Little Wing 15 / Warren Light /Anybody sailed this boat?

Discussion in 'Multihulls' started by Doug Lord, Nov 13, 2010.

  1. Corley
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    Corley epoxy coated

    I can recall reading an interview somewhere with Ted a magazine I think? sorry about the vagueness and he mentioned he was putting leeway reducing surfaces on the amas as a means of leaving the kayak itself in a simple lightweight form and as a means of having the sailing kit as an easy retrofit option it's easily detachable so the kayak can be paddled without the sailing kit. I suppose it minimises the compromises that would have to be made otherwise.
     
  2. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    Little Wing / future design

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    That makes good sense-I love this design. I think hydrofoils could have a role in boat types like this and I'm sure they will. The ultimate design is not done yet-except for now the Little Wing is damn close...
     
  3. cardsinplay
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    That's an interesting wish for what is not even present, but hey, nobody said we had to confine our conversation to reality.

    Here's the part that I find amusing. Ted Warren has always been known for thinking outside the confines of his chosen genre. I'd be willing to bet that he knows fully well what lifting foils are and to be more precise, how they work.

    He's gone to the trouble to produce a very expensive carbon kayak and equip it with a thoughtful sailing rig that is very much in keeping with the overall concept of the base boat. Yet, strangely enough, he has not only not included a provision for foils on this craft and hasn't even mentioned it as a possible future application within the website literature.

    I see where this boat is slotting in the grand scheme of things and the clutter and complexity of foils simply takes this design far away from its intended application and makes the concept muddy in purpose as well as execution.

    Another example: Greg Ketterman is well-known in the foiling world as the designer and prototype builder of the Trifoiler. The boat worked and it worked well until scrapped by Hobie as a production model. Hobie also produces a boat that is very much in the same genre as Warren's sailing kayak. Interestingly enough, with all the resources and all the engineering know-how possessed by Ketterman at Hobie, he hasn't moved one finger to install foils on the Adventure Island design. The answer to this festering dilemma is.... it's just not worth the trouble and the boat's design mission is so totally different from that of any small foiling machine that it would be a waste of valuable company resources to pursue the potential.

    I'm going to go way out on a limb here, Doug, but it sounds very much like you do not understand what interests a sailing oriented kayaker and how they approach their sport.
    There's a kayak out there that is foil equipped for paddlers (The Nelo Flyak see below) and it has not done well with the folks in the kayak world. Interesting to look at in photos and video clips, but to sell them on the boat market has proven to be impossible. Ted Warren probably knows this and so does Greg Ketterman. I also know this from having produced several boats that slot nicely into the same design genre as Warren's sailing kayak and have taken them to trade shows and on the water demos over the years.

    Please give it a rest and simply enjoy the Little Wing kayak and its interesting sailing solutions for what they are and not what you wish they would be. If you still find yourself burning with a desire to fit a set of foils to a sailing kayak, then by all means, go build it, show it around and let us know how the paddling/sailing community responded.

    Once, again, can we please confine the discussion to the presented thoughts in the original post and let this foil thing go away?
     

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  4. cavalier mk2
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    cavalier mk2 Senior Member

    Foiled again ? Years ago Woodenboat Magazine published a study where low aspect foils on a beam were fitted to narrow workboats. The increase in stability allowed the sail area to be almost doubled, the resulting speed increase made the craft an alternative to the expense of outboards.
    A similar approach might be a lighter less cumbersome solution for a human/sail powered race-craft through terrain where the the bottom,logs and sharp objects are likely to be encountered. Most likely it would require more agility to operate. If it was of less high tech construction, say thin tortured ply with the appropriate fibers the racer could patch it with duct tape and concentrate on winning versus preserving the expensive structure.
    The Little Wing is a beautiful boat and like a Ferrari lets its owners good taste and deep pockets be admired. Having beautiful amas ( I'd want asymmetric ones) lets the owner look good and sail well without getting out of the cockpit. When building and selling boutique boats it is important to keep the client's checkbook dry!
     
  5. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    Foiled Again!

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    I think there is lots of room for experimentation with foils on almost all boats.
    The Little Wing TYPE is probably not an exception and it would be fun to see if a boat designed to have a similar function to the "Little Wing" and designed from scratch with a foil system would actually be an improvement.
    Cav, do you remember the Woodenboat Issue?
     
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  6. spidennis
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    spidennis Chief Sawdust Sweeper

    including mine! it would be one of the last things I'd try out after the long list of other features to implement but I'd sure like to try out a foil setup on my UFC/EC boat sometime in the future.
     
  7. cavalier mk2
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    cavalier mk2 Senior Member

    Hi Doug, I just pulled it off the shelf. The issue is January/Febuary 1990, the article is called "Sail and Hull Performance", by Colin Palmer. It is full of comparative real life rig tests on boats with the same hull. I found it worth preserving, plus there is a neat Jim Brown article on multihull safety. They tested everything from crabclaws to sprits, hopefully back issues or downloads are available. The foil trials were done in England.
     
  8. cardsinplay
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    There's lots of room for experimentation with all boats, but the majority of that experimentation is not about lifting foils.

    As to the "Little Wing Type" not being an exception, well, like I said, have at it and show it around to kayakers who are open to sailing their boats and see what they say. I know what they'll say, as I've talked to thousands of them over the years and you're barking up the wrong tree. But, you can find that out for yourself after you are many thousands of dollars lighter in the pants.

    This process isn't new, Doug. It's called market research. As in; Knowing the interests and habits of the folks with whom you would like to engage with a product.

