Maquarie Innovation-50+ knots!!

And in only 24 knots of wind! More later.....

 

Congratulations to all involved in the endeavour!

 

It is really spectacular to consider that this speed was done in 24 knots of wind. If there was an "efficiency ratio record"(which should be the REAL record!) Maquarie would beat every sailing device on the water...

News video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tvTaQY-veA

 

Gosh, Doug, didn't you say this very same thing back in October about L'Hydroptere? So, what happened? Did the French guys dump you, or are you being whisked away by another pretty face with more voluptuous statistics?

You fought so hard for the Hydrop when they were getting their boat beat by a bunch of dudes with a $5K kit and steel globes. Now, there's only a trail of dust without a By Your Leave to the former love of your life.

I'm astounded that you would dump the foiling Frenchies in favor of the non-foiling Australians. Good grief, what has this world come to, anyway?

Interesting that the kiters still hold the outright record and not a mention of their dominant position. Three times they've gone faster than Hydrop, Macquarie, or Sailrocket.

Three times

 

I'm afraid you're confused: I think Hydroptere is great and has shown greater efficiency than kites or sailboards but you have to give the Maquari team their due: they've done better than any other sailing device on the water(50 in 24-nobody and nothing else is even close!) and I say congratulations! But Hydroptere will have her day-and she can sail both ways... So theres good to be found in all this speed sailing -if you just look for it.

 

I say that the real record should go to whomever produces the most speed per dollar spent ratio. ;-)

 

I agree Chris - lets encourage something usefull.

My ideal is an ocean race with a speed x dollar x payload formuale.

This latest thing from Macquarie is being run on a millpond, behind a beach facing big southwesterly wind source.

It not only can only go in one direction, it would break up in any kind of decent chop.

They are just skipping stones across the surface of the water, kids games - big rich kids that is!

 

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Something useful?! Don't you think the efficiency demonstrated on the water by Maquarie is useful? Man, that is incredible performance compared to Hydroptere,windsurfers or kites. 50 in 24 sounds pretty useful to me-so much we might learn from this kind of technical advance.....

 

The performance is relative to its potential applications.

Perhaps you are forgetting that this boat is very much patterned after Yellow Pages. What this means is that the understanding of this particular technolgy has been around for a very long time, relatively speaking. It's not that new, so the technical advance is in tiny increments and not one great leap.

Actually, I see kite technology as having far greater global potential than the technology of the Macquarie effort, as powerful as it is. Take a look at this little presentation. Before you jump to any rebuttal conclusions, understand that this man might also be looking to break the outright speed record with what could be a foilborne craft driven by the power of a well flown kite.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/saul_griffith_on_kites_as_the_future_of_renewable_energy.html

Still want to shoot projectiles at kiting as a lesser record producing technology, Doug? Actually, I fully expect a foiling kite board to blow right past the existing records we currently see. The dude will be in a bitchin' aero suit with even thinner control lines and there won't be a bar in his hands forcing the sailor to adopt a less than favorable aero drag signature. I don't know how fast that type of setup might go, but guys like Howes might if he teamed up with someone like Alex Caizergues. Maybe 60 knots... who knows?

 

Venom

Sometimes the venom spewed back and forth on this site takes away from the actual information and progress that is being made daily and shown on this site. If you look at this boat, it is remarkable what Lindsay and the team have accomplished. To say that this is not a foiler is also not quite accurate. What defines a foiling boat? Go to their website and take a look at what they term as "foils" and decide for yourselves whether this is foil assisted or not. As far as big budgets go, theirs also is not a large budget considering that this project has been going on for years and is a follow on of the Yellow Pages Endeavor project and the C-Class cats they began with.

 

Bulls eye TTS.

 

WOW A remarkable effort, well done fellas.....

 

From the site for those who have not been there: "The foils that control Macquarie Innovation are tiny by comparison to the large dimensions of the craft. They are asymmetric foils with a total span of approx 270mm.

The foils have been thoroughly tested using both computer simulation as well as flow tank testing at the Australian Maritime Engineering facility in Tasmania. With such high design speeds and relatively large loads carried by the foils (each of the four foils experiences the equivalent of an average adult male standing on the end of them), the possibility of experiencing cavitation is real. The section profile is deliberately aimed at delaying the onset of cavitation, thereby ensuring that control is maintained with minimum drag. Two anti-ventilation "fences" also appear on each foil to prevent the low suction pressures from dragging air from the surface down the side of the foil."



Read the site some time ago. Foil assisted... as in, virtually any boat that wishes to go upwind without falling off the earth. That kind of foil assisted.
Got that.

Foil assisted, as in: The craft is being lifted from the water partially in order to reduce wetted surface and the attendent drag signature. Not happening.
Got that too.

There is no indication that the dam structures installed have anything at all to do with lift. Rather they look to be specifically involved in the business of preventing ventilation and nothing more.

To say that this is a foiler, or even intimate that it is a foiler, is also not quite accurate. So the point is....?

 

Well Chris, all yachts with keels, foils. lee boards, anti-derives, whatever, they are all foil assisted and the fact that MacQuarie Innovations begins her run sailing free, then as speed increases, hardens up further and further relying on her foils to maintain equilibrium and direction, that is definitely foil assistance to keep the boat on its very narrow course. But I know what you mean, the foils are not conventionally lifting the boat or hulls out of the water, nevertheless MI is still foil assisted in dictionary terms. But all this means very little because in your wacko efforts to denigrate anything relating to foils, and your obsession to attack anything Doug Lord says, you miss the real substance of the achievement. That is a fantastic performance from the Macquaire Innovations team - why can't you accept that and congratulate their long and difficult effort - instead of coming out with this nonsensical bullcrap that Yellow Pages has been around for a long time and therefore the whole deal is old hat. Get a grip, mate, stop being so churlish, you're missing the boat, so to speak.

 

Need speed classifications

I read on a French site, some day, some one is going to cover a parking lot with plastic and break all records with a skimboard and a parachute. Or I would just slightly flood a frozen lake when the wind was blowing 100mph (very easy to achieve).
MI is a very cool idea, and exciting to watch. Hydroptere is very interesting because she can scream through ocean waves, sail from A to B, and is also extremely fast in flat water. In light of those differing approaches, and the thought that a skimboard could go 100mph, I hope that someday speed is classified more into areas such as "bi-directional speed" like they must do with cars, with water depth restrictions and even distances from shore.