Any chance at a follow-up to this video with the latest AC75 designs? Where they have a foiling monohull and canting-arm hydrofoils? They don't address the suggestions you made (enclosed cockpits, etc.) but could the shift to a monohull be less dangerous in a nosedive and capsize situation? Note: there have been capsizes already in these boats that have been recorded for viewing.
Everyone that sails AC boats knows the risks its part of the challenge. The sailing collective associated with the AC wants a safe race. Basic human nature is to be safe and do risky things.
Anything at 40 kts is inherently unsafe. Those engaging in such activity must be fully informed and determine their calculus for/against participation.
I think the sailors were generally aware of the risks and chose to pursue what was a breakthrough in the sport in terms of raw speed and thrills. To your point, as discussed in the video the risk of fatality increases approximately exponentially with speed. Energy = trauma when things go wrong lacking sufficient absorbing mechanisms. I'm willing to bet that highly vocal crew members and team owners are stressing the need for improved stability in the new AC designs!
I really like your solutions, and agree with what you're saying. Maybe the following is a bit pedantic, but I'll still say it. No ship ever has ever, or could ever put safety first, otherwise it would remain in harbour and send its crew home. I suppose that doing something is kind of an implicit first priority, whatever that something is.
That is a good point to remember. The sea is inherently unsafe and unforgiving. I suppose it really comes down to risk versus reward. For many, the America's Cup justifies the risk of hydrofoil sailing.
One point you may find interesting is that foiling cats use a lift differential in the rudders, windward rudder providing a fairly large proportion of the righting moment by pulling the hull down
This is old vid, if you catch this, I feel you would be interesting to follow modern sailing designs, current Americas cup as well as some ocean racing of Europe, from the foiling/non-foil trans mini 6.5’s to extreme 100’ trimarans
"ships must protect life" - let's look at F1 cars, do they protect life? Sort of, the carbon driver cell is tough, but aside from that, they're vulnerable in a crash situation with MUCH higher speed differentials than even the current AC75s are producing. I don't think it's reasonable to construct an ultra light thing and then load it with 2 tonne of safety gear and slow it down again. They're built purely for speed, like any racing craft on water or land or in the sky, and *all* of them are dangerous, and that's okay. Better to die having the time of your life than rotting in a rest home with dementia.
I allways note in Cats that they turn completly over with the mast going vertical under water. That is stupid. The mast should have an airbag in its top that can be triggered automatically or by a mechanism if the Cat tips over. This would avoid complete capsizing easily.
Well Nancy opps sorry Nick. There is more to life than just making life safer. In fact the safer you make life, the more humans will seek out danger. Sorry about the Nancy thing earlier, I know you are representing an Engineering Firm and need to be professional.
Your statement about the risk at approx 7:20 is totally inaccurate. You state that in a 12 man crew 1 to 2 persons should be dying every season... This doesn't take into consideration the number of accidents these vessels have. In order to produce a number estimating the number of deaths per season you have to walk through the danger per accident and the number of accidents. Obviously your calculation is completely wrong since there are many high speed racing crews and to my knowledge only one sailor has died. I'm not saying it's insignificant that a sailor died. I'm just saying your numbers as you have said them are off by maybe two or three orders of magnitude from the reality. Not to mention that cars are different from sailboats in positive and negative ways and I'm not sure those numbers translate directly between the two worlds. I totally agree with your larger point about the design being wrong but you should spend please less time arguing with the imaginary people who think you're against going fast and spend more time developing your own design improvement recommendations. I would like you to recommend an alternate design. To me it is plainly obvious that the AC75's are precarious on their foils and there must be a better design which is more stable and still very very fast, and now I am going to watch the rest of the video to see if as I hope you will propose some specific improvements. I watched your recommendations and I just believe those are not the kinds of recommendations that I was interested in. I wanted you to recommend a different hydrofoil design. You're the architect I bet you can do better than the AC75 and the catamaran designs. Also to be honest I'm interested in what you think about the moth and other foiling boats. Also the sailor who died didn't die from the impact as someone would in a car accident. Also usually the capsizing accidents most likely do not happen at the boat's maximum speed, they happen when the boats are changing direction--so there is nothing inherently wrong with boats moving at hyperspeed. Obviously the real issue at fast speeds is collisions and this is about the rules of sailing and provided people follow the rules of right of way I believe that this is a background risk but not an inevitability. I've sailed a little bit but I'm not a real sailor so a real sailor can correct this if what I said is wrong. To me all racing has some inherent danger and that is okay when the people involved deliberately assume the risk. But the design should not lead to issues where a foil loses lift and plunges the bow head on into the water (I believe you feature a video of one such event in this video), leading to an immediate collision stop with the water, or where the boat relies on an unnecessarily precarious balance between foil, heel, and wind. On a displacement boat all of this is beautiful. But in a foiling hull its like watching a jengo game on a trampoline.
