How and when did boats learn to fly?
Jan. 17th, 2023 08:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickHydrofoiling has been a thing for boats since 1906. Like, they knew it would work, that people could get a boat up out of the water on hyrofoils. Initially, this was with engines, not sails, providing the forward oomph.
By 1938, there was a sailing hydrofoil. (No engine, just sails.) After that, there were a few (one-off) foiling boats and catamarans. Also, speed records (normally measured on a straight line course without turns or anything) fell to wind-powered foilers from then until 1997 but the boats were not... nearly as effective on anything other than straight sailing. Foiling boats, at that time, didn't turn well, didn't tack well, etc. (Most sailboat racing done on a course requires the boat to turn several times back and forth, this is called tacking, and to circle a marker at the end before proceeding back the way they came. Basically, there is a lot of turning involved. So, the early foilers did not do well at course based sailboat racing because they couldn't maneuver for beans.) Also, early foilers didn't fly in less than pretty stiff winds. So, they did OK in speed records but not so well in anything else race-related.
We're going to take a brief detour here to discuss more about sailboat racing. Most sailboat racing is done by classes. A class is defined by agreed-upon rules for designing the boats used in the race. All the boats competing in the class must meet the design criteria. Some classes are one design where everybody gets the same boat, made by a short list of authorized manufacturers, and you cannot do very many aftermarket changes to the boat, all of which are also delineated and enforced by rules nazis. Other classes have fairly loose rules constraining the boat -- these classes are ones where "design" is sort of the point. It's not 100% about who is the better sailor (those are the one design classes) because it's ALSO about who is the better boat designer, modifier, tuner, whatnot.
The America's Cup yachts are widely considered a "design" class. You are allowed and even *expected* to try to build a better boat than the other guys. That's a part of the competition. But, they are not the design class where foiling got a serious foothold. The design class that brought foiling sailboats into the light of day for sailboat racing was the International Moth.
Why? Mostly, I think it was cost. The 2021 America's Cup boats cost about 10 million apiece, weigh 13,000 lbs, and require 11 people to operate (a helmsman who steers the boat, three trimmers who mess with the sail shapes and alignments, a flight controller who plays with the foils to keep the boat in the air, a tactician, and a bunch of people called grinders who use hand-cranked things (changing to foot-cranked things in the next iteration of the AC race) to power the hydraulic pumps used to adjust the boat's above-the-waterline control surfaces. (The rudder and main foil surfaces are controlled by batteries. Why? It's the rules. The grinders USED to be people operating hand-cranked winches called "coffee grinders" and when the sail handling changed from rope-based to hydraulic-based... they just changed from winches to power generation for the hydraulics.)
Anyway, the International Moth is a much smaller, much cheaper "design" class boat. It's 11 feet long, weighs about 70 lbs, requires ONE person to operate, and these days costs about as much as a mid-sized sedan for something... functional. (Again, this is boats and you can always dump as much money as you want into the project if that's your idea of a good time.) But 20 to 30K is a lot more affordable than 10 million dollars. You don't need a crane to launch it. You don't need ten of your closest friends to help you sail it. You can sail it yourself -- for values of "sail" that include more time in the water than in the boat during the admittedly brutal learning curve. (It is somewhat fiddly to sail.)
In 2005, the International Moth class championship was won by a foiling boat. The International Moth started out as a fairly normal looking boat. As the class continued, the boats got... narrower and narrower, with "wings" on the sides to help people lean out of the boat to counteract the sail and keep the boat upright. Then, they had hot-swappable foils so that they could foil some, in appropriate conditions (in not-so-much-wind, it was still faster to run a conventional water-based Moth), but by 2005, Rohan Veal won by foiling in every race. He got the boat up on foils and he kept her there and he won every single race in the series. The best finish for a "conventional" Moth in that Worlds competition was 5th.
And that was the end of the conventional Moth in international competition. You could still sail them. They were still class-legal. But if you were up against people who could actually sail, you would not win if you had a Moth that couldn't fly. With the direction things were headed made perfectly clear to everyone by the results at the 2005 Moth Worlds, foils and foil control systems and shit kicked into high gear, these things developed and deployed on (relatively) affordable, tippy, one-person boats.
And that was how they got foiling sailboats.
For a while it was just the Moths, because they were somewhat insane people who were OK with a lot of failure in exchange for a little faster -- everybody else had "normal" boats. But... boats that foiled were faster. And after a bit, they were a LOT faster. Here's video from 2006. (Recall that 2004 was the last year a "conventional" Moth won the Worlds competition.) It's useful because it shows a fairly early foiling Moth (that's the one with the... moth on its sail) against conventional sailboats (the ones sitting on the water). The Moth is not just a little faster. It's a lot faster. But still, they are tricky to sail. They are STILL tricky to sail. Here is some video of 2021 Moth competition, in which you can see that it's not a stable and easy boat.
You don't, these days, have to have an International Moth to go foiling with a sailboat. There are other, friendlier, more affordable options. Hell, if you're on a real budget and you have a pretty reliable offshore breeze, you can buy a beater Laser (a one-design, one-person fiberglass sailboat of which there are many, many out there) and retro-fit it so that it can foil. The foiling kit for that costs about a thousand bucks for the mod, which is WAY cheaper than buying a purpose-built foiler. A beater (functional but not race-winning) Laser, complete and ready to toss in the water, is probably available for around 3K if you shop a bit. Most anything you buy as a "ready to go" new foiling boat is going to be around 20K, though.
