See also Hydroplanes Displacement Skiffs Hydroplane Sailing Yachts AYRS -Yacht Research
Sailboats of the future will look more like aircraft
http://www.macquarie.com.au/mgl/au/speedsailing/photo-gallery
This boat has broken the 50knot sailling speed barrier, the first sailboat to achieve this.
Kite Surfing
Here is a kite surfer Rob Douglas at 49knots
L'Hydroptere
...and here is the french hydrofoiler l'hydroptere at 51knots.
Sailing at speed places huge stresses upon the hull and rigging of any craft, when the vessel travels faster these loads increase and if the materials fail the crew may be stuck in the middle of the ocean. This video shows the french research vessel L'Hydroptere flying on its foils. Interestingly, this craft has reduced its overall weight by reducing the built in safety margin of materials thickness used throughout the craft, this is made possible by the incorporation of many electronic stress gauges which are read by the sailor sitting beside the skipper. L'Hydroptere has the potential to sail at speed accross oceans, however, it has a history of material failures which would be unacceptable in the open ocean.
Here are some examples of a sailing dinghy class called a "Moth" fitted with Hydrofoils
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=a8-2VZDQTvU
Vestas SailRocket
Vestas SailRocket has a new boat and has pushed the sailing speed record up to 64.45 knots!
http://www.sailrocket.com/node/148
Ok so the world speed record holder is was on a sail board, but the rest of these links are a bit bigger.
http://www.speedsailing.com/Background_records.htm
The UK Speed sailing attempt craft SailRocket
but of course it is was a sailboarder Finian Maynard who currently holds the sailing speed world record
http://www.yachtsandyachting.com/news/?article=15408
Sailing records which cross oceans are mainly held by the large multihulls.
These multihulls are very fast as can be seen in this video
The America's Cup
This international trophy dates back to 1851 when a yacht named America crossed the Atlantic and soundly beat all the British yachts into submission in a race around the Isle of Wight.
For the American's to win in UK home waters must have really annoyed all the wealthy yacht owners at that time as for the next 50 years great sums of money was invested building yachts and taking them to compete in the US-unsucessfully.
For 132 years the USA held onto to the America's Cup as each contender (selected through a "Rest-of-the-World" Race) failed. In 1983 Australia II finally won the America's Cup aided by several design innovations. The most important of these design innovations was it's "winged keel".
I have read that the famous winged keel only actually gave the yacht a 0.5% advantage, however, sailing over large distances even a very small advantage will race your yacht miles into the lead over the line.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America%27s_Cup
The America's Cup has recently adopted a different design format, moving from singled hulled boats to multihulls, this has produced very fast and athletic sailing.
Kite Powered Boats
Similar to kite surfing (but much bigger), my particular favorite form of harnessing the energy of the wind is the use of kites to power boats.
Kites fly up in the sky where the air is stronger and less disturbed, kites also have the advantage of a lower Centre of Effort, which creates less tipping force within the boat. But Kites are less able to sail into the wind and are mainly useful for sailing at broad angles to the wind direction. Sails and wings can sail towards the wind, but not directly into the wind. Only one type of wind powered craft can sail directly into the wind, this is the windmill yacht (please see AYRS -Yacht Research ).
Mr Smiths Amazing Sailboats
This is a website which maintains a list of sailing research craft and conceptual designs not yet built successfully.
http://webspace.webring.com/people/na/aerohydro/home.htm
This human powered hydrofoil "Bike" is interesting, the carbon fibre frame is built to flex when the rider bounces, this forces the horizontal hydrofoil to move up and down like a whale's tail.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=In8f0C_B9HA
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