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I built a (soft water) sail boat that went just under three times windspeed, called the Windrocket. Ice boats and land yachts can do about 8 times wind speed. I doubt that the A2 creates enough lift vectored in the right direction to gain enough range to make up for the weight of the hoop and the unfavorable aerodynamics on bad points of sail. But the first one would definitely work as a land yacht.
On almost all of these craft that go faster than the wind, the true wind must come from roughly abeam to go fastest. (This puts the apparent wind well forward of abeam.) The machine that Niky showed, however, actually goes faster than the wind when going directly downwind. My boat would do better than windspeed down wind (as will an iceboat) on a velocity-made-good basis. (I'd sail 45 degrees off the wind for a while, tack and sail to the other side of straight downwind. I'd travel 1.414 times as far as straight downwind, but would go double windspeed over the water.) The downwind sailer in Niky's pic doesn't need to tack. Not all that fast on other points of sail, but a neat trick.
I've toyed with the idea of making a practical landsailer that would run on north south tracks in the midwest. It could haul freight from Chicago to New Orleans.
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