Dont worry Antoine XYZ is on to it.

choco said..
Hold the Outright record for making it onto the Buy Swap and Sell pages

Macro the best thing about foiling is it is not about speed.
Lets hope it stays that way.

mathew said..

Cocky2 said..

choco said..
Hold the Outright record for making it onto the Buy Swap and Sell pages

Macro the best thing about foiling is it is not about speed.
Lets hope it stays that way.

The fastest sailing boat is SailRocket.

Which uses foils.

Macro is talking about windsurfing foils.

seanhogan said..
Nicolas Goyard clocked 33+ on 500m it seems

but for us mere mortals anything close to 25/2sec is like lightspeed !!!!

yeah i hit 22 knots and i couldnt slow down or turn jumping off didnt look like an option either

I remember several discussions about this years ago. Most ideas were hastily discounted because of one perceived roadblock or another.

I always keep an open mind.

History usually proves the naysayers wrong too. For instance I remember people ridiculing Hot Sails Maui's early 1990's design for a wide luff pocket racing sail....mmmm....now what happened to racing sails......?

If Sailrocket did 70knots all on foils, I see no reason windsurfers can't also go fast on foils. No doubt much smaller foils but foils nonetheless.

Like proper speed sailing it won't be for everyone and that's just fine - but seriously - what's wrong with going fast and why would anyone want to "keep foiling slow"?

Simon100 said..

seanhogan said..
Nicolas Goyard clocked 33+ on 500m it seems

but for us mere mortals anything close to 25/2sec is like lightspeed !!!!

yeah i hit 22 knots and i couldnt slow down or turn jumping off didnt look like an option either

I agree, 22 knots is the speed where you are thinking holy s*^#t im going very fast, what happens now? I also get that feeling doing 33 knots sailing conventionally.

Most, if not all sailing craft use 'Foils". On a conventional windsurfer, we call them a 'Fin', or a centreboard.

Sailrocket 2 is quite unique, and it is nothing like "Foiling' windsurfers, or any other sailing craft that I know of. The biggest difference is that it does not use any foils in the water for 'Lift' (to hold it up out of the water). It's main foil in the water is actually holding it DOWN. Sailrocket 2 is also partly a planning craft. The front fotation and steering pod 'planes' at top speed (even if it appears to be barely touching the water) and has a 'fin' type foil for some directional control.

The largest factor limiting top speed with current windsurfer 'Foiling' designs is the fixed amount of surface area under the water of the 'foils'.
That is, a planing hull, (eg. windsurfing speed board) rises higher in the water and planes on a decreasing surface area as it goes faster. This reduces drag to some degree. With current design Windsurfing 'foils', there is no reduction in surface area and therefore drag reduction in more limited as speed increases. One would have to employ much smaller 'foils' for faster speeds,with the attendant difficulty of rising on the foils to start.

Some foiling craft have employed a foiling setup that auto reduced the foil surface in the water as speeds increased. Hydropter is a good example, and it has indeed, well exceeded 50 Knots. Perhaps a craft that employed a windsurfing type stance and rig, and this type of reducing foil area might be faster???

sailquik said..
Most, if not all sailing craft use 'Foils". On a conventional windsurfer, we call them a 'Fin', or a centreboard.

Sailrocket 2 is quite unique, and it is nothing like "Foiling' windsurfers, or any other sailing craft that I know of. The biggest difference is that it does not use any foils in the water for 'Lift' (to hold it up out of the water). It's main foil in the water is actually holding it DOWN. Sailrocket 2 is also partly a planning craft. The front fotation and steering pod 'planes' at top speed (even if it appears to be barely touching the water) and has a 'fin' type foil for some directional control.

The largest factor limiting top speed with current windsurfer 'Foiling' designs is the fixed amount of surface area under the water of the 'foils'.
That is, a planing hull, (eg. windsurfing speed board) rises higher in the water and planes on a decreasing surface area as it goes faster. This reduces drag to some degree. With current design Windsurfing 'foils', there is no reduction in surface area and therefore drag reduction in more limited as speed increases. One would have to employ much smaller 'foils' for faster speeds,with the attendant difficulty of rising on the foils to start.

Some foiling craft have employed a foiling setup that auto reduced the foil surface in the water as speeds increased. Hydropter is a good example, and it has indeed, well exceeded 50 Knots. Perhaps a craft that employed a windsurfing type stance and rig, and this type of reducing foil area might be faster???

This^^^

and of course some sort of lobotomy.

A few of the foilers have done 30+ in some crazy winter fronts over here, but the only way to reduce wetted surface (putting aside changing foil size) on the current windfoil config is to go up till youre riding the bottom of the mast, something youre trying to avoid when its windy. And once youre at the top of the world thats as much as you can reduce wetted surface by.

We'll have to change foil configurations and reduce foil sizes and shapes to go faster. Im pretty sure those early reports of foils beating slalom gear around a slalom course were either misrepresented or wildly embelished.

boardsurfr said..

Subsonic said..
Im pretty sure those early reports of foils beating slalom gear around a slalom course were either misrepresented or wildly embelished.

I must have missed those. I've seen reports about foils beating formula and slalom gear in courses that include upwind legs, like triangle courses and "around the island" races. I've seen a couple of such races where both formula and foils were out, and it was no contest. Of course, formula boards have a lower top speed than slalom boards, but upwind and downwind angles tend to be more important than top speed in the races.

Of course a foil is going to beat slalom kit around a course with upwind legs. Hence why i said it must have been misrepresented. I've heard slalom gear has been beaten down a slalom course with some degree of regularity, which must be chinese whispers. Maybe the racing being talked about took place in marginal slalom conditions, dunno.

ZYX said..
I just had max gps speed 30 km/h on 40cm fin and 40km/h on a foil. 5 m sail, same time, same board. Wind was just enough to get on plane on 5m sail but just right for the foil. 1 out of 10 days wind is strong enough for fin to win vs foil in speed.

Admirable. Going that slow with a 40 cm fin is not something that is easy. Refusing to rig up to a proper sail for the wind strength, however, is somewhat more common.

What ever floats your boat man.

You do you.

Kite foils are already going more than 40knts
With enough skill, guts & development of specialist speed foils it's only a matter of time before a windsurfing foil tops the speed ranks
It may not need to be gale force winds like with a fin on due to their high efficiency.
Yes it will be more dangerous than on a fin but that won't stop the brave.

gorgesailor said..

tonyk said..
Kite foils are already going more than 40knts
With enough skill, guts & development of specialist speed foils it's only a matter of time before a windsurfing foil tops the speed ranks
It may not need to be gale force winds like with a fin on due to their high efficiency.
Yes it will be more dangerous than on a fin but that won't stop the brave.

Of course it is possible, & likely to be in the future. But not nearly there yet. Currently the kite record is at 55.49kts so just about as much faster as windsurfers on fins vs foils

George i think you're the man to crank it up

ZYX said..

There is a specific engineering reason for the speed limit when increasing sail size does not help any more.

An excellent point. And the same principle actutually applies to slapper Windsurfing, but it is not always obvious.

The silence is deafening