Why haven't more dinghies adopted hydrofoils, for low-flying speed?

lw395 said:
How things have changed in the 40 years I've been sailing.
Lasers were the fastest boats in my first club, where the main racing was Solo, Enterprise, Mirror and British Moth.
British Moth is a very different animal to a moth, only thing in common is the hull length!
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I love this video of the first mark rounding at last weekend's Bloody Mary. Gives you an idea of the huge gulf in performance between a conventional performance dinghy and a well sailed Moth. 350 entries...a clean sweep Moth 1,2,3. :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrL8iWFUauU
 
As you say Iain, a huge difference between Moths and older designs, side by side - like watching jets pass Cessnas. I suppose the Moth is the ultimate singleminded speedster...although it has necessarily dropped almost everything I like about boats, to achieve that pace.

I'm not a Laser fan either - I was just curious if the action of a light boat climbing onto the plane, could be exaggerated with foils to the extent of keeping the hull aloft, thereby going faster than it could have in the water...

...I know that's obvious - but if one fitted clumsy 'leg' hydrofoils like some ferries use, to a Laser hull, then towed it behind a speedboat, I wonder how fast it'd have to go before the hull (with a 'rider') went airborne?

I recognise that it all stems from lightness.
 
Dan

You do ask some daft questions! So you want to know if you bolted **** foils to a **** boat how fast would it need to go to fly. Probably a specific fraction of what a car would take off at if you bolted some wings that looked a bit like ones off an airliner uses, on to it's roof...

I've no doubt the Laser would foil earlier than a Moth if you made the foils big enough...but not exactly scientific is it?;)
 
Iain C said:
I love this video of the first mark rounding at last weekend's Bloody Mary. Gives you an idea of the huge gulf in performance between a conventional performance dinghy and a well sailed Moth. 350 entries...a clean sweep Moth 1,2,3. :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrL8iWFUauU
Click to expand...

Brilliant video, I haven't seen them side by side with slow boats before, I have to get one. Especially seeing as the Laser race yesterday was so dull I lost the will to live. But that was a lot down to the shifty patchy lack of wind. Next week we want a good 25knts please (message for any wind gods reading this)
 
Iain C said:
I love this video of the first mark rounding at last weekend's Bloody Mary. Gives you an idea of the huge gulf in performance between a conventional performance dinghy and a well sailed Moth. 350 entries...a clean sweep Moth 1,2,3. :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrL8iWFUauU
Click to expand...

Great video.

Reminded me of this comparison test between 49er, moth and kite in Miami


The 49er didn't even get a look in. I was expecting the moth to win cause quite frankly kites are not that great upwind, but somehow kites manage to look fast even upwind.
 
Actually the RS600FF had quite a few things going for it at the time...

- Cheap - pick up a decent second-hand 600 for about £2k, add foil kit £2.5k and you're foiling for less than a third of a Moth...

- It carried weight - to be competative in the Moth you need to be sub 85kg. That's now when the weight has risen... IIRC it was a sub 80kg sailors boat back then, and Si Payne was doing most of the winning at about 65kg, so it gave us bigger-proportioned guys a bite at the cherry.

- At the time, the 600FF was about the same speed as the Moths once up on the foils, but probably took about 2-3 knots more breeze to get up. Loads more power because of trapeze and wings (and trapeze didn't make it any more difficult, nor any easier, as long as you were skilled in the art), but of course not as efficient as not custom designed for the purpose. Of course as the Moths continued to develop whilst the 600 stalled, they moved on and the developments have now given it an extra 5 kts on all points of sail (my estimate only, could be more).

- The big plus from my POV was that the foils were retractable. With the Moth, everything is bolted in place (for very good reasons I'm sure) and you just carry the boat in the water, swim it out until you can right it without damaging something! The 600 was more like a conventional dinghy... bolt the foils down and avoid half-drowning during the launch process.

The trouble with the 600 was that it wasn't allowed to be a bit of fun for under £5k. Some rich buggers came along and first of all wanted a new sail which was best part of £1k, then they wanted all carbon versions which doubled the price and immediately made all the other ones obsolete.... the writing was on the wall. Probably a good thing to be honest as it would now have looked slow against the newer Moths.

But it was BLOODY GOOD FUN whilst it lasted!!!!
 

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Puffin_Billy said:
The RS 600FF...was BLOODY GOOD FUN whilst it lasted!!!!
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And it still looks fantastic. It may be an illusion, but the helms look relaxed, while Moth helms always look like it's their first time downhill on a skateboard...

...with good reason, no doubt. :eek:
 
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