Extreme Sailing Series

[khiemtran]

Last weekend, Sydney hosted the final of the Extreme Sailing Series. Regular readers may remember that last year I was lucky enough to get a ride on one of the boats. This year, I was confined to the shore, but the boats themselves have taken a leap forward.



The Extreme 40 catamarans of last year have been replaced by foiling GC32s - slightly shorter, but able to lift themselves up out of the water using hydrofoils on their rudders and daggerboards.



Combined with the short-course "stadium" racing format, this makes for some spectacular sailing...



Sometimes, the boats seemed to be under amazing control as they flew over the water.



Other times, they weren't in control at all...







Over the last decade or so, foiling has come a long way. Once, sailing boats were divided between "displacing" hulls (which pushed their way through the water) and "planing" hulls, which skimmed over the top. Now, the division is really between "foiling" and everything else.

Comments

[puddleshark.livejournal.com]

Fabulous action shots!

Have you ever sailed on one of those hydrofoil boats? Is there a trade-off in stability and steerability for speed?

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Foiling is still way above my pay grade. The boats are certainly manoeuvrable, sometimes scarily so, but they seem to need a lot of effort to keep them stable. And there's also a lot to re-learn as they behave quite differently in some situations. The Australian team (in the bottom photo) was helmed by a veteran 18 foot skiff sailor (formerly considered the absolute pinnacle of small boat racing) and he gave an interesting interview where he described some of the differences in handling and how he had to re-learn what to do in different situations.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Wow, whoever said a sailboat had to sit on the water! These ones seem to behave like skipping stones, jumping over the surface!

Beautiful colors on the Roads & Maritime one.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

The interesting thing is that foiling is getting cheaper and cheaper now. You can buy conversion kits for common single handers like the laser and foiling kite boards (which you can think of just a spinnaker and a foil with the rest of the boat deleted). We really are entering a new era.