Faster Sailboats

I may never have been on a sailboat in my life, but I am fascinated by the physics behind their operation. They must operate simultaneously in two mediums, as both an airfoil and a hydrofoil. Plus, they are probably one of the “greenest” vehicles ever conceived.

Which makes you wonder why we don’t use them more.

Not only are they dependent on the weather, but they are also considerably slower than an airplane. I’ve been thinking about how to make them faster, and my inspiration came from a book about airplanes – The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed by John McPhee. This book documents, in popular language, the experiences of a group of entrepreneurs and engineers to build a hybrid airplane/airship (the Aereon) that would have a small engine and use helium to improve its lift characteristics.

Why not do the same thing with a sailboat? Especially since most of the drag comes from the “wetted hull”, it would make sense to lift the hull out of the water as much as possible and leave only the keel submerged. Ship designers have been doing this for years with cleaver hull designs intended to lift themselves out of the water as they get up to speed, but the Aereon design suggests another way – helium.

What seems to make sense to me would be to build a trimaran and fill the outriggers with helium.

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