New Swiss Foiling Machine

YES OF COURSE WE DO NOT WANT TO "GAIN" WEIGHT BUT RATHER *REDUCE" IT

WE HOPE FOR BETTER PITCH STABILITY IN FLYING MODE
OUR MACHINE IS NOT A MOTH, THINGS ARE'T AS EASYLY EXTRAPOLATED...(4 TIMES THE WEIGHT !)
LAKE HUGGING IT WILL BE DIFFICULT TO TACK BUT MAYBE ALSO HAVE BETTER BALANCE WITH THE BIG GENOIS UP

IF NO GOOD WE CUT A TUBE AWAY AND PUT IT BACK WHERE IT WAS

I CALL IT A PLATEFORM FOR EXPERIMENTATION (AND IT IS PROPERLY ENGINEERED AND STRONG .: I HAVE A STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING COMPANY IT HAD TO LOOK LIKE A CRANE...)

WE RACE DAY RACES ON THE LAKE AND GO FOR THE OVERALL MONOHULL (SIC!) WIN

AND OVERALL PERSONAL FUN DURING THE FEW OURS WE CAN GET AWAY FROM THE ROUTINE DAYS

NO

NO

THEY LIKE CRAZY PEOPLE

THANK YOU VERY MUCH
THOMAS

 

Well, "they" just won their first race on a lake!

Thomas (the engineer behind the project, who just posted answers to various questions) is probably too modest to say it, so I will: in its first race on a lake, namely the Bol d'Or du Lac de Neuchatel, in Switzerland, organised by the Cercle de la Voile de Grandson, the prototype foiler "Mirabaud LX" took 1st place in "monohulls", 17 minutes ahead of a (modified) 18-footer on a course lasting about 5 hours. The first "normal" monohull was a 42'' racer another 20mins behind.

Mirabaud LX was also only about 20mins behind the last multihull of the 32'' class Ventilo 32 (there's a very active and competitive fleet of these boats in French-speaking Swizerland).

This was in spite of very light airs which for the most part (1) prevented the "LX" from flying, and (2) made it a very tiring work for the crew to keep the boat on it's mini "hull".

So all in all, a pretty impressive achievement. And clearly if they have more wind in their next race, they might be able to (1) get further ahead of other monohulls, (2) possibly start mixing up w the fast multihulls.

Well done!

 

Had a chance to admire "Mirabaud LX" many times...

...during a boat race on Lake Geneva, this past week-end.

Distance was a go-and-back course over Geneva-Rolle-Geneva, a mere 16nm (29km) each way.

Due to very very light winds especially on the way up it took us 13 hours (so a mere 2.4kn of average VMG), of which 8 hours to go up (so a mere 2.0kn). This in spite of us arriving in the top 20 percent of the monohulls (w many giving up).

We were often not far from Mirabaud LX and so could admire it, and could admire the battling spirit of its crew, doing their best to keep the boat straight (it has tiny safety buoyancy devices on the wings, to keep it from tipping over when stopped or in very light air, but each time they touch the water it obviously causes additional drag).

At the end of the day, Mirabaud finished in 13h23min, i.e. behind us in 13 hours on a Luthi 870 (a very nicely designed boat with modern sails), and they were also behind the 1st normal 18-footer (12h39).


Now that they've shown their determination and stamina over two boat races in very light airs, i.e. as far away as possible from the ideal conditions for their craft, it would be really really nice to see them hit winds high enough to allow them to fly, at least on part of the course. Just to have some fairness to the daring engineers ;-)