    That term, improvement, is a maleable as is the clay you played with as a kid. Not everyone is going to see your fix as an improvement and it all comes back to the paragraph just above this one. Market survey.

    Now, if this is an idea that you'd seriously like to pursue and not just another carbon sandwich boat that you are tossing foils at, then get your fanny up to Wisconsin in early March and attend the Canoecopia three day festival with an example of the proposed boat, along with a video showing how it works. Stand there in your own little 10x20 booth for three long days and field questions about the boat from a huge range of paddle sport enthusiasts. Remain calm, don't get flustered by their backwoods experience generated questions (that are a whole lot more insightful than you can imagine) and see what these guys and gals think about this ever-so-cool idea of yours.

    Next, take your road show to the Outdoor Retailer (OR) show in Salt Lake City in August. Attend the on the water demo day at the lake and let each and every person who asks, have a chance to take the boat out on the lake and crank the crap out of it. Then hustle it all back to the big indoor version of the trade show, get it shiny and again, stand there for four days fielding similar questions with a heavy load of suggested retail pricing strategy, profit margins for the dealers who may have a passing interest and most of all, delivery guarantees when they need it and not before, or after, their big selling season.

    Oh, yeah, the Canoecopia will set you back some several thousand bucks, not including the prototype, or the video production. The OR show will get you for something closer to $10K, minimum. Then sit back and wait for the phone to ring. While you're sitting there and if there is anything to your design that rates attention, the big boys, such as Confluence, Native, Johnson Outdoors, Hobie, etc., will have gone home to see how they can build it cheaper, better and nicer looking to totally rob your budding interests... and they'll have it on the market come Spring order time, totally screwing your sales, if you have any.

    That's what it takes to field a product in the kayak industry if you are going to get serious. Like I said, I know what will happen and you aren't going to like it.

    Or, you can simply bypass the higher education process and come to grips with the fact that foils just don't work for every boat that is out there.. and I haven't even started with the reasons why a foiling/sailing kayak won't work for anyone but you.
     
  9. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

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    Thank you very much! I'll try to track down a copy.
     
  10. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    Little Wing "type"

    Another thing I'd like to look at in a small gunkholer like this is whether or not some form of on-deck movable ballast might have a role rather than amas. I want to see if the possibility of moving a small amount of weight* by hand might provide enough righting moment without the whole trimaran configuration while still allowing the crew to sit inside or in fixed seats either side of the small cockpit. Crew movement would thus be very limited.....It occurs to me after doing some rudimentry calcs that a small ama in conjunction with the movable ballast might give the best solution.

    *maybe in a sealed version of an International Canoe sliding seat but not as high performance as my Trapwing concept. The "seat" would be designed to stay clear of the water but if it did hit the water it would have buoyancy greater than the weight it carries.
     
  11. cardsinplay
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    cardsinplay da Vinci Group

    Then, it's really not a kayak anymore, now is it?

    That is the boat type that started this thread, wasn't it?
     
  12. ancient kayaker
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    ancient kayaker aka Terry Haines

    Nice looking craft. The fins in the amas make sense for shoal water as the amas are mounted high enough for the keels to be kept of the bottom, at least while paddling. High aspect fins might have been faster but would have to be raised from the cockpit. The low aspect fins seem to conflict with the reference to “super performance ” in the site text.

    Why was foiling discussed in this thread? The fins look to be vertical so they will not lift, and no claim is made for this on the site. The amas lack sufficient buoyancy to support the entire craft on one ama therefore it is unlikely that the akas are strong enough to survive foiling. This is a trimaran, not the same thing; a foiler would be a whole new boat.

    Technically the main hull ceased being a kayak and became a vaka as soon as the amas and sail rig were strapped on.

    I doubt many will sell, at least as a percentage of the huge kayak market, so the price likely will remain high. Pity; back when I was sailing my kayak I would like to have seen others out there, it would have been nice to have some company!

    My own approach to sailing with a kayak was to use a Bruce foil on a hinged outrigger with a lifting sail, to offset the heeling moment without needing to shift crew weight. It was more compact than using amas and allowed the entire rig to be taken on board, so the boat reverted to a pure kayak for paddling.
     
  13. cardsinplay
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    cardsinplay da Vinci Group


    Technically on very specific points, I would agree. Functionally, it never stopped being a kayak. It has a kayak hull in the water and by so being, is limited as a sailing vessel compared to a true trimaran... which is also a strong technical point.
     
  14. cardsinplay
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    cardsinplay da Vinci Group

    While I'm sure that it represented a fun boat for lake sailing near shore, this type of design solution have drawbacks if taken offshore in bigger swell conditions. The boat can easily be down in the bottom between swell peaks where it would have hardly any drive and therefore much less bite for the foil. As the wave pitch increases, gravity can force the weight of the boat over on the non lifting foil and it can be driven under, making for a very nice rolling scenario. It is stuff like this that makes amas look like brilliant devices.

    I would like to see a retractable Bruce setup on one side with a sufficient ama to support the boat in just such a situation as described above. Then, you would get the best of both worlds and still have a tidy, easily paddled boat that does not lose its heritage through excess.

    Do you have any photos of that rig, Terry?
     

  15. Manfred.pech
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    Manfred.pech Senior Member

    Bruce foil on a Kayak

    Hope this is the rig you mean: brucefoil11.gif

    http://www.artformfunction.com/projects/ingenious/sail/kwing/kwing.htm

    http://www.artformfunction.com/projects/ingenious/sail/kwing/kwing.jpg
     
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