Moth on Foils: 35.9 knots(41.29 mph)

Moth on Foils/ Bi-foil Technology

-----------------------------------
One of the most interesting elements of this revolution in sailing is low windspeed takeoff for those light enough to partake, that is. As Rohan said- that is a major shortcoming of the Moth class foiler(so far) since the vast majority of sailors are too heavy to be competitive AND to
take off in the lightest wind.
That's why so many people, including myself and others around the world are working to develop a foiler that would allow people of average weight and higher to foil throughout the wind range open to lightweights in the Moth.
If anything threatens Olympic Status for the Bladerider/Moth it is this weight problem-fine for the Moth class but not when you want average (below and above) weight people to be competitive.The Bladerider has a potential partial solution: the 9m² sail. But even with that the boat will still tend to be competitive only for the lower end of average.
It's probably going to take a "Peoples Foiler" designed
for a wide range of crew weight with a "foiler version" of a weight equalization system to create a boat truly suitable for the Olympics and one in which everybody can foil in the lightest/strongest wind possible.

 

This issue occurred in hang gliding a few years (quite a few years) ago. Small pilots could not gain effective weght shift control of big gliders, big pilots could manoeuvre small gliders but went downwards like a homesick typewriter when away from lift. The solution was families of gliders sized for pilots, as the performance when flying with the correctly sized glider was similar size/weight classes were not needed and everyone flew at the same level. No fun for the designer however since this implies some form one design class unless a formula class which considers crew weight as well as sail area can be formed. I have not worked through the scaling laws for this with respect to speed..... but could if encouraged.

Jon.

 

From Doug:

It's going to take more than that, Doug.... way more.

I just had a very poignant look at a market positioning display that fits nicely with this argument about the so-called, People's Gizmo with foils.

The automatic dishwasher at home just took leave of itself mechanically and my wife and I decided to get another one. So off to the People's Dishwasher store we went.

I don't know how long it has been since you shopped for a new, major appliance for the home, but the vast array of available products is remarkable. Personally, I feel that a dishwasher in the home is a purely optional piece of equipment. It's a nice convenience if you have a family, but it's really not an absolute necessity. Maybe that's just me. They seem to be defacto standard items in most modern homes, so they do qualify as a People's Appliance, in the fashion that Doug would like you to believe a Moth Foiler might be.

Something about a Moth Foiler (or it's glorious, fat guy's substitute) just doesn't ring the bell of personal necessity or important personal need in my scheme of things. I have more than a sneaky suspicion that Doug also knows that and he's just sticking his carbon pole in the nearest rotating foil for his own purposes. Whatever...

Back to dishwashers... At the store you have the less expensive, all plastic, whooshing models all the way up to the near $1000 USD all stainless steel versions that are amazingly quiet with a vast array of washing selections available to the homeowner.

I asked the salesman what models sell the most and he said it was the sub/above middle of the road models with a few features and and a few color/finish options. This reality is in a mid-sized American city, within a well-structured middle class neighborhood, so it would compare nicely to a typical national norm.

Consumers clearly have the choice as to which product they would buy and they get a full range of options from which to make their decision. They do not stand in line to purchase the high-end tricked-out carbon/stainless People's Dishwasher. They, instead, buy at the price and feature point where their money gets the most effective return for the outlay.

They do want a few automatic, set it and forget features, but they want it to be a product they can quickly understand, put to work and go about their business.

This kind of thinking applies all across the consumer landscape for products that are targeted at the People's Envelope. Make the product too fancy and complex and they turn away in droves for a more functionally appropriate product. Price it too high compared to the other products in the marketplace and you will lose the mass of the buyers at the center of the consumer bell curve immediately.

If you create a product that is priced so high, with so many features and technical scenarios, you will automatically limit the market severely and place the potential business plan in the niche end of the spectrum. While that's fine if you are happy to target that audience and can make a living in that environment, but it is nothing like the total numbers of product sales that are available in the center of the market curve.

Now, maybe it's just me, (though there are literally millions of buyers out there who would show similar habits) but there's just something about the word niche that really doesn't go with the term People's Foiler

There are dozens of similar examples of this type of consumer reality in the boating world, I just chose to use this example because I just actively went through the process with my own money.

