Have they said how the ride height is controlled? Is the entire arm-thing articulated to change the hydrofoil angle or is there just a trailing edge flap like on a moth?
The biggest concern I've heard from others is that foil sticking out to windward at deck level will be scary for guys on the other boat!
this concept is pure vaporware, the ships will cost a half billion to build at current design specs batteries, motors, grinders, computer controlled stablizers, all kinds of whack high tech expensive nutty stuff going on in this design. By race time, it will be completely different no idea what will happens but it's gonna be all about politics.
Well, one could argue that vast amounts of money are also thrown into big sports, motorsports and all, developing high tech expensive stuff, and it's no different, just in a nicer domain, high performance sailing. Hopefully some trickle down effect in the future. And engineers would love being involved in those challenges.
Sure, with big money comes big politics, but here again, nothing too unusual...
I crewed for one day of racing on Columbia. Beautiful boat, and fun teamwork, and tight racing against other 12m class boats of that vintage.
Awesome...in my early teens my friend and i built 2 1/2 foot long to scale fiberglass models of 12m class boats and sailed them in the bay at our boating club
We use to follow them with rowboats...they were so elegant to watch heel over and slice the water
Mine was a copy of Gretel and my friend was of Intrepid
We also built 2 1/2 foot long Wing masts catamarans models...they were quite fast...but not as graceful to look at