Flying Canting Keel-Extraordinary Innovation!

Discussion in 'Sailboats' started by Doug Lord, Jan 3, 2010.

  1. Fanie
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    Fanie Fanie

    Awwww... the capsizing is pretty standard for mono's, isn't it :D
     
  2. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    Reichel-Pugh 180 degree canting keel!

    Rotating/canting keel 180 degrees(90+90). See post 43.
    More from mysailing.com.au:

    The most radical offshore racing yacht to be launched in decades26 May 2011


    The most radical offshore racing yacht to be launched in decades is to compete at Audi Hamilton Island Race Week 2011.

    The 42-footer, simply named Q, has been created to capitalise on the exceptional performance gains that come from canting keels by taking the moveable ballast concept to the limit: the entire keel fin and ballast bulb rotates around the hull so that when it is fully canted it is completely clear of the water!

    The innovative concept is the brain-child of Ian Oatley, a member of the Oatley family who own Hamilton Island. It has been four years in design, development and build. American design group Reichel/Pugh converted Oatley’s ideas into reality and the yacht was then built by McConaghy’s in Sydney

    Put simply, rotating the keel clear of the water eliminates speed-sapping drag, and because the keel fin is positioned so far to windward less ballast is needed to gain maximum stability. Rating and handicap considerations haven’t come into the equation for this boat, but pleasure and high speed have.

    Ian’s crew for Audi Hamilton Island Race Week will be made up of mates: there will be no ‘heavyweight’ sailors on board: ‘We are into having fun and enjoying our sailing,’ he said. ‘We started out as a gang of mates who enjoyed sailboarding, and now, because our bodies can’t cope with that anymore, we do a lot more keelboat racing.’

    When Ian discussed with his crew the concept for a new design there were two prerequisites: It had to be big enough for them to stay together as a team, and it had to be an exhilarating boat to sail – a bit of a ‘hang-on-and-hope’ situation at times, just like they enjoyed when sailboarding in a strong wind.

    With those parameters in mind, Ian put his always fertile mind to work: ‘I wanted a boat which would accelerate immediately when a gust hit, just as you experience with a sailboard. I bounced some ideas around with John McConaghy and then, when I sat down with the gang to talk through what would be the ultimate boat it suddenly dawned on me – a carbon fibre ring around the boat that would transfer the keel from side to side.’


    The end result is a rotating keel yacht where the efficiency of the ballast weight is fully optimised. This leads to the yacht’s displacement being less than Grand Prix racing yachts of similar size (Q weighs less than four tonnes), while the righting moment is increased to what was previously only achievable in much bigger boats. In short, the power-to-weight ratio is fully optimised, and that translates into greater speed.



    Pictures by Andrea Francolini:

    click on image-
     

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  3. CutOnce

    CutOnce Previous Member

    Huh?

    Note: I added the bolding and red color to the quote.

    How did you reach this conclusion?

    I think Mr. Oatley may disagree somewhat. Boats like this one are on the bleeding edge of development, and out on that edge problems can occur. From the picture, I have reached a different conclusion ... it does mean something. The conditions we see are not extreme, and are not representative at all of worst case conditions. To me this means the loads on the system were not at the high end of the scale from a specification point, and the problem that occurred happened unexpectantly, as normally failures occur in extreme situations.

    From an engineering perspective, problems that occur in extreme situations cause less head-scratching than ones that occur in normal use.

    I do agree that this situation is not as dangerous, given the presence of safety boats, the boat is floating well, and the damage appears to be limited to the canting keel functionality.

    Every complexity added to designs increases the potential for trouble.

    I share your enthusiasm (somewhat) for innovative developments that can improve performance, but feel that casually dismissing evidence of trouble inherent in innovation isn't objective and isn't good science. Bringing problems like this to the communities attention forces designers, builders and owners to better think out implementing advanced systems.

    --
    CutOnce
     
  4. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    Flying Canting Keel

    I'm convinced that a logical extension of this kind of innovation will be the use of lifting hydrofoils designed to fully fly a keelboat. The flying canting keel is one solution for allowing a keelboat foiler to be self-righting but from recent (and past) work I have done some form of sliding(or pumped) on deck water ballast will also be required for maximum power. The water ballast would not be required for light air takeoff but will assist in developing maximum RM.
    The potential development of a self-righting keelboat with speed aproaching or exceeding non-foiling multihulls is real-and very exciting!
     
