on the same course would not be perhaps 10% quicker.

[lougord99]

Does anyone know the direction of sail to the true wind is Hydroptere's fastest?

[boogie]

hi antoineb,
please check you personal messages.

regards
boogie

[yipster]

"only" 42.12 noeuds in 1997 but also a fascinating boat

[antoineb]

As those of you who follow it will know, the Hydroptère sailing team is currently training to try for some shorter seagoing records (while the rocket scientists are working at optimising the boat for high speeds).

Yesterday they gave a shot at the so-called "SNSM" record, i.e. from Saint-Nazaire (south of Bretagne / Brittany) to Saint-Malo (north of Bretagne).

This is a tricky 284 nautical miles, with lots of coastal wind variations, currents, and you start going west northwest, then go north, then north east, and end up east. So it is rare that you get ideal conditions all the time.

Well, Hydroptère, tired of waiting, gave it a shot the night from Thursday to Friday. Apparently they had to much beating at first, then softer winds than they would have liked around Ouessant (Ushant), then deeper seas than they would have liked (2-3 metres i.e. 4 to 6 metres from crest to trough). The final bit saw them between 30 and 38 knots but that did not suffice, given that they had spent quite a bit of time not flying.

They ended up just 11 minutes over the record (August 2006), held by Bourgnon on his well-tuned Orma trimaran, Brossard. He had averaged 21.2 knots over the course after having encountered near-ideal conditions. (In June '06, Thomas Coville, on Sodebo another good Orma 60, but w less than ideal conditions, had needed 20 hours 21 minutes).

what do we learn from this?
- Hydroptère is progressively getting up to speed (no pun intended) for its next objective, i.e. a 24-hour run
- the craft has become more well-rounded: it is pretty solid performance to be just 1.4 percent behind a well-optimised ORMA trimaran despite not very favourable conditions. The older version of Hydroptere, when not flying, was just dead slow - this one is still not perfect, but it has stopped being ridiculous that's for sure
- so it now looks more likely that in better wind and sea conditions, Hydroptère can indeed beat the fastest ocean-going sailing machines of its size (at least on shorter distances of a few hundred nm). That's quite another thing, as beating them over 1nm.


Let's hope these guys can beat one of these short distance records, and then do something on the 24 hours. They deserve it.

[antoineb]

Chanced on an article in a French sailing magazine, about Hydroptère and other crafts looking for high speeds.

The journalist did ask about cavitation, and although the answer was vague, I allowed myself to infer that there seemed to be some (modest) cavitation issues around 50 knots. And it seems that the design team (now with the help of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) are working at evolving the foils to push cavitation issues at least to above 55 knots.

Interesting. But my personal take is that if they want to do 50 they really have to work at aerodynamically streamlining the thing.


Incidentally, the article also briefly touched on Macquarie - I had not realised that back in March they had done 44 and a bit over 500m and a top speed of was it 48, in just 15 knots of wind! It seems that their spot just will not provide the closer to 20 knots of wind they want, or they've been very unlucky. Also it really seems that their craft works only in a fairly narrow band of wind, with risk of breakage in anything over 20 knots. Finally it seems that their planing hulls really do not like the wavelets so that could be another limit. But we can only wish them perfect conditions so that they get a fair chance.

I recently saw a picture of l'Hydroptere anchored with her foils retracted. The rudder and its foil pivot back and up. I wondered then how they steer the thing with foils up.
Today, I was studying the picture of the boat on the cover of the newest Sailing World and noticed that just ahead of the t-foil rudder is a shorter
vertical foil -about 4' deep-must be an off the foils rudder.....

[Richard Atkin]

you 3 guys are amusing

[antoineb]

so now it's four amusing guys, hey!
take care
A

[Richard Atkin]

Please excuse me for being new to all this. I have just been looking at articles about the hydroptere and also reading the ongoing 'discussions' between Doug and Chris weighing the pros and cons regarding hydrofoils.
I just wanted to say... WOW....a Hydroptere-like boat for each country entered in the Americas Cup would make the TV ratings go through the roof. That's good enough reason for using full flying hydrofoils (on a cat or tri). Just looking at the photos it looked almost intimidating. Imagine what it would look like when you see two Hydropteres flying at each other at full speed...with your country's 'superheros' onboard. This would make awesome viewing, even for non-sailors.
Perhaps to keep costs down at first, every country should have an identical boat, and then see how the sport progresses from there.