Hey could you do one about what fluid dynamocs sofware someone could use to design a foil, hobby level freeware would be great, that would be amazing, but i agree with all the points you made and i hope a future where all boats that go fast have all the stated features. Thanks
If the numbers don't apply, why do you even bring them up? You claim a potential 1-2 sailors per boat dying per year, but the statistic you bring up is related to cars hitting pedestrians, which is a completely unrelated topic to a hydrofoil boat hitting someone in the water. Andrew Simpson died because of entrapment under the boat. This is a danger that has existed around sailing since its conception, and a danger that has been mitigated to an absolute minimum, but still happens. The solutions you present in this piece would increase the probability of entrapment, and would increase the dangers present to sailors. 1: A five point harness is literally a method of attaching sailors to boats that then fill with water. No one with experience in high performance boats would recommend this. 2: A fully enclosed cockpit would trap sailors in the boat. What if the encapsulation failed to allow water in but not the sailors out? 3: Watertight cockpit with emergency air- see point 2. 4: Automated systems- I agree that any safety system implemented should be automated. 5: Bottom escape hatches would increase likelihood of that hatch failing in a soft impact and sinking the vessel. Also only works if there is easy access to wherever the hatch is, and does not help with entrapment caused by line or equipment, the most likely cause of death from sailing. 6: Failsafe design in rigging- firstly, literally impossible. Production boats designed to have thousands of miles across heavy seas still have rig failures, because if you make the rig unbreakable, the hull will break instead. There are times when it is better for the rig to break than for it to not. I 100% agree that every possible safety precaution should be taken to protect the sailors, but I disagree with the way you've presented your data, which purposefully misrepresents the data, and I believe that the solutions you present are not safe in their own right. I do not understand how Bart's death directly corelates to fatalities involving motor vehicles? He drowned after being trapped under the hull, but was unconscious when found. I remember Bart, but you're misrepresenting what happened to him. And to compare a boat to a fighter jet is foolish. Jets' safety mechanisms are designed to eject the pilot before impact, and I have not once heard of a jet that made contact with the water and did not crumple or sink upon impact. The two rules of ensuring safety during a capsize are: 1. Do not get stuck under the boat, and 2. do not get separated from the boat. Anything else places further danger on sailors. What you bring up would not be legitimately considered by anyone who has experience with performance vessels.
As an engineer I have a few points: - the analogy to car accidents is wrong, as demonstrated by the significantly lower death rate of these fat boats. - Bart died because the boat collapsed. It collapsed because the naval architect screwed up the structural calculation. They underestimated the loads of a fast boat. The guy still practices, but he’s not the hottest one around anymore. - similar to the recent collapse in the vendee globe. NAs push the limit of the structural strength to the bear minimum and sometimes beyond. - capsizes actually happen more at lower speed as the boat slows down as it looses control, see recent crashes in the AC or other foiling classes. I was hoping for some insights into more stable foil setups, rather than generic safety chat.