And therein lies the truth in producing any model of anything that one hopes would appeal on the People's level of things.

 

Moth on Foils

Jon, thanks for that. I'm going to look into the numbers a bit later as well.
PS- Please consider yourself encouraged! I'd like to see your results and they could be a big contribution in these early days of bi-foil technology.

 

That photo deserves to be posted.... so here it is:

 

Moth on Foils/ weight

Thanks for posting the pix Stephen!
--------------------
If we pick a weight range of say 140lb.
to 220lb. and decide that the idea is that both crews or anyone in between should be able to compete fairly with the same low speed take off and same max RM here are some interesting numbers:
140 Moth:
--boat weight 60lb
--crew 140lb.
--Sailing weight/SA = 2.32 lb. per sq.ft.
--SA=86 sq.ft. /8m²
--mainfoil area= 1.04 sq.ft.
--mainfoil loading = 153.8lb. per sq.ft.
--Sq.ft. SA per sq. ft. mainfoil area = 82.69
===============================
220 Moth( just for purposes of illustration)
--boat weight 70lb
--crew 220 lb
--Sailing weight/SA = 2.32lb. sq.ft.
--SA = 125sq.ft / 11.6m²
--mainfoil area= 1.51 sq.ft
--mainfoil loading = 153.6lb. per sq.ft.
--Sq. ft. SA per sq.ft. mainfoil area =82.69
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The 220 Moth has exactly the same foil loading, weight per sq.ft.SA and most importantly the same sail area per sq.ft. of foil area as the current(140) Moth and would be likely to take off in the same wind speed.Both could be set up to have exactly the same maximum proportion of rightng moment to heeling moment(with different beams). For a touch of added realism the 220 Moth weighs 10lb. more than the current Moth.
An important factor left out besides SA/ws off the foils is the "footprint" which might have to be larger on the 220 Moth to give close to the same pitch characteristics to both boats.
A possible solution that would NOT EVEN BE CONSIDERED(nor should it) in the Moth class but which has been considered in the 14' aeroSKIFF design is to build one slightly bigger boat and use a sliding seat(not like anything you've ever seen) that incorporates a ballast compartment so that the weights are identical within the chosen crew weight range. There are some possible pitfalls of that including what happens to the seat when the lightweight crew is ejected and how it would impact righting , the complexity of the sliding seat ect.
But it would provide a boat with the same low windspeed takeoff characteristics and same maximum RM with an exceptionally high effective crew weight range.
Frankly, I CAN'T SEE HOW A SYSTEM COULD BE MADE TO WORK WITHIN THE RULES OF THE MOTH CLASS and my guess is that a Peoples Foiler design from scratch would be the only way.
What do you think, Jon?

 

I have a quibble with your calling it a Moth, Doug, since 8m^2 is the sail area limit for International Moths (and U.S. Modern Moths when going to windward). Perhaps the boat you describe can find a home in another class. You can check out a few at www.bloodaxeboats.co.uk. But I think you have the right idea, i.e. if you want to optimize for a higher crew weight I see no reason why you shouldn't start by scaling foil area and sail area (assuming you are not concerned with being a Moth) according to your target.

So coming back around to the aeroSKIFF (or whatever the boat is you really want to build) I'm rooting for ya! I will say, though, that actually spending time sailing one of those Bladeriders when they come to your area can only help in preparing you to troubleshoot your own boat and make it work. Or you could get someone already actively foiling to work with you on your boat.

Onward & upward,
Stephen

 

Moth on Foils/ weight

Stephen , the "220 Moth" was only a figure for illustration purposes to help me explain to Jon Howes what I was thinking. I am not advocating such a thing for the Moth class but I am interested in hearing Jons thoughts on the subject of weight in any foiler class particularly in the Moth class. I tried to make the division between the solution I came up with and the Moth class crystal clear; as I said my solution will not work in the Moth class but for the Moth class' sake I hope some solution to the below average competitive weight situation will be found. Note that the 9m² Bladerider optional main is illegal in the Moth class but may be legal in the Bladerider class .
I think I'll stick to my own foiler-can't see the Bladerider experience at my weight being any help at all but seeing the boat will be tremendous!

