Can the E25 have foils?
What do you all think?
I think the El, and the E25 were aimed at Tornados. But the
foilers are coming. And you got to admit, that looks cool.
Might be a cool way to get HP's out there. I solicit your
thoughts.
You CAN put foils on anything, the real
issue is SHOULD you put foils on a particular type of boat. Proas
are designed to change bow for stern while shunting, and the foils
on the boat have to deal with this frequent change. This makes
adding lifting foils a lot more complicated than in traditional
unidirectional sailing craft.
Proas attain their speed and efficiency through narrow hulls,
light weight and relatively powerful rigs due to the high righting
moment from the wide spacing between the vaka and ama. This
"formula" for speed works well and is both cost, structurally and
material efficient.
Adding lifting foils adds stress and structural demands that
forces the basic proa design to become tremendously more
complicated with higher cost materials and sophisticated
engineering design. And then you add the very high expense of
multiple lifting foils & control systems.
Although lifting foils can add incredible speed in optimal
conditions, boat like proas aren't sailed on one point of sail on
perfect days where the wind meets the requirements to foil. My
point is that for 90% of the time you are sailing a proa, lifting
foils would be a liability not an asset. Upwind? I doubt lifting
foils would help. Straight downwind? Nope - no foiler can foil
going straight downwind. Low wind days? Foils would just be a
literal drag. High wind days? Foils could quickly become
uncontrollable due to ventilation and cavitation.
The though of quietly blasting along on lifting hydrofoils is very
seductive and makes for good dreams. The reality of living with
paying a lot more, restricting your sailing to perfect conditions
and being slower than other boats for a lot of your sailing time
makes the dream impractical for me.
I watched firsthand Fred Eaton and Steve Killing's first attempts
to build a foiling C-Class competitor. It DID foil but it wasn't
able to be competitive with their non-foiling C-Class race boats
over the complete range of race conditions at the time. They
mothballed their first foiler and won the Little America's Cup
with their displacement hull C-Class cat. Subsequently foilers
have become the C-Class standard - but C-Class cats do not have
any of the design complications that shunting proas do - and they
are pure race boats sailed only in competition.
You CAN put foils on a proa, but SHOULD you? I think putting
lifting foils on a proa "breaks" the magic formula of high speed,
low cost, structurally efficient design and simple operation
across a wide range of conditions. My opinion only - everyone
gets to make their own decisions.