A good point, even NASCAR realized that speeds were getting beyond what drivers could control and introduced restricter plates on speedway cars. Having said that, the unintended consequences of that move caused even more wrecks by bunching up the cars at 200 MPH. America's Cup racing doesn't allow electronics to control any aspect of the boat's systems and it may be that the demands on the crews of foiling multi-hulls are too high to allow foils to continue to be used. There is the danger of the sport being so pacified that public interest is lost like has happened in auto racing. It is the speed, and yes the danger that has driven up interest in yacht racing in recent years and unlike NASCAR, yacht racing poises little danger to spectators, putting the risks on those who choose to take them. Perhaps there is a solution to boat control, but wouldn't that lead to even more speed and more danger? America Cup boats are no more passenger craft than competition stock cars are family sedans. Any sort of racing will never be as safe as commuting to work or to the Bahamas. Trying to make it so may end the sport.
Interesting that you brought up NASCAR but then failed to address other safety features added to the cars and track to make racing safer. Safety features such as the roof flaps to help prevent rollovers, 5 and 6 point safety belts, the HAN device to help keep the drivers head as one with the body. Rollover cages have been part of the sport for decades.
@@drkjk I suppose I could have written a book about NASCAR's rule changes, but my point was that as the sport got safer and inundated with rules it gradually lost public interest and with it, sponsors that support it. NASCAR has now devolved into 40 cars circling a track for three hours and a huge multi-car wreck on the last lap with one of 4 or 5 well healed teams winning. Perhaps you should examine how the popularity of the America's cup has accelerated world wide as the speeds and innovation of the boats have increased. Any of man's endeavors that push the envelope of achievement involve some sort of risk whether financial or physically. Turning the America's cup back into a vanilla sort of event where one well healed team wins every time will result in it's previous status of disinterest.
People are going to die, sailed a few of the small ones. They scare me s##tless If I may ask a question, What do you think about the Neel 51 trimaran? Dearly would like to own one.
Very spacious ships. I like that most of the living space is on one level. Definitely an ocean-class vessel. I really like that they have a dedicated engine room in the center hull. From a safety perspective, there is a very important graph on this page: www.neel-trimarans.com/why-neel/ That shows the graph of righting moment vs heel angle. Don't worry about the magnitude of the moment. Look at where the peak occurs. The Achilles heel of multihulls is they have high initial stability, but nothing after that, leading to the concern about capsizing. That is what the graph is showing with the Cata 44', which has its peak at 12 deg. Heel past 12 deg and its a loosing game. Monohulls typically have a peak in the range of 30 to 40 deg. The NEEL trimaran shows its peak at 27 deg. That is safety range close to a monohull, plus the stability of a trimaran. Good combination.
Thank you kindly for the reply. The one reason to look at the Neel was simply the fact all the weight is in the centre of the boat. That and the higher angle when sailing up wind. O ce again, thank you.
Something I'd be interested in seeing is an efficiency comparison between props and jet drives. When I was a comercial fisherman in the eighties there was a jet that supposedly matched prop thrust with equal horsepower and boat size. Then in later years I moved to land based work and didn't hear anything more of them. I still see jets for rivers and such, but there is a loss of thrust in them that supposedly wasn't there in the industrial version.
Stay tuned. I have a video coming out in the next few months abut water jets, and they address that issue. The short version: jet efficiency depends on speed through the water. Below 20 knots, props win every time. Above 30 knot, jets almost always win. 20 - 30 knots, jets and props are about equal in efficiency.
If, as an engineer charged with protecting life, as you say, your new direction should be designing and fabricating devices to mitigate these dangers, not to mewl and bleat against the invariable and inevitable. A belt-mountable and cost-effective miniature rebreathing apparatus, perhaps? An ultra-light helmet with automatically inflating bib, that prevents an unconscious crewperson from drowning while face down? A device that effects the crucial "first-minute count-off" after a capsize?
The KEY takeaway here is engineering gives us the tools to experiment with stability aimed at safety while maintaining speed, challenge, and FUN FACTOR. Aircraft design has similar solutions, which add stability and safety, in which the engineers knowingly sacrificed performance (just enough) to solve the problem. Think Fighter jet vs Cessna 150 - both very successful in the market place.
