Article: "Foilers here to stay"

The following are excerpts from an article in the March 2005 issue of Australian Sailing. Since foiling is a hot topic on this forum and across the world and since most people here probably don't subscribe to the mag I thought I'd post some tidbits. The article was written by Ian Ward the first man to sail a two foiled hydrofoil dinghy(the first hydrofoil Moth was sailed by Andrew Paterson). Both Andy and Ian have posted here as has John Ilett the developer of the world champion Moth foil system.
Ians enthusiasm is catching so here goes:
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"I spent part of January at Black Rock in Melbourne watching the final four heats of the Moth Worlds(couldn't help myself,just had to be there!).
I must say that I have never seen such a huge single development in Moth design. Certainly the difference with addition of wings in 1970 was big, and narrow skiffs in 1990 proved to be a very big improvement over scow Moths, but nothing prepares you for the incredible performance of the foiled Moths."
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" In lighter winds they go even faster and lapped the conventional skiffs in a three lap race, a 30 per cent improvement! And the standard skiff Moths are not slow by any measure."
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"In flat water in Perth the foiled Moths have clocked 19kts in 10-12kts of wind, nearly double the windspeed. This is far more efficient than any other sailing craft I know of. Even the new world speed record holder was only going about 1.3 times the wind speed on his sailboard."
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"While a modern Formula sailboard can pace it with a foiled Moth, they need 11-12sqm of sail to get going and it is unlikely they would be competitive if they had to use the much smaller 8sq m rig to which Moths are restricted."
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"It is quite clear that foiled Moths are one of the most efficient sailing craft afloat today, perhaps even better than sailboards, as they are now proven to handle all sea conditions as well as being fast in light winds and can definitely race around a course on all points of sail.There is no doubt that we are witnessig one of the key achievements in sailing technology."
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"The one person who deserves ultimate praise is Perth boatbuilder John Ilett, who came up with his centerline dinghy foiler concept by himself and has perfected both the design and construction...."
" Amazingly, John has received little recognition or publicity for his impressive efforts. Not one sailing magazine has contacted him,even though they have published the opinions of several recognized "gurus", many of whom have never seen or sailed a foiling dinghy.I take my hat off to John[me too,dl] ,who has put into practice what I originally dreamed of and achieved even better results than I imagined would be possible, especially upwind,in light airs and also with the strength and durability of his construction methods."
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"Despite some concern about destroying the class, there is already realization that this is one of the greatest developments in sailing and is here to stay. Racing for the foilers was fast, but they were very close in top speed and there is certainly an opportunity to have close tactical racing. They tack as fast as a conventional dinghy and even gybe while on foils. The future is bright,but it does require a good skill level to get going!"
" In very light airs,below 5kts, foilers are definitely slower than conventional Moths. There remains quite some development work to get the best possible performance in all conditions."
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Ian has written several articles over the last few months in Seahorse as well as this one.
These boats have impressed a lot of people and there are new foilers-not Moth's- but small foilers attempting to capitalize on the Moth
success being built all over the world-these are early days of the foiling revolution!

 

No doubt the moths are very efficient sailing craft, sailing at 19 kts in 10-12 knots of wind. I would have thought that certain multihulls and monohulls that can do over twice the windspeed would be considered slightly more efficient. One example is the 90' supermaxi Nicorette doing 13 kts in 6 kts of wind. That is over twice the speed of the wind, while the Moth was just under. Has a moth actually done twice the windspeed before? They seem capable of it, has anyone actually done it?

 

Bethwaite new book

Heard recently about a new book by Frank Bethwaite with at least one chapter in it by Ian Ward on apparent windsailing with particular reference to Moth foilers-can't wait!

 

Foiler Futures

The first post in this thread quotes an article by Ian Ward (Wardi) that is as appropo today-or more so- than when first posted here with monofoiler develoment picking up- at least two new non Moth monohull foilers are under development and sailing now vs when this was first written. Check it out....

 

More than twice the wind speed

The article by Ian Ward as posted by Doug Lord is a little optomistic when claiming that Moths are the only boats capable of nearly twice the wind speed, and their efficiency level is unparallelled, can pace it with formula boards etc.
Even as much as 10 years ago the American magazine " Windsurfing" which regularly runs board tests in which amongst other things, speeds are recorded with a radar gun, better numbers than this were being recorded. Ratios slightly higher than 2:1 were regular occurences and making a comparison to Finian Maynard setting a world speed sailing record near 50 knots are completely flawed. (Doug if you want a mathematic explanation email me on :
sfrosh@hotmail.com and I will send you the solution). Now with Formula Boards the ratios are likely well over 2:1 in ideal conditions. What is more relevant is that the speed recorded by a sailboard is about double the highest ever recorded by a hydrofoiling Moth. Exciting it might be, that Moths are flying at very good speeds, but earth shattering it certainly is not!

