New Catamaran Foilers

Discussion in 'Multihulls' started by Doug Lord, Nov 18, 2014.

  1. Skyak
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    Skyak Senior Member

    Even the original stiletto 27 was a very lightweight construction (nomex core if I recall). I never heard anyone say they would lighten the construction and a few broke in half in heavy weather.

    The boat is a fine candidate for foiling and I am glad they are resurrecting the brand.
     
  2. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    Stiletto Foiler

    -------
    Doug Shickler answered my question on another forum about how much wind the Stiletto would need to take off-and as a rough estimate said around 18 knots.But I reread what he wrote and I'm not sure he meant 18 knots of wind or boatspeed at takeoff. He said that was because the Stiletto foils also develop all the lateral resistance for the boat whereas the Quant 23 foils don't because the keel does that job. I had mentioned to him that the Q23 guys are talking about foiling in light air-5-8 kts.
     
  3. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

  4. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    S9 wand controlled foiler(with no crew)

    Here's a video of one of the boats just delivered in Texas losing its crew and continuing (in a good breeze) with no one on board! Michelle's going to have to come up with a fix for this. There is no surprise that a wand controlled foiler would do this-thats how the foils work: they develop the RM that the boat needs with or w/o a crew.
    Video by Charlie P Mayer.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxCPQ6n_luU
     
  5. Steve Clark
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    Steve Clark Charged Particle

    Small catamarans have been sailing away from their crews for years.
    This is nothing new.
    It is the worst thing about them.
    Even capsized, and A Class will blow away from you faster than you can swim.
    Rule 1: NEVER let go of the boat.
    Rule 2: Be prepared for a long ( several mile) swim when you sail.
    SHC
     
  6. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    S9

    I guess the new part is that a wand based foil system will allow the boat to continue to sail in wind where another type of foiler cat might capsize without a crew?
     
  7. Steve Clark
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    Steve Clark Charged Particle

    Incorrect.
    The foil system and wands have nothing to do with it.
    If you fall off an A Cat and the main sheet is eased / uncleated the boat will sail away from you almost exactly as the S9 did in this video. It won't hydrofoil better than your test model, but it will sail away several times faster than you or anyone else can swim.
    This is because even with no one aboard catamarans have quite a bit of initial stability and have very little resistance, so they blow downwind upright very quickly.
    Even f the boat tips over and you don't keep your hands on it, the hulls will blow downwind of the sealed rig and the boat will blow away from you a bit faster than you can swim. This is a vexed problem, with the rig sealed, the boat blows away, if the mast floods, you cannot self right .
    In either case, becoming detached from a modern high performance catamaran is life threatening.
    It is a function of the multihull, not an function of the foils.
    There is nothing new here. It was just a freaking big model.
    By the way, I used to to occasionally free sail full size boats. It is pretty funny.
    SHC
     
  8. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    Well,my Test Model foils very well but I find it hard to believe that an A cat would foil that well with no crew-particularly in a,say, 15 knot breeze on a reach or higher. The wand controlled boat- S9 or Whisper- would continue to provide all the RM the boat needs where the A Cat would take a big hit in terms of RM w/o the crew?
    Especially if the crew fell off with the boat sailing substantially higher than did the S9 in the video?

    UPDATE- from the designer of S9: "there is also who saw an S9 in Punta Ala flying without crew for about 3 km, with 16 knots wind and 1m wave, but nobody writes this".
     
    Last edited: Mar 22, 2016
  9. CT249
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    CT249 Senior Member

    Doug, may we ask how often you have sailed foiling cats, or high performance cats?
     
  10. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    I've sailed Hobies and a Tornado once-no foiler cats yet. But I have a couple hundred hours sailing a Rave foiler -using wand controlled foils.
    May we ask how often you have sailed wand based foilers?
     
  11. Steve Clark
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    Steve Clark Charged Particle

    Under the conditions in the video, the A cat does almost exactly what the Stunt does.
    It doesn't foil, or at least I don't think it does.I haven't lost mine in several years, certainly not since the foils got good enough to fly.
    So I don't really know if the A cat would foil away or just sail away as it always does.
    It really doesn't matter because you are screwed the second the thing gets out of reach. I repeat, if it is upright or on it's side it blows away from you faster than you can swim. If it sails for 5 yards or 5 miles is irrelevant to your chances of living until cocktails.
    If you want to make some bold statement about wand controlled foils on the basis of this video, I think you ( as my father used to say) are theorizing ahead of your data.
    SHC
     
  12. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    You're right about the video I posted given the circumstances depicted. I'm sure a wand controlled foiler minus a crew would behave much differently than a "normal" cat minus a crew in different circumstances.

    S9 facebook page: https://m.facebook.com/catamaran.stunt/
     
    Last edited: Mar 23, 2016
  13. David Cooper
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    David Cooper Senior Member

    If sailing alone, you'd need something like an automatically deploying sea anchor. It would have to be in a box which opens if you don't actively prevent it from doing so every now and then: it could beep once a minute and give you ten seconds to react before deploying. Unfortunately it would have to be at the back rather than the front if it's to have a guarantee of not snagging on the foils, so the boat may be driving on at full power and might take a lot of sea anchor to slow it down below your swimming speed. A better system would be able to detect your proximity so that it doesn't bother you with beeps at all until it thinks you've gone missing (which could be caused by your battery running out). You could also wear an inflatable raft to give yourself a higher swimming speed if that's necessary to make the catch possible.
     
  14. CT249
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    CT249 Senior Member

    My experience is irrelevant, since you are not challenging anything I said. What's relevant is what experience you're basing your claims on, compared to the experience of those who you are challenging. In this case it seems that the experience is overwhelmingly, almost completely, on one side.


    PS - I've sailed a couple of wand-based foilers and I'm on my second performance cat. And in the active performance cat world, people are VERY aware of the issue of cats getting away from people.
     

  15. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    ct249, it is possible to disagree with someone without "challenging " them-at least for me. For you it's a whole nother thing, apparently. Just out of curiosity, what were the names of the two "wand based foilers" you sailed?
     
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