60' Moth-A Preliminary Detailed Design Exploration

Just for the record ,again

Just for the record again:

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First public mention by me of the concept- 1st time this concept was publically mentioned by anybody anywhere to the best of my knowledge:
WindPower :: View topic - Hydrofoil monohulls - full flying hydrofoil equipped keelboats
Address:http://www.rcsailtalk.com/viewtopic.php?t=382

 

what a joke, A forum, is hardly "on the record".

 

Is it or isn't it Memorex?

Dan S.,

You have tossed around a bit in the RC forum world. Are those old postings at Windpower editable? If they are, it could mean that a person could go back and adjust their post on a very old thread to reflect his latter day genius. Kind of a "Back to the Future" kinda thing.

Interesting potential story there. It might even end-up in a fictional novel one day as a component in a murder mystery.

I'm not spiffy enough with the inner workings of peeking into the html code pages to know when something may or may not have been modified, so I'll leave that bit of detective work up to someone who does have that knowledge.

Free lunch on me, guys, if you can prove that the page at Windpower has been edited in the past week or so. I saved all the relevant web pages and html code to keep the potential intact to that end.

For now, I suggest you work on the validity of the claim as a published proof via the obscure web page route. It may or may not be supportable in a legal sense, I don't know.

 

Technically Doug has been banned from the forum, and can’t edit his old posts. However anyone that has access to the database the forum resides on could go back and edit it without anyone knowing (trust me I know I work with databases every day).

 

Sheeesh, if this had carried on it looks like it would have been pistols at dawn !!!

 

The Godzilla Gambit

Hi Anton,

Actually, I'm only kidding about all this, detective work and discrediting thing. Truth is, I don't really care if Mr. Lord wants to claim an insignificant piece of prior art from some obscure Internet web forum for radio controlled boats.

I have serious doubts as to the mere mention of something as a substantiation of "prior art" anyway. There were no drawings, renderings, technical plans, etc., to precisely outline the form of the so-called, prior art. The partial (and vague) description of said mechanism is without merit.

If he had gone on to fully define the mechanism, draw suitable imagery that is stamped in time by a Notary which describes, fully, the mechanism and its function, then there may be a way to cobble that hodge-podge together if a patent attroney were especially glib and had a very lenient judge.

This is like any other wanky claim that bombards the producers in the film industry on a daily basis. "hey, that fiery monster with the scales and building stomping feet was my idea back in 1930 when I played space invader dude with my neighborhood buddies because we were having low blood sugar hallucinations. I want some royalty money."

"OK, yes, Mr. Lord, it does appear that you have "invented" something like Godzilla. Now, if you'll kindly return to your home, we'll have our attorneys contact you."

It is amusing stuff... I'll give you that.

 

60' monofoiler

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So, 2, if you willing to accept that a monohull keelboat on foils would be equal to or faster than an Orma tri , do you think it matters?

 

The Emporer Has No Clothes

Careful, Bubba usa2, you are about to be enlisted in the Lord Army of foilistas without having signed your name to a single piece of paper. Ask Randy Hough about how he narrowly escaped the horror of that enlistment. It took a beautifully poignant reference to the oblique majesty of Doug Quixote to wrestle himself clear of the grasp of the great one who envisions a world full of foilers.

Ouixote is just looking for privates in the Army of the Naive and Inattentive so that he can gain precious validity... as he sees it.

If you thought you were getting a ton of Spam prior to this, you ain't seen nothing yet.

My suggestion to prevent an all-out melt down would be to play along with him, tell him he looks and sounds great, that the whole world is watching and that he sees things that nobody else could possibly see.

Placate, pacify and run like hell when you get the chance

 

