Fastest sailboat: Two wild designs
newatlas.com
newatlas.com
But, they've been pushing the windsurf gear to 40kts on hydrofoils. That's without adjustable control surfaces like these boats, just steering with body weight and sail trim. I personally have gone 23kts or so and it feels much much faster than when you're on a fin, and you are constantly moving your weight to keep from slapping the water or getting too high for the foil then crashing.
The speed canals where they hit really high speeds on fins are in special areas that most people will never be able to experience that have no wind disruptions and are very shallow canals to keep the chop down like in Luderitz, it isn't an open water speed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt3DQNUJXkc
The races, which have fin and foil against each other, have been in open water state (more real world for 99% of windsurfers), and in those conditions fin vs. foil are very competitive, with foils pulling ahead in the turns due to a lot less resistance and better ability to get back upwind compared to a fin. There's been a lot of debate on even allowing them to compete in the same races as they currently are allowed. They can both do 30ish knots in the same conditions, with the foilers getting away with smaller sails. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsUDkg2d5tE
Another innovation is a new kind of harness for the connection to the sail that releases above a certain force. A lot of the injuries are related to still being attached to the sail and being thrown into it during the crash, where you hit the hard carbon boom or mast instead of being flung clear into the water. That harness prevents that kind of catapult.
But that begs the question- would that type of cavitation induction be considered 'cheating' in the sense of being used on a sailboat that is supposed to be solely powered by the wind? The gas bubbles wouldn't be providing thrust, but a stored bottle of gas or electric pumps or any other stored energy device is just that....
The line between what tech gets used and what isn't allowed in these completely unsanctioned 'record attempts' is interesting to ponder.
In this case, it seems they are using a passive system (it is possible to get a foil to supercavitate without extra powered manipulation).
See Comanche. After she broke a bunch of records her winches and grinding pedestals got pulled and hydraulics installed.
So if you used a wind turbine to drive the compressor then it's fair game I guess? Maybe that makes it more of a windmill ship than a sailboat though.
It is new technology without a track record, on a bespoke machine without a track record. It's safety is unregulated and unresearched. The builder doesn't have the resources to do anything like the safety engineering, prototyping, testing, etc. that someone like Toyota or Airbus does. Even if the design is safe, the construction also lacks those resources.
I can imagine taking the risk if I knew the risk. I could imagine doing it if someone else I relied on knew the risk (e.g., as a test pilot for a major company or military air force). I'm not risk-averse; I've taken more than my share, including risking life and limb. How does someone decide to ride one of these?
Analogously that is the only way I could rationalize the Wright brothers attempting an airplane flight (after surviving many glider flights), which otherwise would seem an insane proposition.
Finally, they were the engineers of their plane - they probably knew the risks well. Maybe that describes these watercraft pilots too.
I think that is the key here. Don’t compare these to a reliable production airplanes, they are more akin to a prototype plane.
With prototype airplanes we call the pilots a special name: “test pilots”. But that is just because with most airplane designs there is an expectation that they once will graduate out of testing and will be piloted by regular pilots. But some airplanes never do that. They were only ever meant to demonstrate some principle or explore some new frontier. Same with these sailboats, their crew are “test pilots”, and they perform a test program to gradually validate the performance and safety of the craft. And most likely they will be only ever crewed by the crew who did that program.
So what does it mean that they are “test pilots”. They all probably have a lot of experience with all kind of sailboats and especially fast ones, and then they have a proven track record of having a good intuitive understanding of the physics involved. If all you ever did is to capsize a dingy on a local lake you are probably not getting this job.
And then test pilots get access to the engineers designing the craft and they talk a lot about expected performance. There are all kind of curves and diagrams one can inspect to understand how the craft is likely going to handle.
And then they don’t just leave the pier for the first time and run a world record speed. They first go relatively slow, and only when they are certain they understand how the craft behaves do they try to go faster and faster. This might also mean that they are initially very picky about the conditions they launch into, and as they gain more experience they can “expand the envelope” and try gnarlier weather.
Then of course they prepare for adverse events. They wear appropriate personal protective equipment, have a plan what they do if they are thrown overboard or capsize, and they also most likely have rescue boats at the ready to save them if something goes wrong.
And then on top of all of that they all probably have a psychological makeup where they value going fast, and being the first more than being safe. Even with all the safety precautions and mitigations and good design activities like these are risky. People who all above wish for a long and peaceful and slow life are probably not going to gravitate towards these jobs.
The Wright Brothers' plane carried neither passengers nor cargo, yet it presaged an entire industry of air travel. Likewise, these speed-record boats will only demonstrate a new technology. But likewise, they might transform an enormous industry.
But remember that the Wright brothers didn’t even try to patent “the airplane”. Their achievement (and patent) was about safely controlling an airplane so that it could fly. More than two years before their 1903 flight, Wilbur Wright gave a presentation in Chicago where he said “ As long ago as 1884 a machine weighing 8,000 pounds demonstrated its power both to lift itself from the ground and to maintain a speed of from 30 to 40 miles per hour, but failed of success owing to the inability to balance and steer it properly. This inability to balance and steer still confronts students of the flying problem, although nearly eighteen years have passed. When this one feature has been worked out, the age of flying machines will have arrived, for all other difficulties are of minor importance.”