Interesting thoughts - sounds like your complaints have nothing to do with the actual hydrofoils themselves, but the degree of performance they push these boats to at the risk of human lives. It's not the hydrofoil concept that is unsafe, it's a sailboat that might capsize going 40 knots. Would be interesting if the approach changed to a more "modern" design to try to get the most performance hypothetically possible out of a sailboat using modern approaches and technology. Have a crew of one or two inside an enclosed cockpit strapped into harnesses as you suggest, controlling everything remotely. I envision two crew, one a helmsman that steers the boat, focused on navigation, strategy, and avoiding collisions. The other controls the sails, and possibly the hydrofoils, using switches and other electronic controls to drive them in and out, electric winches replacing manpower. The vessel could hypothetically be single-handled as all these controls are in reach of the helmsman, though that would be an entirely different event - sort of like how there are different events for single- and two-crew sailing skiffs in the same boats. The sail and hydrofoil control could easily be automated, sooner or later the helmsman role could be too, computers being able to analyze conditions and react faster than a human ever could. The "purists" who prefer the current approach of no motorized anything on the vessel would hate this, but said purists probably aren't keen on the latest generation of wing-sail hydrofoils anyway. This approach would give the best performance of wind and water possible with current technology, and I would find it quite interesting.
I think you need to do comparisons to other sports before you complain about the safety of the Americas Cup. My suspicion is that it's fairly safe. Do you have any data that shows it is more dangerous than even some fairly common things like hydroplane racing, flying light sport airplanes, sky diving, or even horse back riding? It must be safer than some of the more extreme sports like wing-suit flying or cave diving. Or, what about much more traditional sailboat boat racing -- single-handed around the world races. The Golden globe race (which still has some contestants sailing) I believe has had 5 dismastings and 3 rescues (single-handed - 3 boats in such bad shape they were abbandondon) out of 17 contestants that started. Combine that with the history of deaths in years past, and I think it must be a much more dangerous race than Americas Cup. Or how about Fastnet? Or more recently the Dauphin Island Race? Due to the Americas cup being run inshore (or close to shore), run one day at a time (so they don't get stuck out in bad weather), and being sailed only by highly trained persons, I have a suspicion that it may be one of the safer sailboat races.
I think audiences ENJOY RISK. Mankind has always wanted to watch dangerous sports. The danger itself not the challenge or the difficulty is the allure. Historically we had watch men fight to the death in Arenas. We enjoyed racing where there can be a fatal crash at any moment. There is huge excitement to be had knowing that the heroes you are rooting for could not only lose, they could die. When we couldn't get it from from sports, we go to the movies to expose ourselves to the roller coaster of possible and sudden death of characters we had grown fond of. Why do you think Game of Thrones was such a hit? It is what Mankind wants. I say give it to them! After all, nobody is forcing anyone to participate or watch extreme sailing sports. There is always American Gladiators and all kinds of safe, cushioned, entertainment if that is your cup of tea.
Good video. Like most sports, the risk of death eventually scares away sponsorship dollars. Hopefully, we do not have to witness more fatalities before financial backers knock the organizers in the noggin..........so to speak.
As a sailboat racer of 50 years these ac boats are death traps. I am working on a sailboat design to go 70 knots and saftey is my first concern. I need to get home safely
In my opinion, hydrofoils are always dangerous if they crash into debris floating in the oceans or into coral reef towers. That is valid also for the Jet engines powerded big Hydrofoils you see today. Assuming that the Oceans have no debris is crazy if you see the garbage islands today. Any engineer tested the behaviour of those ships or racing foil cats if they loose a foil???
Any chance at a follow-up to this video with the latest AC75 designs? Where they have a foiling monohull and canting-arm hydrofoils? They don't address the suggestions you made (enclosed cockpits, etc.) but could the shift to a monohull be less dangerous in a nosedive and capsize situation? Note: there have been capsizes already in these boats that have been recorded for viewing.
sadly the reason the foils were so exciting is because of the dangers involved.