Having your cake and eating it too: 60' Bi-foil Monofoiler

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Well,now , I've been thinking about this a bit.
You said: "If systems can be designed and built that would make a 60' Mono on foils stable, the same systems could be used on a multi. The Multi would be faster since it has the ability to carry more sail".
Not necessarily: you and I both, earlier, showed theoretical and real world examples of where the boat with higher power to carry sail is beaten or at least*potentially* beaten by the boat that more efficiently uses the power it has(Moth vs A Class ; 60' Monofoiler vs 60' cat/ Orma tri).
What you didn't say here (that I can find) is what would happen to speed IF a 60' monohull foiler sailing on just two foils were raced against a 60' multifoiler sailing on just two foils. The only big multifoiler now is L'hydroptere which sails on three foils(50% more foils and associated hardware than a monofoiler) two of them surface piercing. The good thing about that is that they automatically assume the minimum area as speed increases.The bad thing is that at a certain speed they come out of the water. The question comes up: "does the in- line bi- foil fully submerged foil system on the monofoiler have inherently better rough water ability than the system on L'Hydroptere?" I think it probably does but thats just speculation right now. But could a two foil full flying system be applied to a multihull? Well, would the 60' monofoiler be a multihull if you added two hull shaped buoyancy pods to the ends of the wings? Yes, but then you've added weight- for what purpose? Just to convert it to a multihull? Maybe you could take the suggestion of ggg guest and design a cat with a system to allow it to sail on just two foils, but then-at the very least you'd have to have two foils each side(2+2=4) which is twice the weight of the monofoiler foil system.
However, a multifoiler will probably beat a monofoiler in calm water, I'll give you that for the time being.
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Of course,just as reality check: we've already determined a well designed bi-foil monofoiler will probably beat a 60' cat and be competitive with an Orma tri which partially foils when it's in control.(and fully fly's when it's nearly out of control).
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You said: "If the design budget for a foil borne 60+ foot Monohulled boat was allocated to self rescuing designs for Multihulls.You would have your cake and eat it too. High Speed and safety in one platform." Wait a minute, Randy:the cake was served in the first post of this thread-all you have to do is take a final bite or two! The 60' monofoiler is SELFRIGHTING or,I guess, self rescuing if you have to move the keel.And we've both shown that it is *potentially* capable of multihull+ speeds! Why go to the extraordinary trouble to make a multihull AT BEST self rescuing
when you already have a platform that definitely is?? And is equally as fast? If you look at the monofoiler it is trully exciting-at least in concept- because it is carrying BALLAST that will allow it to be righted unaided yet it can still equal or better multihull speed . My position is that that's your answer staring you in the face: the Double Ballasted Double Foiled Monofoiler does the whole thing: unparalleled speed with unparalleled safety!
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One of your contentions has been: " whatever system you add to a monofoiler to make it fast you can add to a multihull to make it faster"- maybe and that's a BIG MAYBE. But can you add the factor of safety inherent in the monofoiler design to this new multifoiler? I just don't think it's possible........

 

Once more into the breach ...

Its the weekend ... my boat is still in the paint shed and the keel is still off ... so I have some time ...

The only reason the 60'MF had a theoretical advantage in the numbers I crunched last week was because the ORMA Tri was using the ama for pitch stability. Thus the Tri's wetted surface was higher than the 60"MF. At very high speed the skin friction and induced drag of the foil assisted ama was higher than the combination of the skin friction and induced drag of the foiler.

If we go back to a big cat on foils the drag cruve for the two foils in the water is equal to the two foils on the 60'MF and the sail carrying power is higher. Thus the cat would not have the drag penalty of the ORMA Tri's ama. The cat would be lighter than the 60'MF since it does not require the ballast strut and bulb, the water tank, and all the machinery to run the ballast system and pumps. The the cat's foils would have less drag than the 60'MF since they could be smaller or carry less load (the cat is lighter).

If we use submerged foils on the cat (two foils in-line like the 60'MF) there is a small problem of providing lateral resistance. In either the 60'MF or the cat, if the vertical foil is used for lateral resistance, it is a surface piercing foil and subject to ventilation. Heeling to weather solves this for the 60"MF, on the cat the foils would have to be canted outward so they would provide lateral resistance to reduce the lateral load on the vertical foil.

The same system (yet to be engineered) that provides pitch and heave stability on the 60'MF would work on the cat also. Since the stability system on the cat does not have to control ballast systems also, it would be simpler and lighter than the MF system.

Bottom line:
IF the MF works the cat would work. At speed they both would be 60' foilers. One lighter than the other, and the lighter one having more power to carry sail. As soon as the leeward hull leaves the water, the theoretical drag advantage on the MF goes away and the cat wins.

