SuperFoiler 2018-2019 Season

From one week ago:


More recent videos : Superfoiler https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_nrbAAGHb1O9MZKFsr7W_Q

 

Race 3-Great video as usual with these boats when there is wind!
The more I watch the more I think a small center lifting foil on a vertical strut(formerly known as a daggerboard foil) on the main hull would more than pay for itself by keeping the main hull in the air. Without it, the main hull is constantly touching down= drag. In addition, it would be interesting to eliminate the dual rudders and have just a single rudder T-foil on the main hull. Then the "mainhull touchdown" would be eliminated with ,probably, no increase in wetted surface or weight.

 

Sat Dec 17, 2018

 

SuperFoiler Promo:

 

Great to see full length in depth coverage of a race, instead of 5 second clips mashed together.
Also an interesting contrast to the 18ft skiff racing of 10 years ago. I see them as in the same spirit, but although the superfoilers are so much faster and more powerful (I presume!) they look so much more in control than the skiffs. I presume (again) that the foils increase the stability hugely, but also that the superfoiler crews are likely to be at a higher level of expertise generally? Incredible speed of development of the tech, materials, theory...

 

SuperFoiler :
Jan 14 Gold Coast:

 

SuperFoiler: BAD NEWS---

SuperFoiler Grand Prix has postponed the events tentatively scheduled for the first half of 2019. Circumstances, including feedback from our many and valuable stakeholders and other partners, dictate that we re-work our format and schedule. Our next event will now be held in the second half of the year and will be preceded by an on-going schedule of promotional, media and related activities in a number of markets around the world. Various delays and tightening schedules limited our ability to deliver the best possible SuperFoiler experience last summer and we will not make the same mistake twice. We will announce our new format and schedule shortly.

 

Well, that is that. Too bad, I thought they were interesting to watch and the teams would ultimately have got their heads around them.

 

Dave Clark says:
They got completely eclipsed on attention and talent-draw by SailGP. Game over far too soon. Little to do with the concept or equipment and a lot to do with a world in which there are suddenly two fully foiling America's Cups at once. The endgame should be to sell the whole thing to the extreme sailing series and get them out of those abysmal GC32s. I like the G32's!dl
DRC
edit. A heroes burial is owed to Jack and Bill's effort here. The whole thing took more willpower than most people ever muster.
=========================
Good comment. I thought the boats had some problems but some of the race video was just spectacular!

 

The whole high-speed short-course pro racing idea has been failing since the 1980s. Superfoilers just join Formula 40s, the Ultimate Yacht Race, the Ultras, Formula One, 18 Foot Skiff Grand Prix and a bunch of others in the dead pros society.

One has to wonder exactly how many of these failures it is going to take before people realise that this "new" idea is an old one that has been failing for decades.

 

I sometimes think that Formula 40 may have continued for longer had they set firmer constraints around the boats that could be used. It's hard not to sympathise with the owners of F40 cats who found they were non competitive in the new world of square trimarans that pushed the dimensions to the edge of the box. Those developmental trimarans were cool boats and it would have been a pity not to see them though.

One could argue that the Extreme Sailing Series ran quite a number of seasons with the same equipment (X40's) with basically decent success it seems at least outwardly to be continuing to survive more or less in a commercial environment. It does seem that one design multihull circuits have more chance of long term survival witness to that is the M2 catamaran and D35 catamaran circuits on the Swiss lakes. The F50 game seems to once again hinge on bag loads of cash from Larry and unlikely to survive if he pulls the plug.

I sometimes reflect that it's really a matter of if owner/drivers can have a stake in the game the long term survival of a class or circuit. Nominally at least many of the M2 and D35 teams are sponsored but it seems to be more of a case of the people who own the company liking sailing and either personally competing or putting together a team to compete on their behalf.

 

The Prosail 40s were a more restricted one-design M&M F40 cat, weren't they? They had a series alongside Hobie 21s, after the Ultimate and Formula 40 series had crashed. Similarly, the Ultimate 30s became more restricted Ultra 30s, if I recall correctly, but still crashed.

I think you're dead right about the M2 and D35 classes but I'm no expert on them. The only time I've seen them, one of the most impressive things was the way a Tornado hung in with them although that may have been a freak of the conditions.

