Nothing new under the sun

On this we do agree.

Sailrocket has achieved a tremendous feat, and nothing but praises should be given to everyone involved in the project. We all would love to have been part of it, but we were not. The human envy doesn't give us right to denigrate those who did something we couldn't or weren't able to do.

http://www.moralstories.org/the-fox-and-the-grapes/

Cheers

 

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Great! I feel better now...... Thanks!

 

Doug, out of curiosity how would you have titled the start of the thread? I think that seams to be the main problem here.

it seams we all can agree on the similarities.

I also can remember reading about it also around the eighties.

 

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I'd have probably put in the thread it belongs in: "Historical Multihulls"...
PS- I don't agree on the similarities-plural.

 

From Sailing Anarchy, whats next for Paul Larson.

http://sailinganarchy.com/2013/03/05/next/

Paul Larson took the SailRocket program to incredible heights, literally. We caught up with him after the Shackleton Epic to ask what’s next…

To be honest… we still have to work that one out. Even if we do push on with VSR2, I think it will be in parallel with whatever our next project will be. I don’t think anyone expects… or wants us to do something normal/conventional. It has to be something we are truly passionate about as I know now more than ever what depths these projects can drag you to. It’s only worth it if you really believe in what you are doing. I doubt I need to tell you that.

We have started looking into a few options at taking the concepts offshore and scale models are already being sailed… but these are just early days and we remain objective. The answers will present themselves as to whether they are worth following up on. Yeah there’s some pretty obvious paths and then some slightly ‘off track’ ones. We will look into all of them. When we first saw Bernard Smiths concepts a long time ago, it all seemed so obvious.

The path to where we are now seemed clear… although we often tripped up on the details along the way. So often we are ‘conditioned’ not to see what should be obvious. I guess I’m more fascinated by what hasn’t been done rather than what has. I guess that sounds a bit out of place coming from someone who just did a Shackleton re-enactment. I did that for a mixed number of reasons. I wanted to see that part of the world and I wanted to see if I could translate my education and understandings into a world which is vastly different. Those adventures don’t come around often. It was also a good way to avoid the come-down after the high of finally seeing the Sailrocket program deliver.

So we’ll sit down with the team and start afresh. One thing is for sure… there are still plenty of good things out there that haven’t been done… and even more that haven’t been done right. The world needs people lifting up the corners of the carpet to see what’s under there (Christ, after two months on a Discovery Channel shoot I’ve turned into a f*****g sound bite machine)!

 

I've recently saw Paul B's post about the "Golly Gosh" (link Nothing new under the sun https://www.boatdesign.net/threads/nothing-new-under-the-sun.46439/), and that bought back some memories for me.

That particular design was the 'economy' version of a more ambitious proposal that Ray Harvey had put forward a few years earlier. I'd read about "Gosh" in 1979, when an article about it was published in a New Zealand sailing magazine, though the item I'd read had considerably more text than is in the attachment to this post. IIRC, it was meant to fly along on just the two leeward foils, and that it was to have a 3-person crew; one to steer the craft using the tailplane, one to control the wingsail, and one to control the pod's height above the water, using ailerons fitted to the crossbeam.

There are several points of difference between the two designs. Most notably, the "Golly Gosh" has an inclined wingsail, and three hydrofoils - two leeward and one windward - à la Bernard Smith's Aerohydrofoil.

Cheers,
Paul