  5. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    ================
    I reached this conclusion in two ways:

    1) I read a comment by Ian Oately where he said words to the effect that it was nothing-they'd be back sailing in a week.(can't find the link yet)
    2) Reichel-Pugh and McConaghy are the very best in designing, engineering and building high high tech canting keel/CBTF race boats so the probability is that this failure is a minor glitch that means nothing in the overall assessment of the viability of the technology.

    ---
    When Wild Oats was just launched she had a failure that was the result of human error in assembly that somehow got away from them. There were all kinds of doom and gloom comments at the time about how canting keels will never work ,are too complicated etc,etc,. Since that one incident Wild Oats has gone on to win the Sydney-Hobart 4 or 5 times plus innumerable other ocean races.
    It is fascinating that Reichel-Pugh were independently developing this system
    during the same period Jo Richards and Guy Whitehouse were developing their system-it will be equally fascinating to see how this technology is used over time. There is no doubt that new opportunities for the design of monohull keelboats will be opened with the ability to successfully use a flying canting keel.
    Questions abound with new technology-the answers will be very interesting.

    ================
    UPDATE:

    Anything but plain sailing when hi-tech falls flat
    By Peter Kogoy/theaustralian.com.au

    IT was supposed to be a dash around the harbour, a chance to test under race conditions the new hi-tech canting keel fitted to Ian Oatley’s multi-million-dollar Reichel/Pugh 42-foot yacht.

    photo: theaustralian.com.au
    Oatley, whose winemaker father Bob owns the champion Sydney-to-Hobart racer Wild Oats XI, chose to skip the race, instead spending the weekend at the family-owned Hamilton Island resort in Queensland.

    He left the running of the boat, which is named Q, to skipper John Hildebrand.

    It was only the second time the yacht had been in a race since being launched two months ago.

    It was with the fleet of 134 yachts taking part in the annual winter series, running down Sydney Harbour under spinnaker towards their mark at Watsons Bay when disaster struck.

    Principal race officer for the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia, Robyn Morton, said the wind was “all over the place”.



    “The pressure was up and down, but the breeze didn’t get above 10 knots,” she said.

    Oatley’s yacht simply keeled over to its side as it approached the Watsons Bay marker buoy, forcing the crew to scramble to safety.

    All that could be seen of the yacht was the dark hull on its side and the crew standing on various parts of the hull.

    Hildebrand declined to speak to The Australian when contacted last night, as did crew member Cameron Miles.

    “It was gear failure,” Ian Oatley said when contacted by phone on Hamilton Island.

    “All the people on board were very experienced crew members.

    “We’ll get the keel fixed and be back racing in a week.”

    CYC race officials responded to the stricken yacht, as did an unnamed competing yacht.

    Once secured, the yacht was taken under tow to the CYC at Rushcutters Bay.

    A spokeswoman for the CYC when contacted last night said the Oatley yacht was the most radical offshore racing yacht to be launched in decades.

    “It was built to capitalise on the exceptional performance gains that come from canting keels by taking the movable ballast concept to the limit, allowing the entire keel fin and ballast bulb to rotate around the hull so that when it is fully canted it is completely clear of the water,” she said.

    “It had been four years in the making from the design-phase, to development and finally built in Sydney.”
     

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  6. sharpii2
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    sharpii2 Senior Member

    I suppose this is part of the idiocy of sail boat racing. Arbitrary rules bested by clunky technology. Nothing new here. This is been going on for the better part of two hundred years.

    Now, with better materials science, the besting can be even more clunky and even more scary. Seeing that this system failed so readily, just adds to my contempt.

    Why not just be honest. Just admit that multihulls (more a product of aircraft engineering technology than a throw back to the Pacific islanders) are the safest, securest, and probably cheapest way to cross bodies of open water quickly (and I don't mean necessarily safely, they can and do capsize).

    This techno fix to make monos almost as fast Just makes them ridiculously expensive and negates their greatest strength, the ability to recover from capsizes reliably.

