. Throughout the long history of sailing, there has always been a demand for greater speed. Historically, the need for faster boats came as a result of war; piracy and the demands of commerce, culminating in the mid-nineteenth century when the clipper-ships represented the pinnacle of sailing ship design. As commercial sai l faded, so the interest in speed under sai l was taken up by yachtsmen. During the present century the pace of development has constantly quickened with great sporting events such as the America's Cup and Born in 1941, David Pelly first took the the Single-handed Tran satlantic Race hel m of a boat at the age of seven and providing the spur. has been closely involved with sa iling However, the real leap in sai ling ever since. He has been an active speeds has come in the past fifteen years participant in virtually every type of with the World Sai ling Speed Record sailing from offshore rac ing to competition which not only resulted in board-sa i I in g. speed being reliably measured for the After training initially as a newspaper first time but also created a totally new reporter he transferred to the magazine interest in pure sa iling speed unfettered Yachting World and worked there for a by any considerations of handicap or number of years, becoming the Ass istant racing rules. Editor. After work in public re lations, The author traces the history of speed and as Editor of the magazine Offshore under sail through the ages before Sailing he became yachting looking in detail at the various correspondent of the Sunday Telegraph. specia lized speed sailing craft. A Da vid Pelly's interest in the "high detailed account is given of the two speed" aspect of sai ling goes back to the Crossbows which between them have early 1970s when he helped to organize held the outright World Sailing Speed the first speed tria ls at Burnham-on­ Record since its inception. Crouch that were the forerunners of the This fascinating story, which is told present World Sa il ing Speed Record here for the first time, is partly technical competition. He is a member of the but also a personal account of the many Icarus syndicate which campaigns the very interesting people whose interests hydrofoil Tornado shown on this lie at the sharp end of development in dust-jacket and was aboard this boat on yacht design. several of her record-breaking runs. He is a member of the World Sailing Speed Record Committee and founding Jacket photograph by Guy Gurney Chairman of the Windsurfer Class The hydrofoil Tornado Icarus at speed Association of Great Britain. trials at Portland, England. Married, with two young children, he lives in Norfolk. Macmillan Nautical Books _y._ ISBN 0 333 32270 3 £9.95 net Macmillan London Ltd ~ Contents Foreword by Timothy Colman v Author's Preface I V 1 War and peace 1 2 The clippers 21 3 Ding hies and catamarans 40 4 Offshore yachts 64 5 Offshore multihulls 83 6 Hydrofoils : what and why? 103 Drawings on pages 12, 14, 16 and 28 arc from those published in Th e Search for Speed 1111der Sail 7 H ydrofoil record breakers 120 Bv Howard I. Chapelle 8 Flying surfboards (\V. \V. Norton and Con~ritimc Press) 134 9 Speed trials Copyright © David Pell)~ 145 All rights reserved. No part of this publication 10 The Portland Speed Weeks 161 may be reproduced or transmi!!ed, in any form or by any means, without permission. 11 The Crossbow story 194 I S B N 333 32270 3 12 What makes sailing boats fast? 222 First Published in Great Britain 1984 by NAUTICAL BOOKS Appendices an imprint of Macmillan London Limited 4 Lillie Essex S treet Rules of World Sailing Speed Record 23 1 London WC2R 3LF Results of R Y A S peed 'Necks, Portland I I arbou r 235 Associated companies throughout the world History of the World Sailing S peed Records 238 Standing records for various ocean passages 240 Phototypcset by Wyvcrn T ypese!ling Limited, Bristol Time and speed for a 500 metre d istance 242 Printed in Great Britain at the Pitman Press, Bath Index 243 Ill Faster! Faster! Offshore m ultihulls and has never been copied . T he 3 1ft (9·4m) trimaran Williwaw, designed and built by Californian Dave Keiper, first fl ew on foils in 1968 and sailed many thousands of miles without major problems. The main hull had a large foil forward and a diamond-shaped steering foil aft while each of the fl oats had ladder-foil arrangements built up from an 81n (ZO·S mm) chord extruded aluminium section