The A-class cats are well worth keeping an eye on. They are the most developed of the normal catamarans. They have allowed foils, but these are quite different from Moth Technology. The Moths have gadgets to self level and control the angle of attack of the foils fairly automatically. The A-class cats are attempting to do it without the gadgets, requiring the foil shapes only with some input from crew position to control the ride level and attitude. So far the result of the foiling cats vs the non foiling has not been decisive as boat speeds have only been improved a few percentage points. There is also the question that the cats have two centreboards and two rudders, so have potentially a lot more drag than the Moths. Moths sail at very similar speeds to the A-class cats at this point. Most of the footage of these boats flying at speed have been in practice racing when not on a race course. They can fly nicely when you can choose where to go .. but when the racecourse tells you where you can go it is a much more difficult problem. Those of us who have sailed performance boats know this .. we can scream along to get to the start line ... but usually when on the race course we are always waiting for the wind to come in at a few extra knots or change angle by 20 degrees to make the boat hit its stride. As the event continues it will be interesting to see if the foilers have continued their improvement to become decisively better than lowrider cats.
Posted on: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 08:41:11 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015