Reply to :: Catamaran Sailboats at TheBeachcats.com

Welcome anonymous guest

Please Support
TheBeachcats.com

Forums index page

Reply to: Catamaran foiling technique -- Whisper catamaran

Message body

[quote=martin_langhoff][quote=DamonLinkous]
Welcome to TheBeachcats.com, I've been following all the foiling catamaran development news that I can. Is this the same Whisper developed in the UK? Is this the only website?
[url]http://whispercatamaran.weebly.com/[/url]

On that site they have a video of sailing with large T-Foils on a boat with a standard crossbeam, but the pictures of development show a mold and drawings where the boat has integrated crossbeams.

Can you tell us more about your boat? Are you involved in the development or marketing of it?[/quote]

Thank you for the warm welcome! For some reason I didn't get emails on this traffic (maybe I didn't click the right checkbox), so it's been a few days.

Yes, that's the cat we're talking about. If you follow their Facebook page you'll see a cat being built and shipped almost every week, seems like foiling cats (Whisper and S9) are on fire in Europe. I understand there's two Whispers in the USA so far.

Answering a couple questions I've seen in the thread...

- The two crossbeams are integrated, it's surprisingly rigid and light.

- Yes I looked at the S9, and had several positive interactions with the distributors in Texas. However, my family wants to come sailing too, that's two grownups and a 6yo boy (who confidently sails solo on a Taz). The S9 is damn tempting, but a very solitary boat. Also, the Whisper has 3 sails! I can only sail a single-sailed boat for so long before getting bored.

- Trailing wands vs leading wands -- I understand the reasoning, but honestly I think it's overblown; you really don't want to be adjusting for the wave, as it's way short-lived (leading or trailing, it's a losing game); you want to be adjusting for average ride height, and once you look at them in action (in dry) it's clear they dampen plenty, and don't adjust all that much except for extreme positions (boat not foiling, boat foiling high). And that's as it should be.

One of the important tradeoffs wrt trailing vs leading wands is simplicity -- and the trailing wand mechanism is damn simple, and housed entirely in the foil itself.

(I'm not an authority on this (-: just my observations, in the sense that trailing vs leading wand is a multifaceted story, with tradeoffs involved where sailing it beats theorizing...)

The boat arrived a week ago. We rigged it mostly to completion, but it took a while as we were shorthanded and inexperienced. I've sailed (then taught) optis as a kid, then sunfish, lasers, hobiecats, Dart 16, all sorts of keelers (20f to 60f), cruising cats, even tall ships, but somehow never had to bring up a mast shorthanded. Took a few more tries than expected, with a few, um, crash-landings.

Weather was shitty and we had to tear it down before sundown, so we didn't touch the water. Joy and frustration all around.

Our next try at rigging it up will be in 2 weeks' time; and hopefully I'll have the boat in a location where I can leave it rigged. Getting the mast up, rig tensions right, etc is an unforgiving job I don't enjoy.

It dances on the dolly, it's so light. Once it's all rigged up, it'll be a joy to launch it with one crew. From the feel of it, I can probably launch it solo with a bit of practice.

So far, my only overall concern is that having those T foils seems treacherous. Can't approach a dock on the side as you'd normally do. Some things will need re-learning. Some docks and ramps I won't be able to use.

As someone noted in this thread, you can damage the wands pulling up the foils. Manual recommends pulling up the foils only when stopped.

@bacho - thanks for the recommendation, yes I see everyone strives to go flat flat flat in all the videos. I had picked up on that, but having a clearly worded recommendation is fab, thanks.

How will I fare, with no formal coaching? Hard to tell. I've sailed a Dart 16 lots on the wire; that's the closest thing I've done. Will report back on successes and bruises.

If anyone's in Miami, happy to trade some time on the boat for some help rigging it up, and on your boat, whatever it might be. I already have a Moth sailor who's agreed to teach me some Moth foiling :-)[/quote]

No HTML tags allowed (except inside [code][/code] tags)