I did a bunch of the pro windsurfing events in the '80s. I can recall the problems and pressures, like seeing a contest organiser standing around with someone from the TV stations complaining loudly because they had a cameraman and chopper sitting overhead and burning fuel and dollars, sponsors looking narked as they saw their promised publicity vanish, and pro sailors saying that they were damned if they were going to go out in crappy conditions and break gear.

We also know that televised spectacles do not normally result in more participation in a sport (it's been studied and proven many times) so since these sort of things collapse and don't help the sport one has to wonder why on earth intelligent people ignore the lessons of the past and spend millions on ideas that have failed so often.

At least the pro sailing outfits avoid the problems my new club and my other main class are having. We are promoting cheap, affordable, super-simple medium-speed sail racing, and it's causing issues. The club storage areas are now overcrowded. The fleets are doubling in size, so it's taking longer to do the results. Equipment suppliers are finding it hard to keep up with demand. We're having to ask sailors to take more care to not take up rigging and launching space because the rigging areas are packed. There's too many smiling happy faces, too many damn kids coming through and sailing really well, too much enthusiasm, start lines are getting crowded. All it takes is being welcoming and concentrating on accessible gear instead of worrying about what is extreme and cool.

 

Well, there is a huge gulf between the basic multihull fleets and even semi professional teams. Still a lot of passion from those people who campaign modestly technical craft privately. Professional programs do come and go unless they can carve out some niche that isn't easily usurped. You could argue that yes Formula 40 disappeared but it was followed by other multihull classes like the ORMA60's that did inshore and offshore and were eventually replaced by the MOD70's which in turn seem to have been replaced more or less by Ultimes. Budgets must have increased when Ultimes came on the scene significantly over the ORMA60's and MOD70 programs.

The survivor offshore/inshore class has been Multi50 which has run for a surprisingly long time and even grown a little with a few rule tweaks along the way. A boat that demands a lower investment in purchase and ongoing costs perhaps striking a sweet spot for medium sized businesses to sponsor.

This is all French multihull scene stuff where they do seem to have the sponsorship framework to actually make it sustainable at least to some limited degree. Prosail 40 as you mentioned had a fairly short life which is perhaps indicative that outside of France very few professional multihull programs have the legs to continue. The specs of the Prosail 40 are pretty similar to the X40 which held the fort for many years prior to them switching to GC32's in the EXSS.

I'm glad your sailing programs are all going well, overflowing boat storage and smiling kids is a good sign.

 

The 40s and 60s came along at the same time, I'm 99% sure. Festival Macallan de Lorient (?), the model for the F40, was a sensation at La Trinitaine because she was chasing the models for the 60s (Apricot and Paragon) as hard as they were chasing the big boats. But the 60s were more offshore-based (as are the Ultimes etc), so in a different area to the Superfoilers, F40s, Ultras, Ultimates etc. I think you're dead right that they only really work inside France.

One interesting thing is that Anglos assume that French sailing is strong because of the pro sailing scene, but French sailors tell me that the French pro scene is strong because of the grass roots involvement, including government hire fleets and school sailing. Certainly, French sailing was doing well before the pro scene evolved.

Thanks for the good wishes about our sailing scene. The class I used to run now seems to be the world's third fastest-selling International class although of course it's early days yet and the growth may not be sustained. It just doesn't seem to be rocket science - ignore the high tech classes that people cannot afford, be friendly and helpful and have cheap kit, and you grow.

Over the last few weeks we've also seen the arrival of a world-class foiling cat sailor, so we have the bizarre site of an ex-America's Cup team foiler sitting on cowpats in a club on a country dam. The sailor is talking about getting back into our fast-growing Laser fleet because he reckons the foiler isn't practical in our situation, but the boat looks cool. I do think I'd be too scared to take it for a ride since one crash could cost $12k.

 

I've no doubt the French professional scene is strong because of the grass roots development. I've always thought the elephant in the room is the multi layered government support for sailing programs. I'm not conversant with all the details but clearly at a planning level sailing infrastructure well considered as part of the process and marine/sailing precincts and activities funded and encouraged. An example could be La Base in Lorient, many of the multihull and monohull race programs would struggle to exist without the facilities and specialist manufacturing hub that is available there. A far cry from the sink or swim attitude that seems to be employed towards sailing in Australia. Land of that nature in Australia would be sold off and apartments built on it or similar with no thought given to alternate uses.