 

back is right

I'll have to take a look tomorrow but you're original premise was that the cat weighed the same as the monofoiler which I took as a generous gift.
In the new case you're talking about a four foil cat(twice the foils of the monofoiler).Unless you have a really neat system for retracting the foils all four will be in the water prior to takeoff. If your boat weighs the same as Mediatis Region Aquitaine(11,000lb) then with a 49' beam your max RM will be less than the 60'monofoiler RM and your SA won't be any greater. What that means is that your time before flying a hull and sailing on two foils would occur much later than the monofoiler which is flying on foils(unballasted) in an 8 knot wind.And thats because of your enormous extra wetted surface pre flying. So the monofoiler would build an insurmountable lead on the cat in wind up to 17-20 knots especially given the fact that the monofoiler probably carries little or no extra ballast in those conditions.
In stronger conditions the cat has no RM advantage
at all if it sails unballasted but it might be faster- if the windward hull is kept out of the water- due to being lighter.Repeat, the 11,000lb. CAT HAS NO RM ADVANTAGE AT ALL!!!( 23' righting arm @11000lb.'s = 253,0000 ft. lb.'s vs monofoiler max rm of 268,000 ft. lb.'s)
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edit: The cat has three more problems though: 1)getting the foils angled properly means that the windward foils will hang down substantally below the hull making it very difficult to keep them clear of the water especially off the wind.
2) the lift vector on the 60' monofoiler rig is generating some upward lift reducing the load on the foils while the lift vector on the cat rig is probably down or neutral.
3)Control of angle of heel. Both boats require excellent control of their angle of heel for optimum performance- particularly upwind. The cat only has the main and jib sheet to keep the platform balanced upwind and downwind so that the windward hull/foils does not touch the water. The monofoiler ,on the other hand, has the main and jib sheet as well as the sliding on-deck movable ballast that moves extremely quickly giving the monofoiler a tremendous advantage in controlling angle of heel.
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It would be a good race but it looks to me like in winds from 0-20 the monofoiler would have the advantage. In stronger, steady winds in a smooth sea state the cat would tend to have an advantage. In stronger winds downwind the monofoiler might have a slight edge since it is sailing level and the cat still has to hold the windward hull clear of the water. In strong, rough conditions the monofoiler would probably be superior because the inferior control the cat has over angle of heel would be complicated by heave acting 23' from the cl of the foils.
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And just one more small detail: you know that storm we're both going to sail thru? The monofoiler is far more likely to come out of it right side up. (Mediatis Region Aquitaine capsized(or pitchpoled) on one of Parliers first attempts at a singlehanded record).Because of it's fast movable ballast the monofoiler will be able to be pushed harder ,longer than the cat. I will admit that the foils, even sailing slowly, will probably help the cat(reducing capsize or pitchpole probability) in storm conditions.

 

The question is moot.

No system is capable of keeping the big MF trimmed when foiling.

Read what Rohan has to say about how he sails his Moth in the foiler design thread.

The system has to be able to move the ballast in as many planes as Rohan can move his body, and it has to do it *before* the boat starts to react, and it has to do it as quickly as Rohan can. It is not going to happen.

If you had a servo system tied to very sensitive rate gyros that could decide which way to move the ballast nearly instantaniously, you still need big heavy machinery to get it done. It would take a huge amount of power to run such systems, the range of the MF in ocean conditions would be limited by fuel tankage and the size of the engine needed to run the hydraulic pumps. After all that, the system would still be behind the boat, not in front of it as Rohan says is one of the keys to foiling a Moth.

Both boats would face the same problem with sail trim. The amount of power needed to play a mainsheet on a 2500+ sq ft rig would require another fossil fuel engine.

A Moth main is what, 80sq ft? At a 2 lb/ft^2 loading that's only 160 lbs. A 3:1 mainsheet system drops the sheet load to around 50lbs.

A 1500 sq ft main ... 3000 pounds .... 3:1 = 1000 pounds sheet load .... you have a choice ... a big assed powered winch or much more purchase ... either one is V E R Y S L O W compared to Rohan pumping the sheet on a Moth.

Remember also that your MF does not develop anywhere near 250,000#/ft RM until it is up and heeled to weather. Before that, it has about 100,000#/ft RM, it is paying for hauling around all the extra fuel and weight so it would not enjoy much of a wetted surface advantage.

The 60 Cat at 18,000# has 414,0003/ft RM * FOUR TIMES the SCP *

If your 60"MF can pump water ballast in ... that cat can do it too ...

There is no fantasy system on the MF that cannot be used more effectively on the cat.

Doug, you want foils to work on everything ... you find or generate numbers to convince yourself that they will ... I could care less ...

You have some odd attachment to boats that have to carry dead weight around to sail at all .... and you want them to foil ... never mind the first hand accounts from people that have actually sailed on foilers ... never mind that the modern foilers you are so thrilled about (I14, Moth, and now the foiling 18) are similar in that the crew weight is more than 60% of the total weight of all of them.