 

As much as new foiler technologies are a tad pricey, and a bit trickier to control than the old Sunfish, there's a lot of potential in foil technology. We used to have buoyant aircraft; we now have the technology to build foil-borne aircraft that perform better. We used to have the buoyancy-supported Moth; now we have the foil Moth that goes like a missile. They're not for everyone, but I'm certainly looking forward to seeing what new and wacky foilers will come out of the nautical engineers' labs in the next few years....

 

Foiled Again

So, toss a .5 cent plastic bag in the water in front of a foiling Moth and tell me what speeds it has attained with the lifting component thoroughly cooked and said sailor back in the watery world.

Can someone say, Excessive drag? How about face-a-plant with said speedy foiler on top of the sailor?

I remember a really fast, Indy 500 car owned by Andy Granatelli that ran a revolutionary turbine engine. Amazingly fast car. That dude lapped the field and was on its way to laying waste to the speed records of established Indy teams of the day.

Somewhere in the last lap of the race, a $6 bearing in the turbine took a dump and the car coasted to a stop in sight of the brickband, while the rest of the turtles flew by to the checkered flag. Funny how the simplest of things can overdose the fastest of the fast when they can least handle it...

No doubt foils are cool in very controlled conditions with no crap in the water. Let me know when they get the plastic bag thing sorted and I'll see if I'm still interested.

 

Chris, bad analogy.....Rohan Veal seemed to have no trouble (or plastic bags) at the Moth Worlds....I believe he had all bullets.....

 

Ooof!

It's a great analogy... you just don't like the way it sounds.

The world knows what happens when flow is fundamentally disturbed over a foil's surface. The result is loss of lift. Loss of lift for a foiler is loss of function and then it's nothing more than a really slow sailboat that is dragging around a couple of fancy wing thingies in the water.

The point, Bobo, is that there is crap in the water and there will be more tomorrow. When an El Cheapo plastic sack, or weeds, or burger wrapper... or you name the flotsam, get's wrapped around the lifting foil at speed, the result will be interesting to watch.

More junk in the water, means more incidents. The fact that a race, or group of races was held and one dude didn't have the experience is not the point. It will happen.

 

The International Moth Class of Italy will organize the 2007 Moth World Championships at Torbole, Lake Garda.
I can assure everybody that, being Lake Garda a strictly controlled environnement, the probability of hitting floating garbage is nearly non existent.
Furthermore I must admit I still love sailing in spite of the fact that I heard of a guy that had a heart attack whilst sailing and fell overboard.
Marco.

 

Flotsam and Jetsam

I do most of my sailing in the normally pristine Swan River Perth Australia. On about the third outing in my 6.2 metre tandem windsurfer with 3mm ply bottom, epoxied inside and out the following happened. Great day around 18 knots. We were planing upwind and downwind. After a while I found that the hull became sluggish and would not respond to lateral trim from foot pressure. Shortly after I lost control of my sail (it seemed to handle strange at the time), fell heavily into my rig smashing the carbon mast. We were both in the water then, lost my rig entirely, and found we had around 300 litres of water inside the hull. I found a neat hole the exact shape of a wine bottle punched through the ply bottom. Some ******* on a cruiser, F*** them. **** does happen, even where you dont expect it!

 

Lake Garda observations

Casavecchia,

That sounds like the perfect place to hold a foiling event and I hope everything comes off without a problem for the sailors.

Chris Ostlind
Lunada Design

 

Mate, there are many foiler Moths sailing all round the world in all sorts of places. Comments like that do not make you look clever. Like they say, best to stay quiet and be thought ignorant than to open your mouth and remove all doubt...

 

Even after my catastrophic outing described above with my tandem, I am not put off at all, and still sail in the same waters regularly. It is like having a car accident, and then refusing to drive again, really dumb!
If you want to sail a foiler, then go for it, all credit to you, as it is definitely very cutting edge, but not everyones cup of meat!

 

Foiling is the future. For the simple fact that on long distance ocean races a hydrofoil will be able to "ride" open ocean swells, for example Indian ocean South Africa to Indonesia, hypothetically with no wind. Watch this space.