Quote:
Originally Posted by Old Tele man
...likewise, we haven't seen another wind-sail boat like Jacques Cousteau's CALYPSO have we?
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I'm guessing by wind-sail you mean wing-sail? There have been quite a few wing-sail boats (also called rigid airfoil boats, etc). My Windrocket was one.
The
Windjet page on softwater boats shows a few others.
One that had a little commercial success was the Planesail:
I built an RC version (about 3' tall) of a boat vaguely like the Planesail, and had intended to commercialize it after commercializing the Windrocket. Like the Planesail, its wing was self-trimming (whereas the Windrocket was manually trimmed... and sailed much like other fast sailboats -- just faster and with more of a Jeckyl/Hyde personality.) In mine, the self-trimming was strictly aerodynamic, so that as you steered the boat under the wing, the wing would maintain a set angle of attack with the wind. The RC boat could be quickly stopped or reversed, both of which are very hard to do with a soft-sail boat. The Planesail added a layer of automatic control to the aerodynamic control, so that, for example, as wind sped picked up , the angle of attack would be reduced automatically to prevent capsize, etc.
Where rigid wings are indespensible is in very fast sailboats. In slow boats (most typical cruisers and racers) that cannot sail at multiples of windspeed, it is easy enough to get any desired amount of lift (used as thrust in a sailboat, because the "wing" is on end) just by making the sail big. But in very fast boats, the limiting factor becomes the ratio lift over drag... and it is there that a rigid wing has a large advantage. In the Little Americas cup, if has been decades since a soft sail boat was competitive.