 

Doug,

Have not crunched the numbers on this yet but agree that this would be a "restricted foiler" rather than a Moth or any other class.

One thing that is important and has been very significant in pilot-in-the-breeze gliders (hang gliders and paragliders) is that the drag of the pilot is an important consideration. With a fast boat where the wind angle is roughly constant regardless of the point of sailing (like an ice boat, presumaby foiling Moths have a similar characteristic?) the crew drag will be similarly important as it has a direct effect on the wind drag angle. This needs to be factored in as in gliders a large wing reduces the relative drag of the pilot if the pilot remains the same, ie, a zero lift aircraft drag coefficient (based on wing area for convenience) of (say) .01 for the wing plus .015 for the pilot gives .025 for the whole. If the wing area is doubled then the wing drag coefficient is unchanged for the same geometry but the pilot drag coefficient drops by half to 0.0075.

Volume (weight) of crew varies with the third power of size and area with the second power, I suspect that this would need to be included.

Jon.

 

Moth on Foils: Sailing World Boat of the Year 2007

The Bladerider was nominated as a finalist in the Sailing World Boat of the Year contest for 2007.
Congratulations are in order here-to my knowledge this is the first monofoiler ever nominated for this award.

 

http://idata.over-blog.com/0/23/63/37/_stf1051.jpg

From Nicolas Bessec Moth blog.
Ophelie foiled at first outing just after 15 minutes .
Well done Ophelie!

Marco

 

Moth on Foils

From Rohan Veals website:
VSK releases "International Foiler Moth" for Virtual Skipper 4:
VSK Australia :: The home of Australian Virtual Sailing
Address:http://www.vsk-aus.com/ Changed:6:39 PM on Sunday, December 10, 2006

 

Howdy Chris,

My tendancy is to stick with much more standard sorts of boats than foilers.

But they are an interesting sideline.

I think your dishwasher analogy partially falls down because people will spend much, much more money on FUN than anything else.

The $1000 you maybe spent on a dishwasher probably pales into insignificance if compared to most peoples' budget (or expenditure above and beyond budget) for FUN items.

Whether it is clothes or holidays or movie tickets or sailboats.

But where I would agree is looking at the windsurfer boom of a decade or so ago (gosh - its almost two decades!!!) where gazillions of people were sailing the dam things back and forth in every bay around the globe.

It introduced tens of thousands of people to sailing

Then as the push toward more and more complex and expensive equipment kicked off the impetus just died and people went back to their Xboxes.

Or back to waiting for the Xbox to be developed.

Or whatever they went off to do instead.

Michael Storer

 

Olympic Moth / Spectacular Letter

As many of you know I've said that the foiler Moth(and its technology) is the most spectacular thing to happen in sailing for a long time. Read this from the current Scuttlebutt:

From: editor@sailingscuttlebutt.com(Curmudgeon) Date: Sun, Dec 17, 2006, 5:58pm (EST-3) To: lorsail@webtv.net Subject: Scuttlebutt 2245
SCUTTLEBUTT 2245 – December 18,
* From Magnus Wheatley: (Re, 'Butt 2243) I recently invited 6 non-sailing friends around for dinner and after a delicious meal cooked by my new wife I decided to test out the non-sailors on the Olympic format. I had a video of Big Ben beating Scheidt in Sydney, my own footage from the Star class in Athens and a clip of Rohan Veal doing the foiler Moth thing. Every single one of them was in awe of the Moth and totally didn't get the rest of it. We absolutely, as a sailing community, have to get behind this and insist that the class becomes Olympic. Please, please, please don't bury this in petty politics and narrow viewing reasoned argument. This is the greatest thing to happen in sailing for generations and will create huge interest in sailing at the Games and I don't care whether you class this as 'niche' or non reflective of sailing as a whole. Sailing is dull, boring and uninspiring for the majority and if we don't change, it will be canned from the Olympics. Embrace the new and stop endorsing the stupid classes we currently have or else we're out and that goliath of politics - ISAF - will be terminated for good. Actually on second thoughts perhaps I should get behind the Finn, Star, Yngling, 470 and Tornado because if they stay in the Games, ISAF will be a dead duck by 2016...now there's a thought!
*

 

Fixed it for you ...