The 6,50m long monohull, ground-breaking Magnum 747 prototype, designed and built by David Raison, was transformed into a flight demonstrator.
Posts tagged foiler
02
May 17
May 17
Maxi Trimaran Sodebo Ultim
Lorient, Morbihan, Brittany, France 47º43’42″N 03º22'16″W
Relaunched of the 31m maxi trimaran Sodebo Ultim.
02
Jan 17
Jan 17
Martin Fisher
Lorient, Morbihan, Brittany, France 47º43’41″N 03º22'06″W
PhD in fluid mechanics and a PhD in geophysics on climate predictions, Dr Martin Fischer works also as a naval architect. He is considered as one of the fast multihulls specialists: he is the co-architect of Groupamas 2 and 3. His talent has also been involved for many sailboats appendages; America’s Cup yachts, Volvo Ocean Race yachts and maxi-multihulls for solo sailors…
26
Dec 16
Dec 16
Thomas Coville / Sodebo solo round the world record
Brest, Brittany, France 48º22’47″N 4º29’08″W
Thomas Coville (FRA) and his 31m maxi trimaran Sodebo Ultim’ arrival in Brest.
Thomas Coville has successfully broken the solo round the world record, completing the 28400 nm route in 49 days 3 hours 7 minutes and 38 seconds.
26
Aug 16
Aug 16
VOILAVION
Marseille, Bouches-du-Rhône, France 43º15'42″N 5º18'40″E
Voilavion is a new foiling catamaran that is performant but incredibly stable and easy to handle.
An idea of foiling catamaran with a tilting mast came from windsurfing where at high speed surfers tend to lean the sail against the wind enabling it to operate as an airplane wing and have the board take off.
Voilavion is not only about performance and stability but also about fine lines and exceptional design, the best compromise between speed, navigation comfort and pleasure.
Photo assignment for VoilAvion.
26
Feb 15
Feb 15
HYDROPTÈRE FOR GEO MAGAZIN
Los Angeles, California, United States of America, 33º42’40″N 118º28'58″W
06
Oct 13
Oct 13
GC32s showcased at Extreme Sailing Series in Nice
Nice, France 43º41’35″N 7º16’18″E
A new chapter opened for the GC32s last week when they joined the Extreme Sailing Series for the penultimate Act of the Land Rover-backed 2013 stadium sailing catamaran circuit in Nice, France.
While the main attraction remains the Extreme 40 catamaran racing, the Series events are slowly evolving into mini sailing festivals, with multiple attractions, rather than just one. Thus on Nice’s Baie des Anges each day between 1000 and 1300, racing between the two GC32s – Laurent Lenne’s SPAX Solution and Flavio Marazzi’s Marwin – has been a warm-up act for the Extreme 40s.
Amsterdam-based Frenchman Laurent Lenne, the GC32’s creator, explains what being in Nice means: “The association with the Extreme 40s is an important endorsement: to be accepted as a good enough class to join them and be part of the spectacle. It showed what the possibilities are, being alongside the Extreme 40s, because we both race catamarans and have a similar vision. It is just different formats.”
While the boats are different, the GC32 courses are longer than the ultra-short ones the Extreme 40s sail, but they still have a turning mark immediately off the VIP tent on Nice’s Promenade des Anglais.
For both Lenne and Extreme Sailing Series organisers OC Sport, Nice has been a ‘toe in the water’ exercise, which may lead to the GC32s joining more ESS events in Europe next year.
Full throttle
Sailing on the Cote d’Azur in the autumn usually means light winds, but on this occasion crews have been challenged by 20+ knot winds and a large and short sea. Nonetheless the GC32s performed well.
“There’s been a lot of wind, so there have been some challenges out there,” said Lenne. “We were bearing away in 25 knots and the boat was fully flat going 28-29 knots and passing through the waves very well. It feels very safe. But we designed the boat to be able to handle these conditions, to be able to go through this sea state, both upwind and downwind. We are very happy with it.”
A design from New Caledonia-based catamaran guru Martin Fischer and built by Premier Composite Technologies in Dubai, the GC32 is a state of the art catamaran, with buoyant bows, but it is the double-S profile daggerboards and L-shape rudders that ensure she behaves well in stronger conditions.
As Andrew Macpherson, Chief Operating Officer for the GC32, observes: “There have been some ‘moments’ as you’d expect in 20+ knots and two metre seas, but the comment from all the crews is that with a reef in above 20 knots they feel totally safe. You could still throw it around and do your turns upwind and down. And going downwind the bows are completely clear of the water which allows you to push harder.”
Despite the lively conditions on the first two days, racing between the one design catamarans has been tight, with the starts proving vital and the boats regularly overtaking each other on both the upwind and downwind legs. At the end of Saturday SPAX Solution and Marwin were tied on 5-5.
Lenne commented: “It’s been really close – up and down all the time. We have had some really good racing, good starts, crossing each other all the time, upwind and downwind. It’s full on. Not easy.”
Mathias Buhler, an Olympic Nacra 17 catamaran sailor who stood in for Flavio Marazzi helming Marwin on Saturday added: “We were both overtaking each other. It was nice racing. Today, conditions were very tricky, especially in the first race. But we were lucky – the forecast was pretty light, but in the end only the first race was in bad conditions. All the other races were fair.”
Sunday dawned to extremely light winds. But with the GC32 only requiring a minimum of 3 knots of wind for racing, the two boats were able to compete in the 5-6 knot offshore breeze, coping happily with a difficult, left-over chop from the windy days. Where the teams were so matched in performance the previous day, in the softer breeze Marwin’s accurate positioning at the start put them at a strong tactical advantage as they cruised away to five straight victories on Sunday.
