Foiler in Kings Cup Thailand

[Capn Mud]

Interesting design

http://sailingthailand.ning.com/video/hf-2nd-beat

[jmolan]

Very, very cool. Thanks for posting that, I enjoyed it!

[Doug Lord]

Amazing boat! This is the first multihull over 20' to use a bi-foil hydrofoil arrangement like a Moth-one lifting foil on the daggerboard and one on the rudder. But this is the really cool part: very clever sliding system, so that the pod that the main foil and rudder foil are mounted to, slides athwhartship. The boat can be configured to fully fly or to use the altitude control system(wand) to maintain a given angle of heel and to fly the windward hull earlier than it might otherwise.
Also makes retracting the foils a piece of cake....

[Chris Ostlind]

Piece of cake, it may be.. but I have still not seen any video that supports the claim that the boat can actually fully fly.

Further, I have not seen any video that would show the foil configuration to actually be faster than a similarly rated cat in the same wind conditions.

I have also not seen any video that shows the pod being moved while under sailing loads. Is it difficult? Does it require significant mechanical advantage? Can it be done on any point of sail at any time in the sailing session? How long does it take to rig the boat from trailer to water, or does the boat need to be moored all the time to keep the setup time to a reasonable limit?

For the time being, it looks to be an interesting study of foil application to a twin rigged cat. There's a lot missing here that would allow the claims made above to be closer to factual than fantasy.

I look forward to further information.

[Gary Baigent]

I'm pretty sure it is too wide to trailer. The foils look exquisitely built and extremely fine (meaning very narrow chord), hard to imagine the main inverted T can take the loads - but they definitely help lift the platform - but more like a foil stabilsed craft than a flyer, which probably was their intention.
30 years ago Malcolm Tennant drew a 6.5 metre twin rigged, self righting cat in the hope that it could compete in the Mini-Transat, (it couldn't, multihulls weren't allowed entry) - although it had no lifting foils, his design looked very similar to Happy Feet. I'll did up some images.

[junkman]

jmolan,
Very, very cool hard ware on that boat of yours have any link to the place you found it ?
Thanks