    Now you have something that will beat the crap out of you going up wind, that costs a hell of a lot of money, and will probably fail when you need it most. And that's only if its manufactured correctly. Just wait till the civilian knock offs come out. Then, structural failures everywhere.

    I will say this, however, the canting keel is more likely to be engineered adequately than the fixed keel with the same ballast arrangement. Because, if it's not, it won't even make it out of the harbor.

    I guess my point is: a multihull can do high performance sailing cheaper and with greater reliability (it's even easier to put hydrofoils on them) and, arguably, greater safety than a mono can. Why can't the racing community just admit that. And adjust their rules accordingly.
     
  7. quicksail
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    quicksail Junior Member

    I have to admit I just don't get it. I mean why bother? Are we not just getting to a multihull here but carrying around more weight then we have to? What's the point, is it just to call it a monohull. The performance benefits of multihulls are proven, especially when you can fly all but one hull and the weight savings helps performance, safety and reducing un-needed loads. I thought we were smarter then this. Use the engineering and design to innovative not move ten steps back and hinder ourselves with complexity, dangerous operation and fundamentally flawed reasoning.

    One thing that always amazed me was when I was working for a catamaran company and they weren't worried about safety because the vessel would always stay afloat rather then have 1000's of pounds of ballast hauling it down to the bottom. Makes sense to me.

    Monohulls are great because the get stiffener as the heel but with canting keels you give that up and the RM curve starts to look like a multihull anyway.
     
  8. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    in spite of, not because of

    ===================
    Sharpii, that's a pretty tough indictment. I think the pursuit of improvements in monohull design is exciting as hell. Already, the fastest sailboat under 20' is a monohull-beating all multies. The direction monohull design is going will, likely, lead to monohull keelboats at least as fast as the same size multihull-and maybe faster. But there will be one major difference: the fast keelboat will be rightable at sea-automatically or in the same manner as an Open 60.
    --
    Development of new technology is never easy-it is fraught with small and large disasters. Canting keels were decried because of numerous high profile failures at sea. And yet now most all the fastest ocean going sailboats use
    canting keels. I don't think this kind of development occurs because of racing rules, I think it happens in spite of such rules. Designers, builders and sailors all want to go faster, faster, faster. And the major effect of rules is to slow them down. Sliding on-deck ballast was used successfully by one of the Herreshoff's in the 1800's and then the rules banned it-that's a technology whose use will return(has returned) despite the rules.
    --
    Nobody in their right mind, when I was a kid, would have entertained the thought that a monohull dinghy could ever be the fastest sailboat under 20'
    and yet that day is here now. Everybody back then "knew" that catamarans were faster....
    --
    While it is still counter intuitive to most people, foiling a monohull keelboat on just two foils is probably the way of the future(assuming Reichel-Pugh/ Richards-Whitehouse and/or others get the flying canting keel and on-deck movable ballast working reliably).
    I , for one, feel that these developments are good for sailing and will lead to remarkably fast, seaworthy sailboats.
     
  9. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    ===================
    Why bother? Speed and exceptional performance potential.
    Hmmm... You mean flawed reasoning like " multies are faster than monos??
    Keep in mind: when current multihulls are sailing their fastest- whether a trimaran or catamaran- they are sailing on one hull. I'm sure thats a good omen for the expenditure of engineering prowess to make monohullls even faster than they are today-in fact, I know it is......
     
  10. sharpii2
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    sharpii2 Senior Member

    Sea worthy? For harbor or near shore racing, perhaps, with highly electronic regulated counter weights (using similar technology to the 'seguay(r)'), perhaps. I just can' t keep myself from imagining this whole contraption breaking up in angry seas. Remember wing sails? I don't see them in many marinas.
     
  11. CutOnce

    CutOnce Previous Member

    The boat you are referring to is not a dinghy, nor a monohull when it is operating at foiling speed. Thomas Jundt proved this conclusively by removing the hull from his foiler completely. When foiling, a Moth is a foiler and it is not by all conventional terms a monohull. When it drops out of foiling mode, it is a monohull, but this just indicates two modes of operation and the designation of this boat as the fastest monohull under 20' is misleading at best.