@Despiser Despised hell no brother, I'm actually a ex trump supporter... Just pointing out the falacy of improving safety in an extreme sport.
Everyone that sails AC boats knows the risks its part of the challenge. The sailing collective associated with the AC wants a safe race. Basic human nature is to be safe and do risky things.
Anything at 40 kts is inherently unsafe. Those engaging in such activity must be fully informed and determine their calculus for/against participation.
I think the sailors were generally aware of the risks and chose to pursue what was a breakthrough in the sport in terms of raw speed and thrills. To your point, as discussed in the video the risk of fatality increases approximately exponentially with speed. Energy = trauma when things go wrong lacking sufficient absorbing mechanisms. I'm willing to bet that highly vocal crew members and team owners are stressing the need for improved stability in the new AC designs!
I really like your solutions, and agree with what you're saying. Maybe the following is a bit pedantic, but I'll still say it. No ship ever has ever, or could ever put safety first, otherwise it would remain in harbour and send its crew home. I suppose that doing something is kind of an implicit first priority, whatever that something is.
That is a good point to remember. The sea is inherently unsafe and unforgiving. I suppose it really comes down to risk versus reward. For many, the America's Cup justifies the risk of hydrofoil sailing.
@ Damn, even port is dangerous.
One point you may find interesting is that foiling cats use a lift differential in the rudders, windward rudder providing a fairly large proportion of the righting moment by pulling the hull down
This is old vid, if you catch this, I feel you would be interesting to follow modern sailing designs, current Americas cup as well as some ocean racing of Europe, from the foiling/non-foil trans mini 6.5’s to extreme 100’ trimarans
"ships must protect life" - let's look at F1 cars, do they protect life? Sort of, the carbon driver cell is tough, but aside from that, they're vulnerable in a crash situation with MUCH higher speed differentials than even the current AC75s are producing. I don't think it's reasonable to construct an ultra light thing and then load it with 2 tonne of safety gear and slow it down again. They're built purely for speed, like any racing craft on water or land or in the sky, and *all* of them are dangerous, and that's okay. Better to die having the time of your life than rotting in a rest home with dementia.
I allways note in Cats that they turn completly over with the mast going vertical under water. That is stupid. The mast should have an airbag in its top that can be triggered automatically or by a mechanism if the Cat tips over. This would avoid complete capsizing easily.
Well Nancy opps sorry Nick. There is more to life than just making life safer. In fact the safer you make life, the more humans will seek out danger.
Sorry about the Nancy thing earlier, I know you are representing an Engineering Firm and need to be professional.
Your statement about the risk at approx 7:20 is totally inaccurate. You state that in a 12 man crew 1 to 2 persons should be dying every season... This doesn't take into consideration the number of accidents these vessels have. In order to produce a number estimating the number of deaths per season you have to walk through the danger per accident and the number of accidents. Obviously your calculation is completely wrong since there are many high speed racing crews and to my knowledge only one sailor has died. I'm not saying it's insignificant that a sailor died. I'm just saying your numbers as you have said them are off by maybe two or three orders of magnitude from the reality. Not to mention that cars are different from sailboats in positive and negative ways and I'm not sure those numbers translate directly between the two worlds.
I totally agree with your larger point about the design being wrong but you should spend please less time arguing with the imaginary people who think you're against going fast and spend more time developing your own design improvement recommendations. I would like you to recommend an alternate design. To me it is plainly obvious that the AC75's are precarious on their foils and there must be a better design which is more stable and still very very fast, and now I am going to watch the rest of the video to see if as I hope you will propose some specific improvements.
I watched your recommendations and I just believe those are not the kinds of recommendations that I was interested in. I wanted you to recommend a different hydrofoil design. You're the architect I bet you can do better than the AC75 and the catamaran designs. Also to be honest I'm interested in what you think about the moth and other foiling boats.