welded onto vertical struts. This is a rather draggy arrangement but safe because it is both strong and unlikely to all ventilate at the same moment. \Villiwau.: would start to lift clear at around 10 knots and had a top speed of 18-20 knots. S he was a fai rl y unsophisticated boat with a very ordinary rig in spite of which she put up some good cruising passages. Keiper would leave the foil s down even if sailing in a big seaway when Aying was impossible because he found that the foil s stabili zed the boat. He seems to have been ahead of hi s time because no-one has built a Keiper-type boat since. There is of course a half-way house: foil stabi lizati on. The 'foiler' that sail ed at Portland fo r several years was like a trimaran except that the fl oats were replaced by foi ls which were not expected to lift the main hull One of the few offshore hydrofoils. Williwaw has never been copied although she was apparently quite successful and made several long ocean passages The handsome Sea Falcon was the second of the 'British Oxygen' class. She was badly damaged in 1983 when a ship ran her down off the coast of Spain (Patrick Roach) Atlantic record in 1984 when she crossed from Sandy H ook to the Lizard in 8 days 16 hours 33 minutes 17 seconds at the fantastic average speed of 14·03 knots. It does seem possible that catamarans will have the advantage over tris especiall y in fresh following winds : they have the edge in stability, steer better and have less tendency to broach. This cer­ tainly seemed to be the lesson of the 1982 Route du Rhum Race. Marc Pajot was first in Elf Aquitaine 62ft (18·2m) while the handicap winner by a very large margin was Mike Birch sailing the SOft ( 15·2m) cat Vital. This interesting boat was designed and built by Nigel lrens who was a member of the Clifton Flasher syndicate. If you wanted to go faster offshore (in races with no rating rules) it would seem sensible to look at the results of the Portland Speed Week competitions to see what kind of boats have done well there. 'What about hydrofoil s?' I hear you cry ! Oddly enough , there already has been a successful offshore hydrofoil which attracted remarkably little attention 100 10 1 Faster.' Fnste1.' out of the water. This layout was cop ied by Eric Tabarly fo r his 6 1ft ( 18·5m ) Pa ul Uicard wi th which he cracked the Atlantic record in I 980 (later being beaten b y Elf Aquitaine, thcn]el Services). The long. slim, easily-driven main hull is stabilized by small Aoats which have deep, 6 angled foi ls p rojecting below them . To start with at least , she was not a 1·cry successful boat, being beaten in the Transat en Double by the Hydrofoils: conventional Kelsall tri \iSD. This may have been due to a large overweight of hydraulic machinery designed to make it possible to rotate what and why? the main beams in order to vary the angle of incid ence of the foils . In her second year she sailed better but at the time of writing has yet to win a maJOr race. It remains to be seen if anyone will be bold enoug h to try to bu ild a really big Aying hydrofoil. Certainly they arc talking about it and I shall l lydrofoils can be described as little wings, working under ,,·atcr . Like be very surprised if a boat of th is type does not come out wi thin the next foils of an~ type they work by creating a p ressure differential between few years. It wi ll be very expensive to build, very tricky to sail, and o ne side and the ot her whic h can be used to pro,·ide li ft. .-\ ctually , extremely fast. I cannot say more than that! hydrofoils arc nothing new since practicall y everything that sticks out underneath a sailing boat IS a fo il of some sort. In com ·cntional boats howc1·cr, t hc:;c foils come in the form of keel or rudder and the force thev produce IS u sed to pre1·cnt the craft sailing sideways or to cause it to turn. \Vhat is unusual is to usc hydrofoils to lift the hull of the boat up out of the water so that it no longer relics on b u oyancy. The first and m ost obvious question is: why should one want to do this? In orde r to find the answer we ha1·e to look into the general question of resistance or drag of 1·arious types of boat. Taking first the case o f the perfectly CO IWCn tional 'displaccment' hull, in which buoya n c~· is wholcly responsible for supporting the weig ht of the c raft, we find that resistance to forward m ovem ent rises approximately as the sq uare of speed.