By 1938, there was a sailing hydrofoil. (No engine, just sails.) After that, there were a few (one-off) foiling boats and catamarans. Also, speed records (normally measured on a straight line course without turns or anything) fell to wind-powered foilers from then until 1997 but the boats were not... nearly as effective on anything other than straight sailing. Foiling boats, at that time, didn't turn well, didn't tack well, etc. (Most sailboat racing done on a course requires the boat to turn several times back and forth, this is called tacking, and to circle a marker at the end before proceeding back the way they came. Basically, there is a lot of turning involved. So, the early foilers did not do well at course based sailboat racing because they couldn't maneuver for beans.) Also, early foilers didn't fly in less than pretty stiff winds. So, they did OK in speed records but not so well in anything else race-related.
We're going to take a brief detour here to discuss more about sailboat racing. Most sailboat racing is done by classes. A class is defined by agreed-upon rules for designing the boats used in the race. All the boats competing in the class must meet the design criteria. Some classes are one design where everybody gets the same boat, made by a short list of authorized manufacturers, and you cannot do very many aftermarket changes to the boat, all of which are also delineated and enforced by rules nazis. Other classes have fairly loose rules constraining the boat -- these classes are ones where "design" is sort of the point. It's not 100% about who is the better sailor (those are the one design classes) because it's ALSO about who is the better boat designer, modifier, tuner, whatnot.
The America's Cup yachts are widely considered a "design" class. You are allowed and even *expected* to try to build a better boat than the other guys. That's a part of the competition. But, they are not the design class where foiling got a serious foothold. The design class that brought foiling sailboats into the light of day for sailboat racing was the International Moth.
Why? Mostly, I think it was cost. The 2021 America's Cup boats cost about 10 million apiece, weigh 13,000 lbs, and require 11 people to operate (a helmsman who steers the boat, three trimmers who mess with the sail shapes and alignments, a flight controller who plays with the foils to keep the boat in the air, a tactician, and a bunch of people called grinders who use hand-cranked things (changing to foot-cranked things in the next iteration of the AC race) to power the hydraulic pumps used to adjust the boat's above-the-waterline control surfaces. (The rudder and main foil surfaces are controlled by batteries. Why? It's the rules. The grinders USED to be people operating hand-cranked winches called "coffee grinders" and when the sail handling changed from rope-based to hydraulic-based... they just changed from winches to power generation for the hydraulics.)
Anyway, the International Moth is a much smaller, much cheaper "design" class boat. It's 11 feet long, weighs about 70 lbs, requires ONE person to operate, and these days costs about as much as a mid-sized sedan for something... functional. (Again, this is boats and you can always dump as much money as you want into the project if that's your idea of a good time.) But 20 to 30K is a lot more affordable than 10 million dollars. You don't need a crane to launch it. You don't need ten of your closest friends to help you sail it. You can sail it yourself -- for values of "sail" that include more time in the water than in the boat during the admittedly brutal learning curve. (It is somewhat fiddly to sail.)
In 2005, the International Moth class championship was won by a foiling boat. The International Moth started out as a fairly normal looking boat. As the class continued, the boats got... narrower and narrower, with "wings" on the sides to help people lean out of the boat to counteract the sail and keep the boat upright. Then, they had hot-swappable foils so that they could foil some, in appropriate conditions (in not-so-much-wind, it was still faster to run a conventional water-based Moth), but by 2005, Rohan Veal won by foiling in every race. He got the boat up on foils and he kept her there and he won every single race in the series. The best finish for a "conventional" Moth in that Worlds competition was 5th.
And that was the end of the conventional Moth in international competition. You could still sail them. They were still class-legal. But if you were up against people who could actually sail, you would not win if you had a Moth that couldn't fly. With the direction things were headed made perfectly clear to everyone by the results at the 2005 Moth Worlds, foils and foil control systems and shit kicked into high gear, these things developed and deployed on (relatively) affordable, tippy, one-person boats.
And that was how they got foiling sailboats.
For a while it was just the Moths, because they were somewhat insane people who were OK with a lot of failure in exchange for a little faster -- everybody else had "normal" boats. But... boats that foiled were faster. And after a bit, they were a LOT faster. Here's video from 2006. (Recall that 2004 was the last year a "conventional" Moth won the Worlds competition.) It's useful because it shows a fairly early foiling Moth (that's the one with the... moth on its sail) against conventional sailboats (the ones sitting on the water). The Moth is not just a little faster. It's a lot faster. But still, they are tricky to sail. They are STILL tricky to sail. Here is some video of 2021 Moth competition, in which you can see that it's not a stable and easy boat.
You don't, these days, have to have an International Moth to go foiling with a sailboat. There are other, friendlier, more affordable options. Hell, if you're on a real budget and you have a pretty reliable offshore breeze, you can buy a beater Laser (a one-design, one-person fiberglass sailboat of which there are many, many out there) and retro-fit it so that it can foil. The foiling kit for that costs about a thousand bucks for the mod, which is WAY cheaper than buying a purpose-built foiler. A beater (functional but not race-winning) Laser, complete and ready to toss in the water, is probably available for around 3K if you shop a bit. Most anything you buy as a "ready to go" new foiling boat is going to be around 20K, though.