Also the sailor who died didn't die from the impact as someone would in a car accident. Also usually the capsizing accidents most likely do not happen at the boat's maximum speed, they happen when the boats are changing direction--so there is nothing inherently wrong with boats moving at hyperspeed. Obviously the real issue at fast speeds is collisions and this is about the rules of sailing and provided people follow the rules of right of way I believe that this is a background risk but not an inevitability. I've sailed a little bit but I'm not a real sailor so a real sailor can correct this if what I said is wrong. To me all racing has some inherent danger and that is okay when the people involved deliberately assume the risk. But the design should not lead to issues where a foil loses lift and plunges the bow head on into the water (I believe you feature a video of one such event in this video), leading to an immediate collision stop with the water, or where the boat relies on an unnecessarily precarious balance between foil, heel, and wind. On a displacement boat all of this is beautiful. But in a foiling hull its like watching a jengo game on a trampoline.
Hey could you do one about what fluid dynamocs sofware someone could use to design a foil, hobby level freeware would be great, that would be amazing, but i agree with all the points you made and i hope a future where all boats that go fast have all the stated features. Thanks
If the numbers don't apply, why do you even bring them up? You claim a potential 1-2 sailors per boat dying per year, but the statistic you bring up is related to cars hitting pedestrians, which is a completely unrelated topic to a hydrofoil boat hitting someone in the water. Andrew Simpson died because of entrapment under the boat. This is a danger that has existed around sailing since its conception, and a danger that has been mitigated to an absolute minimum, but still happens. The solutions you present in this piece would increase the probability of entrapment, and would increase the dangers present to sailors.
1: A five point harness is literally a method of attaching sailors to boats that then fill with water. No one with experience in high performance boats would recommend this.
2: A fully enclosed cockpit would trap sailors in the boat. What if the encapsulation failed to allow water in but not the sailors out?
3: Watertight cockpit with emergency air- see point 2.
4: Automated systems- I agree that any safety system implemented should be automated.
5: Bottom escape hatches would increase likelihood of that hatch failing in a soft impact and sinking the vessel. Also only works if there is easy access to wherever the hatch is, and does not help with entrapment caused by line or equipment, the most likely cause of death from sailing.
6: Failsafe design in rigging- firstly, literally impossible. Production boats designed to have thousands of miles across heavy seas still have rig failures, because if you make the rig unbreakable, the hull will break instead. There are times when it is better for the rig to break than for it to not.
I 100% agree that every possible safety precaution should be taken to protect the sailors, but I disagree with the way you've presented your data, which purposefully misrepresents the data, and I believe that the solutions you present are not safe in their own right. I do not understand how Bart's death directly corelates to fatalities involving motor vehicles? He drowned after being trapped under the hull, but was unconscious when found. I remember Bart, but you're misrepresenting what happened to him. And to compare a boat to a fighter jet is foolish. Jets' safety mechanisms are designed to eject the pilot before impact, and I have not once heard of a jet that made contact with the water and did not crumple or sink upon impact. The two rules of ensuring safety during a capsize are: 1. Do not get stuck under the boat, and 2. do not get separated from the boat. Anything else places further danger on sailors. What you bring up would not be legitimately considered by anyone who has experience with performance vessels.
Thanks for the feedback. You made interesting points.
As an engineer I have a few points:
- the analogy to car accidents is wrong, as demonstrated by the significantly lower death rate of these fat boats.
- Bart died because the boat collapsed. It collapsed because the naval architect screwed up the structural calculation. They underestimated the loads of a fast boat. The guy still practices, but he’s not the hottest one around anymore.
- similar to the recent collapse in the vendee globe. NAs push the limit of the structural strength to the bear minimum and sometimes beyond.
- capsizes actually happen more at lower speed as the boat slows down as it looses control, see recent crashes in the AC or other foiling classes.
I was hoping for some insights into more stable foil setups, rather than generic safety chat.
