foiling 18

[John ilett]

The first T foiled 18ft skiff was recently tow tested in Switzerland.

It is a regular 18ft skiff fitted with the Fastacraft hydrofoils and bow wand system.


http://www.jeanpierreziegert.ch/06_video.html

www.fastacraft.com

[Chris Ostlind]

Pretty interesting clip, John, and your foils looked to be beautifully finished. It looks like the passengers in the hull were having a great time keeping the boat in the lift mode with all the turbulent and aerated water coming off the prop of the tow boat.

Did they offer any feedback for you as to when they will be ready to take the boat out with its full rig?

By the way, very nice work in the recent Worlds. I hope you are looking forward to the coming summer and what it can mean for your enterprise.

Chris

Great ,John! When do they think they'll be able to sail?
-the Revolution continues....

[frosh]

Much as I admire the technology, I sincerely hope that a foiling 18 doesn't suddenly make obsolete, 100 years of fine tradition in skiff sailing.
This (immediate obsolescence), was the case with non-winged boats in the 70's, which probably was good for the class and high performance sailing generally, as it turned out.
However IMO this foiling development SHOULD NOT pervade into every high performance development sailing class, as to do so will be at the peril of the chances of long term survival of that class!
So lets see it with great interest; and hopefully it pushes the present speed parameters of 18's even further, but I hope that class rules remain closed to this for regular racing.

I think that to take full advantage of foils the bot needs to be designed from scratch as a foiler.
With a foil equiped conversion I think the boat will be faster upwind(IF it can foil upwind) and in lighter air but offwind in a breeze I think a foiled conversion would have a tough time with a standard 18. However, an 18 designed from scratch as a foiler would likely be faster in almost every condition. The hull would be lighter, sail area less and the rig different. Wetted surface would be less and light air performance would probably be the area of biggest gain with foiling in an 18 designed from scratch as a foiler starting in around 5 knots of wind.
So unless the rule allows pretty drastic changes and someone is willing to fund an entirely new boat I don't think you have to worry.The eighteens are spectacular boats as they are!

[John ilett]

Now she flys for real with the full rig.

http://www.jeanpierreziegert.ch/06_video.html

[Chris Ostlind]

Hey John,

Wonderful progress for you and the guys who are using your gear.

Right off hand, I'd say those dudes need to build themselves a gantry much like the Mothies are using so they don't need to crawl all over each other in the pursuit of fore aft boat balance when flying.

My compliments to you and your focused R&D to dial in the correct foil sizes and strengths to make the boat have any chance at all of flying.

Great Work.

Chris

Fantastic! I haven't seen the video yet but the still looked like a million dollars. Thanks for the technology-and the pix!
PS- as best as I can tell these are the first pictures of any monofoiler on foils over 14 feet and that represents a truly historic accomplishment! Well done, John!

[John ilett]

This is the first time on the water. I had encoraged them to make a larger gantry but we thought it was worth first trying with their current standard gantry. Hopefully just some tuning of the rudder angle, wand length, and practice will make some big improvements.

[Paul B]

On the JPZ site there is a photo of a Moth hull. I've been thinking about the Moth shape for a while, and this photo is finally promoting me to ask you the question.

The hull shape appears to be very draggy, with a lot of Wetted Area for the displacement. Even extreme skiffs are not nearly as flat athwartships. Catamaran hulls are generally quite rounded on the bottom, and they are as narrow or more narrow than the Moths.

1. Is this due to the need to put the displacement somewhere, given the limit on LWL and a desire to minimize BWL? If so, is the hull depth such a concern that you wouldn't add a bit of depth to allow a more rounded (less sticky) hull shape for the light air sailing? Of course this could narrow BWL even more (for a given DSPL), maybe becoming too unstable to sail?

2. Is it due to the power/weight of the boats? Does this power allow you to ovecome the drag so easily that it is not important? It seems the non-foiling narrow boats have this similar shape. The word seems to be that the boats need help the most in the soft conditions.

[jpz]

Hello everybody.
As I did the video and so was not on the watter, I'm looking forward to sail it. Today, they should sail (if there is some wind) with an assymetrical genaker and this should be very interesting. Keep looking on my web site to get some news posted.
John did a great work and as I'm sailing his moth (from the wold's) I'm really happy to be part of the foiler's one.

[jpz]

It is done.... 14.7 kts with 6-7 kts with genaker. Thomas is very happy and far more easy than the moth in light air.
chears

JPZ, thanks for the update! Fantastic start to an extraordinary revolution in sailing.
Did they takeoff with the genaker set or set it after takeoff?

[jpz]

took off with the genaker set. Just got Thomas on the phone as I'm in bed.. taking car of public relations...... and my helth

[pchanez]

All the pictures of this first trial with genaker are available here

http://www.18footer.org/Multimedia/P...7/Default.aspx