In December, we posted about a new breed of ocean racing sailboats with foiling daggerboards, which look somewhat like Salvador Dali’s moustache. Safron Sailing Team recently posted a video to explain how these foils work. From an engineering and design point of view, the new developments are fascinating. Whether movable foils, articulating keels, and the other wonderful but complex and expensive innovations on these offshore racing sleds will translate into usable technology for the average sailor remains to be seen.
In a world where a spinnnaker often challenges the less-than-fully-devoted sailor (me, for instance), for most of us foils seem like another efficient way to become YouTube fodder. Of course we’re also in a world with an endless appetite for humor so maybe that’s not a bad thing.
Meanwhile we have the search terms “spinnaker knockdown” to keep us amused. 🙂
See, I can’t even spell “spinnaker.” Heh.