Ocean Records World Championship

Riddle Me This Batman?

You know, if I roll my Magic 8 Ball over enough times with the proper questions, I can almost see the day when "sailboats" look something like this:

The sails, as we now know them, have been turned to a horizontal attitude and now there are two of them. There are the commonly accepted fossil fuel engines running all the time to generate enough forward motion... assisted, of course by the prevailing surface winds, to create lift. Did I say, air interfaced propellor? The one man vestigial hull pod is now skimming (planing?) on the surface with full support of the aforementioned, non-immersed lifting surfaces.

Brother, Where Art Thou? We have made the full transition with an absolute logical progression to the most efficient sailing vessel possible; One which exhibits the absolute minimum in drag signatures in the water. These new sailing craft are, of course, still fully compliant with the existing, full-time running engine for powering all control surfaces and aux power generation. The engineers are still working on a suitable solar adaptation to replace the fossil fuel devices, but they just don't have the throaty cache so befitting a man who has mastered his realm so effectively.

The sailors of the future owe a deep debt of gratitude to the early 21st Century canting keel proponents as they clearly paved the way to the full honor due petro-chemicals and the internal combustion engine in sailing sport.

A deep thank you, also, to the early adopters of the methodology for describing a planing vessel. Without their magnanimous and expansive descriptions, the claims so made for the lifting pod/vessels of the future would be in serious doubt.

I, for one, look forward with great anticipation to the day when sailors can be finally free, so to speak, of the bonds created by the watery environment.

 

...and you guys probably thought I was kidding about the boat of the future.

So, I finished my post here and the sauntered on over to Sailing Anarchy for my usual morning Cup O' Joe and the front page read... and lo and behold, there on the front page, is a rendering of one of the transitional vessels that will get us to the tongue in cheek boat in my future prediction.

I give you, DSS http://www.dynamicstabilitysystems.com/#/profile
No doubt engine assisted, as I can't see any big shots manually actuating foils of that size on each tack. So the progression to a fully engine powered, but sail lifted, vessel is on the horizon. I think I'll do a rendering to illustrate the new boat as I see it.

Hold onto your hats gentlemen, the business of sailing, as you held it so dearly, is moving away from what you now know, to a craft of much different component elements.

 

Business of sailing

And maybe that is a good thing for "business sailing". I am encouraged to see the developments in kite assist, wing masts etc etc which move us in the direction of moving sort of "back to the future" and have ocean trade powered by the wind again to a significant extent. All that stuff has to be good news.

But as for "sailing for pleasure", to me anything that requires motor assist can be left ashore thanks.