Luc
I have very limited practical experience with kites but I have been observing one of the more experienced kiter's progress. He is close to having something that will work over a wide range of wind and boat headings. Still a long way from assessing durability.
For cruising purpose the kite will require automating flight altitude control and maybe automatic helm for azimuth control. There may be some sort of mechanical set up that can control altitude but I expect it will require electronics.
A kite with inflatable leading edge can be relaunched from the water but requires apparent wind above 8kts to fly reliably. Lightweight kites can fly in winds as light as 3kts but will not relaunch once on the water.
Luffing conventional sailing boat has no consequence other than loss of speed. If a kite collapses it ends up in the water and then needs to be retrieved and relaunched. So a kite that requires 8kts of apparent wind to stay in the air has a very narrow range of operation in wind under 12kts particularly when trying to sail off the wind.
Big kites involve big forces. Handling these forces require good size winches and a reasonable amount of power. Some of the weight saving in removing standing rigging is offset by the weight of winches needed to reliably launch and retrieve the kite and possibly to control kite altitude.
Rick
On 2 Jul 2017, at 6:42 pm, lucjdekeyser@telenet.be [harryproa] <harryproa@yahoogroups.com.au> wrote:The theory of driving with a kite is seducing. The practice seems still pretty much in the R part of R&D. Kite boat systems from Germany has at least a seducing web site with product offers demonstrated in clips of actual sailing. How real does this look to those of you with actual first hand experience? Thank you.
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Posted by: Rick Willoughby <rickwill@bigpond.net.au>
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