For insights into stable foil setups, see my other video: ua-cam.com/video/KJpkN_EFpzI/v-deo.html
A good point, even NASCAR realized that speeds were getting beyond what drivers could control and introduced restricter plates on speedway cars. Having said that, the unintended consequences of that move caused even more wrecks by bunching up the cars at 200 MPH. America's Cup racing doesn't allow electronics to control any aspect of the boat's systems and it may be that the demands on the crews of foiling multi-hulls are too high to allow foils to continue to be used. There is the danger of the sport being so pacified that public interest is lost like has happened in auto racing. It is the speed, and yes the danger that has driven up interest in yacht racing in recent years and unlike NASCAR, yacht racing poises little danger to spectators, putting the risks on those who choose to take them. Perhaps there is a solution to boat control, but wouldn't that lead to even more speed and more danger? America Cup boats are no more passenger craft than competition stock cars are family sedans. Any sort of racing will never be as safe as commuting to work or to the Bahamas. Trying to make it so may end the sport.
Interesting that you brought up NASCAR but then failed to address other safety features added to the cars and track to make racing safer. Safety features such as the roof flaps to help prevent rollovers, 5 and 6 point safety belts, the HAN device to help keep the drivers head as one with the body. Rollover cages have been part of the sport for decades.
@@drkjk I suppose I could have written a book about NASCAR's rule changes, but my point was that as the sport got safer and inundated with rules it gradually lost public interest and with it, sponsors that support it. NASCAR has now devolved into 40 cars circling a track for three hours and a huge multi-car wreck on the last lap with one of 4 or 5 well healed teams winning. Perhaps you should examine how the popularity of the America's cup has accelerated world wide as the speeds and innovation of the boats have increased. Any of man's endeavors that push the envelope of achievement involve some sort of risk whether financial or physically. Turning the America's cup back into a vanilla sort of event where one well healed team wins every time will result in it's previous status of disinterest.
People are going to die, sailed a few of the small ones. They scare me s##tless
If I may ask a question, What do you think about the Neel 51 trimaran? Dearly would like to own one.
Very spacious ships. I like that most of the living space is on one level. Definitely an ocean-class vessel. I really like that they have a dedicated engine room in the center hull.
From a safety perspective, there is a very important graph on this page: www.neel-trimarans.com/why-neel/ That shows the graph of righting moment vs heel angle. Don't worry about the magnitude of the moment.
Look at where the peak occurs. The Achilles heel of multihulls is they have high initial stability, but nothing after that, leading to the concern about capsizing. That is what the graph is showing with the Cata 44', which has its peak at 12 deg. Heel past 12 deg and its a loosing game. Monohulls typically have a peak in the range of 30 to 40 deg. The NEEL trimaran shows its peak at 27 deg. That is safety range close to a monohull, plus the stability of a trimaran. Good combination.
Thank you kindly for the reply. The one reason to look at the Neel was simply the fact all the weight is in the centre of the boat. That and the higher angle when sailing up wind. O ce again, thank you.
NASCAR, Indy, F1 did it
Something I'd be interested in seeing is an efficiency comparison between props and jet drives. When I was a comercial fisherman in the eighties there was a jet that supposedly matched prop thrust with equal horsepower and boat size. Then in later years I moved to land based work and didn't hear anything more of them. I still see jets for rivers and such, but there is a loss of thrust in them that supposedly wasn't there in the industrial version.
Stay tuned. I have a video coming out in the next few months abut water jets, and they address that issue. The short version: jet efficiency depends on speed through the water. Below 20 knots, props win every time. Above 30 knot, jets almost always win. 20 - 30 knots, jets and props are about equal in efficiency.
@@DatawaveMarineSolutions those were in the 20 kt range. They were selling them for salmon and hering fishing. Thanks for the reply.
If, as an engineer charged with protecting life, as you say, your new direction should be designing and fabricating devices to mitigate these dangers, not to mewl and bleat against the invariable and inevitable.
A belt-mountable and cost-effective miniature rebreathing apparatus, perhaps? An ultra-light helmet with automatically inflating bib, that prevents an unconscious crewperson from drowning while face down? A device that effects the crucial "first-minute count-off" after a capsize?