I know that you do this just to get me going ... you cannot seriously think that a boat with barely 50% of it's weight in ballast can compare to a foiling dinghy.

Your 60'MF can't race at all in my races ... I choose to enforce all the rules ...

No moving or variable ballast
Manual power only

Since all the high tech wonder boats are using powered systems, we get right back to the thread that got me the "Retro Dude" handle ... boats that use engines to sail faster (or at all) are cheating. They are not sailboats. They do not deserve to take any records from honest sailors and proper boats that used good seamanship and hard work instead of a diesel engine to sail the boat. Particularly when boats that don't break the rules are 20% faster.

The Foiler Moths and the Foiling 18 ARE real sailboats, they don't break and rules. They are wonderful boats. I personally don't want one, but I have high regard for those that can sail them.

There ... I feel better ... I got my anti powered "sail"boat rant in ...

As far as the self righting ... self rescuing thing goes ... it does not seem to be a very big deal ... you keep going on about Ocean Racing Multi's going over ... be fair ... mention that a VO70 SANK ... didn't even get rolled first ... some idiot put some kind of tilting keel on it and the keel spent most of it's time telling the crew it didn't want to play ... finally, it's efforts to abandon ship caused enough damage that the sailors had to abandon the boat instead. The keel won ... the boat sank (as far as we know).

You win Doug ... your imagination can come up ways that it can work faster than I can come up with logic why it won't.

I have fantasies too ... mine involve Sophia Loren, Ursula Andress, Halle Berry, Jessica Alba, and Keely Hazell playing Twister in a vat of Crisco ... but I don't spend hours trying to convince myself that it will ever happen.

That's all you're doing, convincing yourself that it could work ... no one else seems to think so ... at least no one is willing to post in agreement ...

 

Eeeeyouch!!

Brilliant, Randy.

Funny, poignant and just damn brilliant.

Even though one would like to see two individuals coherently engaged in a conversation, I'm afraid you'll be screwing-in your light bulb all by yourself.

Come to think of it... that's kind of retro, too.

 

60' monofoiler

Gee, Randy YOU said it would work (IF it could be built)!! This whole thread particularly the first post is a DESIGN EXPLORATION-just slightly better than doodling on a cocktail napkin in a bar. However, as you point out below there is tremendous potential to the 60' monofoiler design.
As to the monofoiler beating a multifoiler: I think it has a chance particularly against the Quad foiler cat(or is that cats?). But if L'hydroptere is as well sorted as it appears to be it would cream the monofoiler/cat(s) in a flash with much more power per sq.ft. of foil area than either boat.
I find it hilarious that in order to denigrate the fact that the monofoiler would be self righting you have to compare it to a BROKEN VO 70! Come on! I could point to the Transat Jaques Fabre(?) a couple of years ago where something like 17 out of 19 ORMA tris either broke up, pitchpoled or capsized.
This thread was begun to illustrate ONE THING: that a 60' self righting keelboat could be designed to potentially beat multihulls it's own length. EVEN YOU agree that that part of the original premise was probably correct IF the boat
could be built!! Detemining whether or not the boat could be built is beyond me but those I know that are in a position to make an educated guesstimate say that it can but that it is right on the edge of what is possible. Well, great: thats what a DESIGN EXPLORATION is all about.
Before bringing up your "retro dudism" about Power Ballast Systems you suggested using such a system on your cat-is this one of those: " I voted for it before I voted against it" moments, Randy? The Achilles heel of the Quad cat is sailing off the wind where it will be virtually impossible to keep the windward hull clear of the water with or without a PBS.
There is an effect that you may not have considered regarding scaling things up or down. When I've used Power Ballast Systems on rc models one thing was very apparent: when a boat is scaled DOWN the way it reacts to movable ballast speeds up-the reactions are much quicker. If you go the other way those same reactions slow down-and that is why a Power Ballast System will work on a 60' monofoiler(PS-Julian Bethwaite thinks it will work on a 60' hybrid ). This same effect works with sheet control reaction: on a 48" Formula 48 trimaran(sort of a scaled down ORMA 60) it is very ,very difficult to sail the boat while flying the main hull for any length of time because of the incredibly quick reactions of the boat. But it is done routinely on the full size ORMA's. Angle of heel on the monofoiler wil be far easier to control than on the proposed cat(s) beacause it has TWO systems that can react to input quickly.
At any rate this is an interesting design exploration and I appreciate you taking the time to look at it seriously at least part of the time.

