I grew up watching racing thanks to my grandad's interest but all with all the tech involved in these high end machines it's like watching jetplanes or something mechanical, maybe it's because I can't connect anymore to what's happening on a human level. I love the thrill of a fast boat but it's lost me on the accessibility that I remember from the 80s and 90s. I remember how crews and captains would be celebrities, now it seems it's a tech game?
Have you watched sail gp or the recent America's cups. The racing is as incredibly exciting to watch and the skills of the sailors is a huge part of it. I'd argue that technology was always a huge part of sailing, but compare that to many of the "old" America's cups and now you'll see the racing is so much more exciting (largely because while technology is at the forefront, the rules make boats technologically advanced, but also comparable enough to each other).
I'd also argue that sailors (and particularly skippers) are still celebrities (within the sailing community). Now where you're right, is that that these boats are not accessible to the average sailors anymore, but it is because they require so much skill to sail.
Amazing. I saw the introduction of 'high tech fabrics' into sails up close when I was working with/for TD Sails in the Netherlands. The owner was - besides a very nice guy - into materials technology and math and the combination was quite interesting. He was also a visionary, spending a lot of money on CAD when everybody else was still laying out sails by hand and attempting to automate the fabric cutting stage. This was just when water jets were becoming feasible but I don't think he ever managed to get their cutting table to work.
Theo Dokman more or less predicted that the sailing industry and the aircraft industry would converge in terms of high tech while the customers were still asking for 1880's style 'brown' cloth sails for the traditional Dutch fleet.
He would have been super happy to see this, this (and some predecessors) validates pretty much everything he talked about. I'm absolutely amazed at the specs of this vessel, if you take into consideration the length of the hull and the speeds it can attain and in what kind of sea states it is able to do so. The difference between 'theoretically possible' and 'let's build it' here is so large that I wonder what the total bill for putting this out there was.
Note that it hasn't gone hydroplaning yet (apparently the surfaces are not yet fitted), but they're slowly working up to it.
There is indeed something beautiful about traditional boats but this is a different kind of beauty. And 40 knots in 3 metre waves? Wow! Like F1 cars don't drive like road cars the automated control means this is not a boat but something else wonderous.
I love me some hulls out of the water but I have a quibble with the term “flying” when there’s still something in the water and taking everything out of the water is dangerous, even of it is only a tiny fraction of the boat… have hydrofoils always been spoken of as flying or is that more recent hype?
Interesting point about not moving out of the medium. I don’t think this is terribly important but you could say that the airplane completely moves from the medium of wheels on the ground into the less dense medium of air.
In the context of a planing catamaran, flying refers to allowing the windward hull to lift out of the water in order to minimize wetted surface area. These boats, especially the Hobie 16, were quite popular in the 70s and 80s.
Ha ha, we were taught to keep our optimist bathtubs halfway out of the water when sailing downwind back then. I mostly joke but no one called that flying :).
Edit: it's a beautiful machine, regardless. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Ruh3hASFyGw
I'd also argue that sailors (and particularly skippers) are still celebrities (within the sailing community). Now where you're right, is that that these boats are not accessible to the average sailors anymore, but it is because they require so much skill to sail.
Theo Dokman more or less predicted that the sailing industry and the aircraft industry would converge in terms of high tech while the customers were still asking for 1880's style 'brown' cloth sails for the traditional Dutch fleet.
He would have been super happy to see this, this (and some predecessors) validates pretty much everything he talked about. I'm absolutely amazed at the specs of this vessel, if you take into consideration the length of the hull and the speeds it can attain and in what kind of sea states it is able to do so. The difference between 'theoretically possible' and 'let's build it' here is so large that I wonder what the total bill for putting this out there was.
Note that it hasn't gone hydroplaning yet (apparently the surfaces are not yet fitted), but they're slowly working up to it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjiGtwd8q4Q
around ~1 minute the interesting bits start.
A big difference is that these wings lift the main body out of that medium (water) into a much less dense one (air), hugely decreasing resistance.
And yes, this doesn’t lift the boat completely out of the water, but airplanes do not get completely out of the medium they use (air), either.