The KEY takeaway here is engineering gives us the tools to experiment with stability aimed at safety while maintaining speed, challenge, and FUN FACTOR. Aircraft design has similar solutions, which add stability and safety, in which the engineers knowingly sacrificed performance (just enough) to solve the problem. Think Fighter jet vs Cessna 150 - both very successful in the market place.
Interesting thoughts - sounds like your complaints have nothing to do with the actual hydrofoils themselves, but the degree of performance they push these boats to at the risk of human lives. It's not the hydrofoil concept that is unsafe, it's a sailboat that might capsize going 40 knots.
Would be interesting if the approach changed to a more "modern" design to try to get the most performance hypothetically possible out of a sailboat using modern approaches and technology. Have a crew of one or two inside an enclosed cockpit strapped into harnesses as you suggest, controlling everything remotely. I envision two crew, one a helmsman that steers the boat, focused on navigation, strategy, and avoiding collisions. The other controls the sails, and possibly the hydrofoils, using switches and other electronic controls to drive them in and out, electric winches replacing manpower. The vessel could hypothetically be single-handled as all these controls are in reach of the helmsman, though that would be an entirely different event - sort of like how there are different events for single- and two-crew sailing skiffs in the same boats. The sail and hydrofoil control could easily be automated, sooner or later the helmsman role could be too, computers being able to analyze conditions and react faster than a human ever could. The "purists" who prefer the current approach of no motorized anything on the vessel would hate this, but said purists probably aren't keen on the latest generation of wing-sail hydrofoils anyway. This approach would give the best performance of wind and water possible with current technology, and I would find it quite interesting.
to me it sounds like airfoils should not be banned but there should be improved safety characteristics, just like formula 1 did
I think you need to do comparisons to other sports before you complain about the safety of the Americas Cup. My suspicion is that it's fairly safe. Do you have any data that shows it is more dangerous than even some fairly common things like hydroplane racing, flying light sport airplanes, sky diving, or even horse back riding? It must be safer than some of the more extreme sports like wing-suit flying or cave diving.
Or, what about much more traditional sailboat boat racing -- single-handed around the world races. The Golden globe race (which still has some contestants sailing) I believe has had 5 dismastings and 3 rescues (single-handed - 3 boats in such bad shape they were abbandondon) out of 17 contestants that started. Combine that with the history of deaths in years past, and I think it must be a much more dangerous race than Americas Cup. Or how about Fastnet? Or more recently the Dauphin Island Race?
Due to the Americas cup being run inshore (or close to shore), run one day at a time (so they don't get stuck out in bad weather), and being sailed only by highly trained persons, I have a suspicion that it may be one of the safer sailboat races.
Do I know more now?
Moths are nice.
Life jackets work
Thank you.
I think audiences ENJOY RISK. Mankind has always wanted to watch dangerous sports. The danger itself not the challenge or the difficulty is the allure. Historically we had watch men fight to the death in Arenas. We enjoyed racing where there can be a fatal crash at any moment. There is huge excitement to be had knowing that the heroes you are rooting for could not only lose, they could die. When we couldn't get it from from sports, we go to the movies to expose ourselves to the roller coaster of possible and sudden death of characters we had grown fond of. Why do you think Game of Thrones was such a hit? It is what Mankind wants. I say give it to them! After all, nobody is forcing anyone to participate or watch extreme sailing sports. There is always American Gladiators and all kinds of safe, cushioned, entertainment if that is your cup of tea.
Good video. Like most sports, the risk of death eventually scares away sponsorship dollars. Hopefully, we do not have to witness more fatalities before financial backers knock the organizers in the noggin..........so to speak.
As a sailboat racer of 50 years these ac boats are death traps. I am working on a sailboat design to go 70 knots and saftey is my first concern. I need to get home safely
Sounds and looks like someone doesn’t get out much everything is dangerous.
In my opinion, hydrofoils are always dangerous if they crash into debris floating in the oceans or into coral reef towers. That is valid also for the Jet engines powerded big Hydrofoils you see today. Assuming that the Oceans have no debris is crazy if you see the garbage islands today. Any engineer tested the behaviour of those ships or racing foil cats if they loose a foil???