 

Doug,

As usual you read what you want to ...

I compared two boats using numbers that you supplied. One boat is free to foil completely, the other is only allowed to support 60% of it's weight on a foil. That is a very specific case. The number's I came up with showed that as long as the tri is hamstrung by keeping part of one hull in the water, the big MF *MIGHT* be faster at very high speeds.

As soon as the playing field is level and the multi is allowed to foil completely there is no set of numbers that can be made to "prove" that the MF has a chance of being faster.

How can anyone take the comparison between a handicapped tri and the Fantasy Foiler and conclude that I said that the Fantasy Foiler could be made faster than any possible multi?

Compare what Doug says I said: "Randy YOU said it would work (IF it could be built)!!"

What I said: "The 60'MF is potentially faster than a displacement multi-hull."

How Doug's processing filter gets from one to the other is beyond me.

As Farr as light air superiority goes ... 4 of 7 VO70's put their eggs in the better light air performance basket and had their collective asses handed to them by two boats that were light air dogs.

As far as using powered systems on "my" cat, they were only included to show that the same systems that would work on the Fantasy Foiler would also work on a multi. The point being that to make the FF viable, there has to be something that can be done by using only one hull that cannot be done with multiple hulls.

So far the only point is that the FF *might* be self righting or self rescuing. With 25 feet of buoyant ballast support hanging off both sides, I suspect the FF will be very stable when inverted and I doubt that 5000# of canting keel would right it.

If either boat goes over, the rig is probably gone and the race is over. Possible self-righting is not an Ace to play, it's more like a 4, sure it beats 2's and 3's but who cares?

Making things work is what I do for a living. I have a damn good feel for the limits of mechanical systems.

Do your self a favour. Run your RM numbers for these heel angles: -15, -10, -5, 0, 5, 10, 15. Now plot the heeling moment required to balance the MF at those angles. Figure out what CL 2500 sq ft of sail will need to give those numbers. For those CL's figure what AOA the sails need to have. From AOA plot how far the boom has to move or the boat alter course to keep the boat balanced. Take the angle the boom has to swing through, calculate the sheet tension for each condition. Assume the main sheet is attached at the end of the boom, calculate how far the the end boom has to travel. Take the mainsheet load and the distance and calculate how much power the main sheet system has to have to trim the sail from one extreme to the other in 2 seconds, 5 seconds, and 10 seconds. From the power requirement for just the main sheet, calculate the rate of fuel burn for the mainsheet trim engine. Calculate the duty cycle such that the system has to cycle only once every minute for 24 hours a day for 15 days. How much fuel do you need just to trim the main?

That's just one system!

Now take the canting keel and deck ballast systems figure that they need be able to move from one limit to the other in under 10 seconds. Calculate the power needed for a 10% duty cycle for 15 days. Add the weight of the power for those systems to the sail trimming power weight.

Anyone think that Doug's FF can be built anywhere close to:

"Target Minimum all up sailing weight including 5231 lb.s on an 18' 60° canting strut: 14,731lb.'s"

Doug's own scaling says that the FF should come in at 21,884 pounds.

Only in the Fantasy Factory (where they build the Rube Goldberg School of Yacht Design boats) can you scale up a dinghy, add crew accommodations (including food and water for a passage), and all the machinery to run the system and end up 32% lighter.

If we play by the rules ... ALL the rules ... there is no point in even considering the FF. Moving ballast is against the rules.

Here's a challenge for the RGSoYD and the Fantasy Factory ...

Without cheating (or getting someone to change the rules for you). Design a single hulled boat that has crew accommodations for a 15 day passage that has any chance of beating a multihull.

As the rule makers found 100 years ago ... the only way a mono beats a multi is in a rule making or rule altering room.

Hell, a scaled up Tri-Foiler or Rave (except for the bungee system, stored power is a NO NO) would be legal, the same cannot be said for Doug's excursions into foiler design.

Now ... back to my fantasy ...

I'm sure that naked women playing Twister in a tub of lard would get lots of press. It would be just the sort of thing that would make a great TV event ...

If they would only include women's Naked Lard Twister in the Summer Olympics just think how popular naked lard Twister would be everywhere!

Look at how popular women's Beach Volleyball is, and it is nowhere near as exciting as Naked Lard Twister!

Substitute "Mono-Foiler" for "Naked Lard Twister" and you are back to Doug's fantasy.