Early UK foiling cats and tris, Mayfly and Force8

Naval Architect Doug Pattison kindly sent me his technical paper about the trimaran foiler, Force 8, he and his brother designed and built, written 1983. See attached pdf.
Interesting discussion at the end.

He also wrote a paper together with the late Ben Wynne, record holder and the last owner of Mayfly:

"Pattison, D.R., Wynne, J.B. (1980). Surface Piercing Versus Fully Submerged Foils For Sailing Hydrofoils: The Design And Development Of Two Small Sailing Hydrofoils. High-speed Surface Craft, conference papers. Kalerghi Publications, London. pp 350-365."

Actually I more intersted in the last version of Mayfly than Force 8. Even though Force 8 was brilliantly designed at that time, it never reached the speed of Mayfly.

Is there anyone who has got a copy of the conference paper to share?

 

Hi. About page 74 of Hydrofoil Sailing by Grongono and Nigg gives some information about Phil Hansford initial work on Mayfly. Its 9 meg and available at http://www.foils.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/HF_Sailing_Grogano.pdf It's an earlier book but I hope it helps. Also I think you may already have this but I will mention it. https://www.ayrs.org/catalyst/Catalyst_N02_Jul_2000.pdf Also page about 274 of AYRS 074 book on hydrofoil sailing (downloadable from AYRS booklets) Hansford wrote an initial description of Mayfly.

 

Hi, have the older papers and books you refer to, just as you anticipated. Also have Grogonos book ”The boat that flies”. About AYRS I think the available downloads from them is a gold mine.
For those interested in historical foilers, Grogonos presentation at TFW is nice: July 8th 2014 - Presentation by James Grogono: "THE DESIGN OF ICARUS’… https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/foilingweek/july-8th-2014-presentation-by-james-grogono-the-design-of-icarus-hydrofoils-through-failure-to-success
Funny though, that Icarus got all the attention, when Mayfly was the boat that both Hydroptere and Icaros copied foil configuration from.
Actually just found the 512 page book from the conference at the library of Chalmers Technical University here in Sweden. Talked to them and they can send the book to the library in my hometown, for me to copy the article.
Lots of work for 15 pages, still hope someone has a pdf copy.

 

We entered the 1983 Weymouth Speed Week in our 25ft Gwahir catamaran. Home built in plywood and still sailing. Probably the only people ever to sleep on board their Speed Week entry! I remember sailing against Mayfly, they were a bit quicker but not by much. Sailing 500m at speed in a F7 in very shallow water is more challenging and stressful than you might think. And usually the wind dropped half way down the run, or the timers missed us or... In any event our best speed was 16.6 knots, only a knot slower than Force 8.

That was the year the windsurfers broke the 30 knot barrier for the first time.

More here Sailing Catamarans - Gwahir - 7.65m high performance trailable catamaran https://www.sailingcatamarans.com/index.php/designs-2/2-catamarans-under-25ft/163-gwahir

Richard Woods of Woods Designs

www.sailingcatamarans.com