“An amazing day,” said Buhler, buzzing from his dominant performance on Sunday. “I can’t wait for the next event, provided Flavio [Marazzi] lets me out to play again!”
In Nice, the GC32 racing has been broadcast live to the internet via Livestream, which Lenne says is also an important part of the circuit’s offering. Meanwhile he is soon to appoint a Class Manager for the GC32 and is in the process of negotiating with event organisers to finalise the 2014 calendar for The Great Cup, the circuit for the GC32s.
A successful America’s Cup held in catamarans has helped. “We’ve seen a big difference since July. I had some meetings before then with people who were saying, ‘yes, maybe we’ll have catamarans in two or three years’. Now they are coming back telling me they want to move towards catamarans now! The live streaming is also very appealing. We have on board cameras and we can do interviews on the boats. That is good for the class.”
Words: Sailing Intelligence
Photo assignment for The Great Cup.
09
Aug 13
Aug 13
GC32 Cowes Week
Cowes, Isle of Wight, England, United Kingdom, 50º46’23″N 1º17’50″W
GC32s closing on 30 knots
The Great Cup has completed its third day of GC32 catamaran racing at Aberdeen Asset Management Cowes Week. Thanks to a technical issue on one of the three boats competing, the racing on the Solent has become a two boat affair between SPAX Solutions and Time on the Water.
Today was one of breaking new records for the state of the art Martin Fischer-designed catamarans. Cowes Week courses are a long way away from the multiple short race format that the teams are used to sailing. Today the Multihull Class, of which the GC32s are a sub-group, was dispatched on a course taking them all the way up the Western Solent, on a multiple leg course between Lymington and to Cowes, on a single high speed race lasting 2 hours 20 minutes. After a relatively light start to the day the wind the sea breeze kicked in, building to 17 knots and with this SPAX Solutions set a new GC32 speed record of 29.1 knots.
The Swiss Marwin team, skippered by Olympic Star sailor Flavio Marazzi, led out of the start, covering their opponent, but it was SPAX Solutions, skippered by founder of The Great Cup, Laurent Lenne that overtook on the third leg and from there never looked back. But the two one design catamarans remained in close contact all the way to the finish.
Sailing with Laurent Lenne on SPAX Solutions today were Swedish Volvo Ocean Race sailor Mikael Lundh, Kiwi AC45 sailor James Williamson and British former 49er sailor Rick Peacock.
“We had a few tricky moments when we passed a mark with the current,” says Lenne, who hasn’t raced on the Solent since he studied Naval Architecture at Southampton Institute a few years ago. “We almost ended up on top of this big cardinal mark and then at the finish a VIP boat tried to cross ahead of us and we had to duck them with our genniker up. But the racing was good. We were really constant, quick upwind and downwind. The boat felt great.”
Racing in the wind and waves of the Solent comes as a great relief following the two regattas of the Great Cup held so far on lakes in Austria and Switzerland. “The boat has been designed to sail on the sea. For me it is where it should be sailing, in current and big waves,” says Lenne.
British Olympic Tornado sailor and multihull specialist Hugh Styles has been racing on the GC32s at Cowes Week too. “It has got the opportunities of all the bigger cats I have sailed on before, but you can play with the foils to give you some more performance,” he says of the GC32. “And the performance is just electric!”
When sailing the double-S configuration foils on the GC32 are both constantly kept down, but their pitch can be altered to provide either positive or negative vertical lift. More positive vertical lift can be applied to the foil in the weather hull to help it fly in marginal conditions, but in more breeze, this same foil can be articulated in the opposite direction, dragging the weather hull down, effectively increasing righting moment.
“That gives us the opportunity to fly the hull earlier and once we get foiling we can use the foil to create grip on the windward hull, like having extra crew sitting there,” says Styles, who adds that using the foils as describe has allowed them to be hull flying in as little as 8 knots. Typically it is the bowman who constantly trims the foil.
With Cowes Week on and several top international racing boats in the Solent area preparing to take part in the Rolex Fastnet Race on Sunday, several VIPs have been for a ride on GC32, including Irish MOD70 crewman and round the world sailor Damian Foxall, who was suitably impressed with the new catamaran. “He came for a little look and was buzzing at the end of it,” says Styles. “We tried all sorts of different configurations with the centreboards and inclining the L-shaped rudder forward and back. You realise that for years and year you have focussed on everything above the water, but there is so much to be had on how the appendages work below the water.
“You see Extreme 40s downwind and they pitch a lot, whereas with this you are locked in on this constant pitch angle fore and aft – it is really stable. You feel really safe on board even in bear-aways.”
Tomorrow will be the final day of racing for the GC32s at Aberdeen Asset Management Cowes Week.
Words: Sailing Intelligence
Photo assignment for The Great Cup – www.thegreatcup.com
25
May 13
May 13
L’HYDROPTÈRE – Alain Thébault
San Francisco, California, United States of America, 37º49’30″N 122º21'12″W
Last runs for the Hydroptère in San Francisco Bay before heading back to Los Angeles, Hydroptère’s home for the Trans-Pacific record attempt.” Alain Thébault and his crew (Jacques Vincent, Yves Parlier, Jean Le Cam, Jeff Mearing, Warren Fitzgerald) San Francisco, California, United States of America.
Photo assignment for l’Hydroptère. http://www.hydroptere.com/
