SpeedDream: World's fastest sailboat?

R M is not a major factor with a kite.

 

Pros:
stronger breezes up high
virtually unlimited sail area
sail force grounded directly to the hull instread of partway up a tall mast
reduced heeling increases freedom of hull design

Cons:
reliable deployment of kite in all conditions
questionable ability to sail really close to the wind
control problems at night
getting through a storm

- and I'm sure there a many more on both sides, but there are solutions to most problems if you try hard enough and have enough luck and the advantages will never go away . . .

 

Exactly. I would only add that I think the problems developing a kite rig would be more likely to be solved faster and with less money than other approaches .

 

Or we can angle a sail to eliminate heeling force. If only we could get this to work on a mono, we'd have those stinkin multis beat

 

- hmm . . . that's probably what they said about foils . . .

 

Ten years ago at my windsurfing club in Thailand the first kite boarder arrived. He could not sail of the beech in an on shore breeze. Anyone of the rest of us could pass him like he was standing still. He was forever getting stuck offshore if the breeze lightened. He was in the way. Today kite borders out number windsurfers by a large margin. They are as fast as the best of us on windsurfers and point as high. They can plain in winds too light for windsurfers and can get back when we cannot. To top it of a beginner can learn to plain with a kite in three days or less. It takes about four months to get to the stage one can plain on a windsurfer. A kite and board are half the price of a rigged windsurfer. As for foilers "Hydropter" took many years and at least 25 million dollars to beat the speed record held by a windsurfer only to lose it to a kite border. I still windsurf and sit on the beach with the rest of the holdouts and bemoan the encroachment of our space by these brash daredevils. but I can not help but be impressed by the rapid pace of the development of their craft. If I had to guess I would say that a decade from now a kite powered boat will hold the around the world record.

 

No, a kite powered vessel cannot point anywhere near as high to the wind timothy , they work great for reaching but upwind they're poor. Thus a round the world record would be highly unlikely. I have been kiting and windsurfing 12 years now. Speed records with kites, I know we will see much higher speeds to come as a kite can build air speed as well as apparent wind.

 

The windsurfer should point up better. The lift drag ratio of a wing will exceed that of a kite as it is a more efficient lift device. The wing can better conform to an optimally designed shape and has less high drag appendages like lines.

Dino

 

I would agree that they do not point as high but they can increase the apparent wind and their vmg as a result is better. Somewhere on one of these threads there is a video of an around the buoys race between I think a moth, a cat, a windsurfer, and a kite. Kite first windsurfer second moth third and cat last. I was just out today on a formula board with a 9.5 meter sail. The wind was onshore about 9 knots. every body was trying to get offshore to get to more wind . I could point higher but the kites got out further before I or any of the other windsurfers did.

 

I was wrong about that video . Its a kite a 49er and a moth and the conditions definitely favored the kite.

 

Kite Power-upwind and down

Kites can sail to windward very well and they have huge potential for fast sailing. Here is the video Timothy was referring to-it is also the second time in as many years that the kit whuped the Moth and 49er. Of course, the Moth whuped the 49er...... All done in relatively light air. Technology moves on:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ViJZ1DBsgc&feature=player_embedded

 

In an overnight race the sailboarder and kiter would have to be rescued by the cat when they collapsed from exhaustion and the moth would probably be long gone . . .

Seriously though, speed has to be sacrificed in a long voyage in the interests of survivability with small craft. A large crew is necessary to maintain speed 24 hours a day, yet durability can be an issue in a large lightweight craft. Recently, the use of modern composites have made large multis durable enough to sail around the world at speed. I wonder what developments are needed to enable foilers and/or kiters to do the same?

I suspect foilers will always be handicapped by their vulnerability to floating debris. Surviving a crash at the kind of speeds we are starting to see, let alone being able to continue on, is becoming an issue. It may well be that this will, at some stage, become the dominant design issue for ocean racing.

A planing Kiteboat with minimum heeling forces and a break-away foil for balancing lateral forces only may be better able to survive intact and keep its crew alive, perhaps even to continue after repairs, than a mono that loses a heavy keel at speed or a foiler that loses some but not all of its foils when flying several feet above the surface.

Flying a big kite in all weathers for days on end without a break is going to be a far different thing from flying off a beach with wind and weather near perfect. I think it is going to call for quick reflexes and a lot of power to react quickly to wind changes if the boat is going to be sailed on the edge, and unfailing alertness too. Automation may be the answer and what Kiting may need to an take long-distance records from the big multis. We may end up with robotic crew and/or remote control via satellite.

However the design challenges are met, once Kiting becomes established in ocean racing the compactness and lightness of a kiting rig compared to a sailing rig may turn out to be the biggest edge of all. it may become standard practice to carry multiple complete spare rigs, allowing a crew to abandon, for example, an entire light airs rig in the event of being caught by a sudden squall, deploying the heavy weather rig to survive a storm, and then to fly a spare rig to continue after the squall passes. This level of competitiveness is far into the future, no doubt, but just give it a couple of decades . . .

There goes the romance of sail! Well and good, but there may become a time when power has serious difficulty keeping up, being limited to port calls for refulling and the like.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, he flies a scramjet at 5x the speed of sound with multiple air-to-air refueling, he has to keep up with the times just like everyone else!!

Gawd, what was in that coffee . . .?

 

Let's not forget how stupidly expensive those Moths are :idea:

 

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Speed costs money-excellence is not cheap-the fastest sailboat under 20' -what a boat! And so on.....

 

Maybe for a racer, but cost doesn't=fun