    This is your vision, but it isn't being shared by the majority of the marketplace. Physics is problematic in making keelboats go faster in the same manner as a Moth. Heavy weight in the form of ballast - canting, sliding, running, trapwinging, sandbagging or whatever all needs to be lifted by the foils - and lifting that weight means increased lift required from the foils, and added drag to achieve that increased lift.

    Leaving the technology and science issues behind, the bulk of the keelboat market aren't buying keelboats for the ultimate performance experience - they are typically buying them for recreation, relaxed time with family, cruising, beercan racing and social scenes. My club has much larger Tanzer and Shark fleets (dozens of boats) than it has Viper 640s (two). There are reasons for this and mainly it is because most people only care about how fast they are relative to their competitors, not the clock.

    I'd be happier if more people sailed because it was more affordable and more fun because of greater friendly competition. Lowering the technology/cost threshold is a better strategy for sailing than pursuing endless arms races with unlimited budgets. But that is my opinion.

    --
    CutOnce
     
  12. CT 249
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    CT 249 Senior Member

    "I'd be happier if more people sailed because it was more affordable and more fun because of greater friendly competition. Lowering the technology/cost threshold is a better strategy for sailing than pursuing endless arms races with unlimited budgets. But that is my opinion."

    It's not "just" your opinion either - it's the truth. Lowering the technology/cost/accessibility threshold has driven just about every major increase in sailing's popularity. Increasing performance by reducing accessibility has lead to most of the popularity crashes over the past 130 years.
     
  13. CT 249
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    CT 249 Senior Member

    Nice post, even if I can't quote most of it!:)
     
  14. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    ---------------------
    Just a note on #1- In my post I said: " But there will be one major difference: the fast keelboat will be rightable at sea-automatically or in the same manner as an Open 60.
    A keelboat foiler can be designed that does not use a canting keel and that self-rights automatically. Not like an Open 60 that may require the crew to move the keel.
    -- # 2-Contraptions and well designed boats may breakup-it depends on how wisely they are sailed, how well they are built, and how well they are engineered. I disagree with your assesment of the new technology but you may or may not be right. Time will tell. The technology discussed in this thread is not being marketed to the masses-it is representative of state of the art experimental, innovative, visionary thinking. However, once all the chances have been taken, problems solved ,disasters overcome, well, then something could result that would be suitable for "us mere mortals".
     

  15. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    Dinghy and Keelboat Monofoilers ,Multifoilers and Hybrid Whatever Foilers(HWF's)

    =======================
    1)Really? "....and it is not by all conventional terms a monohull." Among some foiler designers the Moth represents a monofoiler(monohull foiler) not just because it has that pesky single hull but because it uses a monohull foil configuration-that is: just two foils, one on the daggerboard and one on the rudder. This configuration is almost impossible to use on a full flying multihull but it has been tried-sort of a hybrid configuration. Prior to the bi-foiler configuration used on the Moth, a three foil system was tried by Brett Burvill and it was the first foiler to win a race in the Moth class. But it was banned as a "catamaran(multihull) configuration". Because the bi-foiler was a monohull configuration it was allowed in the class and the rest is history.
    By every definition the Moth is a monohull and a foiler. The bi-foiler configuration, with movable ballast, is the best hope for a full flying monohull keelboat foiler.
    A note on Mirabaud: Thomas Jundt did a demo last year sailing the boat literally without a hull-but it required outside assistance to get started and when it stopped. It was a great demo but certainly did not change the technical description of monofoilers(monohull foilers) or multifoilers(multihull foilers).....
    ----
    2) Physics-problematic? Well, actually I think that good design and engineering play a substantial role. A foiler can be designed to carry X weight within the confines of certain performance ratios whether the weight is in the keel, on deck, on trapezes etc. If the design meets the performance ratios for the boat, ballast, sail area and foils and is well engineered then it will foil within the designed-for range. Weight ,in and of itself, is not a reason for a keelboat not to foil unless,of course, it was poorly designed.
    ==========
    As I said in a previous post, this thread is discussing state of the art monohull design development-at no time has the discussion been about the current technology appealing to the masses. The thread is about high tech movable ballast systems and maybe what the technology would have to look like to appeal to the masses in the future?


    click on image-Whitehouse/Richards flying canting keel rendering, Reichel-Pugh flying canting keel prototype "Q":
     

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