Hobie Cat Forums

Hi,

Wanted to suggest that Hobie look at producing a lightweight foiling cat.

The current Wild Cat is a great high performance boat but requires a complex rig and spinnaker to achieve its performance. It's also not up there in performance with the very fastest cats and the new breed of foilers.

I personally think there's some call out there for a simply rigged very high performance 2-3 person small foiling cat.

I'd like to see a simple easy to rig cat of maybe 14-16 feet.

A look at foilers such as the Moth class, RS600 and R Class Skiffs all show the potential of Foilers but Moth aside lack simplicity, and the Moth of course is a difficult boat to sail and doesn't allow for more than 1 person.

The new AC 72's in the Americas Cup also show how sailing is ever heading towards foiling due to the extreme performance that can be obtained.

I believe there's great potential therefore for a light weight 14-16 foot catamaran with a Moth style oversize fully battened and cammed sail board rig for a main and a large Jib up front making for easy rigging and sailing (no spinnaker but instead huge sails in area as standard) and folding foils.

The key I believe is to simplicity as many casual sailors would like a fast boat but one that's easy and fast to rig with no complicated wiring to atach or spinnakers to handle.

A-Class airborne. The sailor Flying in that image is Raphael Censier, a French young kid, 19yrs old.
http://raphael-censier.jimdo.com/

Hobie Cat has been-there-done-that with foils... with the most successful foiling product... the Hobie TriFoiler.




The TriFoiler was a point and shoot speedster for sure. Relatively easy to sail while on the foils... not so much when off them. We have looked at foiling cats as well. There is nothing simple or inexpensive about a foiling sailboat. The TriFoiler was expensive and more expensive when you broke something. Look what happened to the Oracle AC 72. Over and out. Foils require care and proper conditions. You hit something or ground the boat... it gets expensive real quick.

So, foils as a recreational or broad market feature... I don't think so.

_________________
Matt Miller
Director of Parts and Accessory Sales
Hobie Cat USA

There is nothing cheap about the Flying Phantom. Even the F-18 legal version of that boat is about $4000.00 more than the Wildcat. The Flying Phantom is price not listed on the web site. With the larger carbon beams , s-j daggers and carbon mast, j rudders I'd guess another $5000 minimum.

Just have a set of curved or l boards made for your favorite boat. Add some rudder winglets and go flying. It has been dome to a tiger.

_________________
Rich Vilvens
F-18 5150
R.Vilvens@yahoo.com
http://www.sailblogs.com/member/f-185150sailing/

I don't think that's a production boat though as I understand the class rules for the A class specifically forbid the use of foils.

Yeah I'm aware of the Tri_Foiler but it was hardly a mainstream boat with its 3 hull design and technology and foiling has moved on a lot since then.

The Moth is now one of the world's fastest growing sailboat classes and has been completely re-invigorated by the introduction of foils that are both simple and work well.

I personally think the future lies in foiling and there's a market out there fore something that goes 2 up and keeps everything tough, fast and simple.

Doesn't look very efficient. The thing basically pops out of the water, rides up until either the foils stall or ventilate and then drops back into the water. I can't imagine it is faster than a non-foiling a-class...at least at this point.

sm

It's not bad for an 19yrs old kid who built it himself.

Absolutely.

However, the point is that developing a foiling cat (as the OP is requesting) is likely to require a lot of expense and complexity and the end result may not even produce a boat that performs better than a traditional displacement cat.

In any case, its certainly not a path that I would expect Hobie to be taking anytime soon.

sm

Yeah we have seen those curved foils before and they don't appear very efficient.

I see the AC72's have gone for a more traditional approach with a little curve. I think the idea of the curve is to match the changing angle of incidence caused by a cat when it reaches speed in the water on 1 hull. I think thats the advantage of the single hull here in that those boats tend to stay flat until they reach foiling speed at which time they foil flat.

These are the Moth foils:



and these are the AC72 foils:



The daggerboard foils being a 1/2 "T" with some curvature.

From the looks of it the A Class sailor may be losing lift because of the lack of a wing piece on the bottom, although I'm no design expert.

BTW in any mass produced boat, I think the foils need to be folding as I doubt the average sailor wants the hassle of a waded launch and would want easier recovery as well.

Here's a 3R Class foiling which shows 2 up can be done:



Albeit without the complication of multihull.

Looks very smooth.

Lately every multihull has been destined to flight. Record setting proas, Hydroptere and the new America’s Cup foilers have lead the way. But how does the average beach cat sailor experience constant 20-30 knot speeds without joining the nautical rock stars? Enter C-Fly. UK based passionados of C-Fly, tank tested and developed a set of foils that will provide a large beach cat with stability and ultimately with enough lift to enter “flight mode”. The C-Fly project is the baby of two ex-Tornado sailor/very high powered engineers – Chris Edwards, who’s day job is as Aerospace and Defence Director of Frazer-Nash Consultancy and who’s past jobs have including working for the marine division at Rolls Royce while Richard Varvill is genuinely a rocket scientist in his role as Technical Director of Reaction Engine, a company that designs advanced space transportation and propulsion systems.Our friends across the pond are now working on an ocean going model. That should be fun…\

http://www.c-fly.co.uk/vid_cfly_action.html

_________________
06 getaway -- always remember, man with both feet in mouth have no leg to stand on.

I agree with Hobie Matt With enough money and time you could make a beach cat foil however any contact with a rock or log at high speed would probably be a total loss
One thing I like about the 16 and even the 21 is their ability to sail over wet sand with no damage. I kind of like to see the hulls blasting thru the water
As for the AC72 I guess they are ok however I liked the 45 LV Cup racers more
In a way it would be great for Hobie to make a 21SE all carbon hulls and mast
with foils and it could be done however who could buy a 50 grand beach cat that breaks down all the time. Does it really matter if you sail at 25 MPH or at 35 MPH.
Thinking out loud
Former Hobie Admiral Gary

Alsone:
My take on foils is why complicate things more than needed just to get out on the water. The cat hull form is already the most efficient with very little drag. If I were to invest my time wanting to go faster, I would invest my thoughts into things like large more efficient soft wing sails. You can get much larger wing sails onto a cat because there is much less side force using wing sails trying to tip you over.
There is a problem with most foils that people don't talk about much, and thats the double drag from both the hull and the foil when the boat is not foiling. This is difficult to overcome, if you can come up with a simple retractable foil design, that doesn't increase drag when just out sailing having fun, then be able to just turn them on when the conditions are right, and you're already up to foil speed when you deploy them, then you might have something worthwhile. I would be deploying them maybe twice per season in Florida.
I built foils for my TI, and they work, but the conditions where I can use them are once in a blue moon (around Florida). Foils on a Tri like the TI are an advantage because the hull is very inefficient to begin with. But with a cat, the hulls are already extremely efficient (drag wise), so there is a deminishing return on all the work designing and constructing foils for a cat, especially in an area like mine where you might get the proper conditions to use them effectively twice a year. My time is better spent just keeping the boat simple, easy and fast to rig so you can spend as much time as possible enjoying sailing and being out on the water. And who cares if your going 25mph or 35 mph on a cat it's a wild ride either way (it's not like you have to get somewhere).
I spent about a year learning all about foils, then designing and building them only to be very dissapointed in how often I was actually able to use the darn things, and also realizing how much work it would be for me if I ever hit anything and how much damage it would do to my boat if I did. I have a friend with a Trifoiler, I watched him hit a sand bar one day at speed, I didn't see him out with it again till the next year (puts things into perspective). I noticed alot of the trifoiler people wear helmets, now I know why.
Just my 2 cent
Bob