I was reciently interviewed by High Octane One Designs for their site, the full interview is available here.

After a really great fun handicap race today I am now fully comitting to building a new boat. And the first step of that commitment is to put my current boat up for sale. I am asking $2900, the full details are as follows:

• Homebuilt axeman style design


• Carbon Kevlar construction


• No leaks !


• Thorpe carbon mast and pocket luff sail


• Alloy wings and boom.


• 2 centreboards, one with cover.


• 2 rudders (One t-foil and one regular), one with cover.


• No hydrofoils (they are going onto the new boat)


• Trolley.


• Boat cover (Covers foredeck and front half of the boat.

Now I just need to get moving on the replacement.

In my last post I talked about how the wing dragging was being caused by insufficient angle of attack on the main foil, well I was wondering how the heck that could have happened (again). To setup the angle we rolled the bottom of the boat upside down and set the hull up so it was level at the centerboard case.

As it turns out, that wasn’t the right thing to do. The centerboard position of my boat is a little further back than the current Hungry Tiger, as the measurements were based on the ones that Andrew Landenberger was using successfully at the time. The fact that the case is further back, means that I have not set the foil angle relative to the waterline, but relative to a point on the curve at the back of the hull.

This has resulted in a setup error in the order of somewhere up to five degrees in the wrong direction. At the nationals last Christmas, it must have been something like 10 degrees the wrong way ! No wonder VR is hard to get out of the water !

The diagram above shows exactly how the error occurs. The blue line is parallel to the waterline of the boat, whilst the red line is the one we used to set the boat level and configure the angle of the main foil. You can clearly see that there is a significant amount of setup error that has occurred, especially when we are trying to get around +ve 2 degrees of lift on the main foil.

A good thing about this is that after the issues at the nationals, I have deliberately left things in a semi-finished state do I can make exactly these sorts of adjustments on the boat. This also shows that if you are planning a foil conversion or building a new boat getting the angles correct (or having them adjustable) is absolutely critical.

Well today was another completely disheartening day sailing the “semi-foiler” that I have. After installing the new gantry, I managed to get out for a few runs before the race. With little success I asked resident foiler test pilot Luka Damic to jump aboard an help sort out the set-up. The results were … interesting.

Luka after the first couple of runs came back in and hesitated before he spoke; “You aren’t going to like this, it feels like a fat boat. It’s very heavy and it just is not behaving like the new boats do.” Luka knows that I would rather hear the truth than some sugar coated answer, even if it is hard to take, and I think his assessment is bang on. The wings for my boat are double sleeved alloy and way something like 15-18KG by themselves, so this doesn’t not come as a huge shock.

The boat did foil though. Luka managed to get it out 5 times, however the results are anything but pleasing. To get VR flying you need to seriously hang right down the rear to get any altitude. The hull is simply not designed to be sailed like that, and the wings drag in the water, which slows things down. When the boat does get out of the water, the flap isn’t reducing the lift as intended, so the boat will rise until it ventilates and crashes back down.

So what are the solutions? To solve the weight problem, a new low freeboard hull is required with carbon wings. I will need to get this happening sooner rather than later, budget permitting. Whilst I could add carbon wings to the current hull, I am not too keen to invest anything more in the current boat when I am planning to build a new one in the near future.

To solve the wing dragging problem, I think the best approach will be to add some more angle of attack to the front foil. One possibility is that our measurement was incorrect and we are still running with the angle of attack slightly the wrong way. That is an easy fix with my current setup.

To solve the height adjustment problem, I will need to go back to the geometry of the wand, and change the setup so that it reduces lift more aggressively. With more angle of attack on the main foil, I should need less flap anyway.

I also had a minor problem with the new gantry, which caused a DNF, but it can easily be fixed. I must say though it was much easier to adjust than the previous version, and looks like it will do the trick.

I have finished constructing the new gantry to replace the one that destroyed itself last week, so, assuming there are no installation issues, I am good to go tomorrow once it is installed and the angle has been sorted out. The only thing that I didn’t manage to do is to get it covered in a spot of black paint. In the end I went with an almost identical design to the last one, as the filled box style simply won’t suit the back beam arrangement on Virtual Reality.

The new developments I was planning will have to wait until the next boat.