> 50k hours of design, 200k hours and 100 people to build<p>Wow, this is an enormous amount of wealth and human effort spent on a sport that I'm barely aware of. I'm curious about the economics of it; is there enough of a spectator base to make this profitable, or is it mostly just a few ultra-wealthy patrons?
The French public pays attention to it, as do offshore sailors in general, but it’s a tiny “market” of eyeballs. My Naval architect friends who don’t sail also find it interesting from an engineering perspective and Gitana puts out good content, albeit in French, so I’m using the translator a lot.
The programs and races are mostly sponsored by large French banks and dynastically wealthy families, I assume there is some overlap there…
It’s like formula 1 but less eyeballs and more French prestige.
A vast majority of the skippers and crew of these yachts these days are French, with the occasional Brit thrown in there.
It's an unholy circle jerk of rich people's pet projects and back handed corporate R&D. Don't try and make it make sense. It doesn't. It may be partially self funding through viewership and other but it's still a money fire no matter how you cut it. Think of it like space exploration circa 2005 only funded by rich people and interests rather than by nation states. Every now and then something trickles down into "normal use". Plastic braided rope is a good example.
I grew up watching racing thanks to my grandad's interest but all with all the tech involved in these high end machines it's like watching jetplanes or something mechanical, maybe it's because I can't connect anymore to what's happening on a human level. I love the thrill of a fast boat but it's lost me on the accessibility that I remember from the 80s and 90s. I remember how crews and captains would be celebrities, now it seems it's a tech game?<p>Edit: it's a beautiful machine, regardless. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Ruh3hASFyGw" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Ruh3hASFyGw</a>
Have you watched sail gp or the recent America's cups. The racing is as incredibly exciting to watch and the skills of the sailors is a huge part of it. I'd argue that technology was always a huge part of sailing, but compare that to many of the "old" America's cups and now you'll see the racing is so much more exciting (largely because while technology is at the forefront, the rules make boats technologically advanced, but also comparable enough to each other).<p>I'd also argue that sailors (and particularly skippers) are still celebrities (within the sailing community). Now where you're right, is that that these boats are not accessible to the average sailors anymore, but it is because they require so much skill to sail.
> Now where you're right, is that that these boats are not accessible to the average sailors anymore, but it is because they require so much skill to sail.<p>I'd argue the money is a much larger factor than it was in the past, but in the past it was quite expensive as well.
Amazing. I saw the introduction of 'high tech fabrics' into sails up close when I was working with/for TD Sails in the Netherlands. The owner was - besides a very nice guy - into materials technology and math and the combination was quite interesting. He was also a visionary, spending a lot of money on CAD when everybody else was still laying out sails by hand and attempting to automate the fabric cutting stage. This was just when water jets were becoming feasible but I don't think he ever managed to get their cutting table to work.<p>Theo Dokman more or less predicted that the sailing industry and the aircraft industry would converge in terms of high tech while the customers were still asking for 1880's style 'brown' cloth sails for the traditional Dutch fleet.<p>He would have been super happy to see this, this (and some predecessors) validates pretty much everything he talked about. I'm absolutely amazed at the specs of this vessel, if you take into consideration the length of the hull and the speeds it can attain and in what kind of sea states it is able to do so. The difference between 'theoretically possible' and 'let's build it' here is so large that I wonder what the total bill for putting this out there was.<p>Note that it hasn't gone hydroplaning yet (apparently the surfaces are not yet fitted), but they're slowly working up to it.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjiGtwd8q4Q" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjiGtwd8q4Q</a><p>around ~1 minute the interesting bits start.
There is indeed something beautiful about traditional boats but this is a different kind of beauty. And 40 knots in 3 metre waves? Wow! Like F1 cars don't drive like road cars the automated control means this is not a boat but something else wonderous.
I love me some hulls out of the water but I have a quibble with the term “flying” when there’s still something in the water and taking everything out of the water is dangerous, even of it is only a tiny fraction of the boat… have hydrofoils always been spoken of as flying or is that more recent hype?
They call it flying because foils are flying through a medium, generating lift, just as the wings of airplanes do.<p>A big difference is that these wings lift the main body out of that medium (water) into a much less dense one (air), hugely decreasing resistance.<p>And yes, this doesn’t lift the boat completely out of the water, but airplanes do not get completely out of the medium they use (air), either.
In the context of a planing catamaran, flying refers to allowing the windward hull to lift out of the water in order to minimize wetted surface area. These boats, especially the Hobie 16, were quite popular in the 70s and 80s.
At some point it's more a "weird shaped airplane flies close to the water" than a sailing boat. It sure does look super cool tho.
Thought it said Gintama for a moment. The boat looks pretty neat though.
Does the tech advancing yacht racing transfer to industrial or social uses?
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