- Richard.

[Richard Atkin]

Ignore my last comment. I've just been reading about the WSL and it appears my idea of a 'new high-speed dangerous America's Cup' is already happening....complete with Americas Cup icons Russel Coutts and Paul Kayard.
I get the feeling I am way behind everyone in this forum. I guess I should read more before posting comments! I'll try to catch up.

[antoineb]

welcome to the discussion and please don't apologize for not being mega top on news, it would be pretty sad if any forum excluded anyone unless they were "perfect" ;-)

on the America's Cup, they haven't said more than 90 feet in length, and a draught of up to 6 metres reduceable to 4.5m by way of a canting keel. Which, unless they're lying, precludes multihulls. And since this new Protocol has already given rise to a lawsuit from Oracle, I don't think Alinghi want to cheat. (No, I won't comment on the fact that it looks pretty bad for Oracle to sue right on the back of having been eliminated pretty early on on 5-0, and i won't comment either on the fact that for most of its history, the Americans imposed super-stringent rules on challengers, just to make sure that they could not compete fairly - the need to cross the Atlantic by your own means for example, meaning challengers needed heavy boats that were too heavy for the light local winds).

But maybe next time around, we'll end up seeing multihulls. Bertarelli certainly is an avid multihull sailor, and has been involved in the design of a super-light multihull class (35 footers) on Lake Geneva.

As for flying multihulls, yes, that would be even more fun. Maybe in 20 years?

[Vega]

Are you certain about a canting keel? That is impossibly modern for those guys. I think you mean a retractable keel.

About those "American rules", In Valencia there was a place were all the history of the cup was told. They have a display of models of all the boats and a short story of each Cup, including those particular rules.
I remember two CUPs that were exemplar about those rules:

In one of them, the Americans have two boats against the contender boat. They used both boats, chosing at will for each race, depending on the weather conditions and wind .
On another they choose for the racing ground a place full of underwater rocks. The American boat was the only one that new the position of all the rocks and could make a lot of shortcuts while the contender had to follow the safe path.

[antoineb]

...I meant "retractable", not "canting"

Now that you mention it, yes I do remember that edition where the Americans had a light wind boat, an a heavy wind boat, and had the option to chose... Funny indeed.

Elison has just had a bit too many frustrations, both with the Cup, and business-wise where his firm continues to not be able to make it in applications. Given that he already has the reputation of not being the easiest guy around, this must add up to too much, and he blows up. Let's just hope he ends up cooling off a bit. For the sake of the sport. And also from a human point of view, I mean on a planet where so many people are starving, it's shameful enough that a lot of money should be put towards racing very expensive sailboats, but it's even worse if people start squandering money in lawyers, isn't it?


As for the Protocol itself, I do believe that there is some merit in saying that it is a bit unfair to have others have to wait until October '07 to know the design rules for a boat set to be ready and fine-tuned by '09 - whereas Alinghi obviously have known those rules for a while (and I'm Swiss). Possibly the way to resolve this, could be to race it in '10 not '09?

An alternative, possibly less spectacular but probably opening the field a lot, would be to recycle an existing class, for example the VOR 70's that race around the world. They've proved to be pretty fast boats (ABN Amro II averaged 23.5 knots over 24 hours in 2006, that's 563nm, and that's also nearly 2x the top speed of an ACC boat downwind). And they're modern. And quite affordable. Of course, "just" 70 feet may be less impressive to watch.

According to BYM news(see below) a new 12 meter(39.3') version of Hydroptere is about to be launched very soon.
They also say that Hydroptere is about to get new "floats" that they say will help it surpass the 50 knot mark. Just how the "floats" will do this when they are not in the water is the question. The answer will be very interesting....
BYM News Magazine America's Cup dispute
Address:http://www.bymnews.com/august/hydroptere.php