It's not too different from people testing the first hot air balloons, planes or helicopters (albeit much less risky, still).
Someone who has done a lot of skiing / parachuting can estimate well the risks of offtrack skiing and base jumping, plus lots of people have done it before and can inform you, plus the technology used (skiis / parachutes) have very long track records and known performance.
(Mountain biking doesn't seem to be in the same category, but whatever.)
> It's not too different from people testing the first hot air balloons, planes or helicopters (albeit much less risky, still).
Yes, good analogies.
It's not really unknown: it's really high and you better hope you don't mess up or you're dead/maimed. Sure here the “don't mess up“ happens mostly at design/build time instead of during the execution, but at the end of the day you're risking your life hoping you're not making a mistake. That's definitely not for everyone.
Well, that's also exactly what we are talking about here…
Also you're talking to someone who broke his own shoulder earlier this year while doing some very easy off-piste skiing earlier this year so I can absolutely assure you that danger is just a small mistake away even if you aren't doing insane stuff.
I’m not sure they can keep video secret if accidents happen that cause serious injuries or death.
There are plenty of failure videos for the gigantic trimarans used in the America’s cup (search term “America's cup trimaran capsize”), and I think not all of them were in public races.
All models of Onewheel electric skateboards are being recalled after the maker Future Motion received reports of four deaths of users between 2019 and 2021 and multiple reports of serious injuries.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/01/us/onewheel-electric-skateboa...
Here's some difference to the motorboats,those pointy tubes sitting on the water surface with a big (jet) engine in your back pushing you. The Vestas has its sail off to the side and even a foil still in the water which will give it stability. The sailboats with the kites are being pulled and I imagine in a situation where you cut the rope, the impact into the water is quite predictable and in a straight line, very different from the wild accidents of high speed motorboats.
Mind you, these are much higher speeds. I looked it up, and the motor boat speed record is over 500 km/h.
What I am saying is that I don't feel bad about "skipping" the original source like most soulless cloners you see on the written internet these days.
2. The site looks like a hot mess because of their use of Taboola links.
Other than that, I tend to stick to niche sites.
* even displacement hull boats can surf - you let a wave come up behind you then you turn down the face of the wave and accelerate - it’s a blast surfing a 5 ton boat.
[0] 15m long and 7m wide.
So I'm a bit surprised to see the current record holder still looking recognisably like a sailing boat. That trimaran contender still looks pretty normal, although if it uses a kite, that's definitely interesting.
But that Syroco! That's really pushing the definition of sailing and boat beyond recognition. It looks closer to kite surfing. Or a glider with a kite instead of wings that only seems to be touching the water because otherwise it wouldn't count as a sailing boat anymore but as a plane. Though I suspect that board/hydrofoil is still necessary to control the course.
Instead, the thing that makes the vehicle work is the ability to use the mechanical(?) advantage of the prop slicing through the air at an angle to improve efficiency. Just as regular sails working at an angle to the wind can move downwind faster than a balloon (illustrated in the video) the angled prop can be used to move the vehicle downwind faster than the wind, but only by moving at an angle to it.
Would be great if I were misunderstanding!
* I struggled to find a better word than this obsolete phrase, but I’m talking about vehicles far beyond a stock car with a rocket attached.
Check out the Foiling IMOCA 60s. They regularly top 30 knots in the middle of the ocean. Highly maneuverable.
The 100 foot foiling ocean Trimarans are a bit faster with top speeds over 40 and 24 hour averages in the high 30s with a crew of 5 or 6, often sailed Solo.
Sailboats can go many times the speed of the wind they're in.
Seems like the sails would be too big of an aerodynamic compromise for the former, but the latter might work (though it would be kind of silly).
Otherwise, no, because it's the interaction between the keel and water which allow you to sail other points i.e. broad reach.
(in theory, I think a kite up in the jet stream and a fairly large sail near ground level would work for some definition of ‘work’)
I remain unconvinced it's impossible downwind, given gliders and parasailing work.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_soaring#Manned_aircraf...
If you use wing-in-ground-effect then you are in a single fluid, where there is no relative movement, so you cannot extract energy from the relative movement.
Put more simply, you need something to push against, so you need at least part of the vehicle in each fluid.
If you count that as sailing, this is the fastest sailing vessel.
You have to remember that speed sailing is effectively an efficiency competition. The theoretically perfect sailing machine would a foil in the air and a foil in the water connected by something with as little weight and drag as possible. Syroco are alarmingly close to making this happen.
An interesting choice to use a supercavitating foil. "Back in the day" there was an assumption that hydrofoils could never run above 50 knots due to cavitation, but the America's Cup people seem to do that (just). There are nice consistent supercavitating surfaces but they're called propellers.
Either which way, my money is on syroco.
Wind-powered “planes” can't work for that reason (and no, gliders aren't powered by the wind, and you can't have a ground-effect glider either)
So the best you can do is have just a foil that sticks in the water while having everything else out, which is basically what every modern race boat is doing.