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Kiwi led world speed record


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Manukau Harbour beside the seweage ponds, rather than in them. :eh:

 

Whangarei: The reaches up to the western / southern side = Shell & Portland Reaches

 

Dunedin: Aramoana Spit

 

Bluff: Harbour by the smelter and north of Bluff.

 

All are subject to wind availability but have shallow sheltered water, with not much obstructions or blanketing hills; but sometimes the hills can funnel the wind down just when and how you need it.

 

Afterall, you only need say 500m + starting / finishing areas.

 

OR

 

:roll:

 

Anywhere that floats your boat :shh:

 

 

Let's not forget Mangawhai harbor used to be amazing on a windsurfer in a honking south easterly wth both feet in the back footstraps and since the bar has repaired should be about a mile and pretty close to glass smooth

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there was a guy at Dury in Auckland who had several dead pw5's he may well contact you.

 

I havent heard from the chap in Drury yet - but was hoping to.

See what I mean about the possibility of using a glider pod for pilot pod / control centre / outrigger mounts ?

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most interesting thanks. Glider pods and such. Re the kites, yes, always a possibility; I have been around 2 / 4 line kites for years, and dragged myself across bays behind a 12 foot Flexifoil kit 16 / 17 year ago .. Great power, and ability to hold C or Effort very low down, i.e. mininal 'tipping force' .. Thanks chaps. Didnt know about project kiteboat. All good stuff Thanks.

 

I shall contact the glider chap. Thanks .. Seems an opportunity to be able to have the basis for a 'ready made' pod .. maybe ..

 

Still hoping to identify a 'software modelling person' .. Cheers DHRB

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So there’s at least two ways of approaching a speed record design.

1. Improve on an old design. Evolutionary rather than revolutionary –so rule of diminishing return. That is to say for the resources put into that design so far, it reaches a certain speed. Significant effort will be needed for modest speed increases. Although it is certainly the fastest and probably cheapest approach to get sailing fast –so a valid approach. Probably also would give you a good test bed for the years of experiments ahead..

 

2. Blank sheet of paper. Takes longer and more prone to failure (learning the hard way). Maybe more likely to reveal radical ideas early, less likely to lead to ‘group think’. Will certainly open your mind to different options. Basically identify the functions required of your design and then brainstorm feasible conceptual solutions and put them in competition with each other, the ideas with merit will naturally emerge/evolve. Sounds easy, eh…LOL For example: a function of the craft is vertical lift to stop it sinking. Vertical lift can be provided by hydrostatic, hydrodynamic, aerostatic, or aerodynamic mechanisms (or a mixture of these). Then theres driving force: hard sails, soft sails, hard wings , soft wings, etc. Theres righting moment… Lateral resistance… directional stability and so on. For this approach it is almost a case of not doing any kind of similiar vessel study as that will lead to group thinking about how to solve the problem, ie you’ll do what everyone else has done.

 

Either approach will benefit greatly from some structure in the project. That will come from a design brief. A good design brief will give quantified and objective guidance through the design process. Unfortunately your design brief will probably not be finished until the design is…

 

So, to start with write one paragraph saying what you want –a design statement. Eg “break the xx speed record by 2014 with a nz designed and built craft.” be specific.

Turn that into a list of performance criteria, be specific. Eg: target speed, class rules, budget, size? Construction material? Also identify any constraints like must fit in 40’container, built in a shed in eketahuna, minimum sea state, class rules etc etc whatever. Limit your performance criteria to <10. 3 or 4 is fine.

The criteria should be quantifiable things, like speed, or cost (which will be the two most important things….) Although things like complexity can also be subjectively quantified. There are simple methods to rank the criteria. So this process will result in a ranked and quantified design brief.

With that you are in a position to objectively measure candidate designs against each other with your goal in mind.

 

Now, have you heard of the ‘design spiral’? – basically thus: identify and determine your design criteria, design your thing and then compare it against the design criteria. Refine the design criteria and then refine your design, and continue in ever decreasing circles until you reckon your done. It’s a very iterative process, filled with trial and error. Developing multiple concepts at once is very time consuming and may not lead to any eureka moments, but it will lead you towards a good solution that suits you. The multiple concept approach can be used for the whole craft or just trying to design a component.

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You were talking about using computers for performance prediction (VPP). I say all the following to give you an idea of where you are, or what you are asking.

The tools basically all work on the same principle:

They are algorithms that link and calculate various equations, assumptions and approximations together with an approximation of your craft design.

The actual performance prediction has basically two steps that iterate to find equilibrium.

 

The first step estimates all the component forces involved. For example: for a single degree of freedom (1DOF) calculation there is all the bits of the boat that contribute to, say, forward motion –estimate them all, and then there is all the bits of the boat that contribute drag (in the opposite direction to forward motion).

 

Now, the second step is to find equilibrium between the two opposing forces at a certain speed (the process is iterative). That is to say at a certain forward speed there will be a certain drag. The drag will be equalled by the forces contributing to forward motion. Change the speed and the forces change.

So that example was just one DOF, an actual boat has 6 DOFs. –x,y,z translation, and also rotation about the x,y,z axes , although using 4 DOFs is reasonable (ie ignore sinkage and trim).

So clearly the accuracy of the result is heavily dependent on the accuracy of the various estimates. The estimates of the forces can come from just about anywhere, from CFD, test results, published data, rules of thumb, prior experience etc etc. In general the more ‘standard’ a component is the more accurate the estimate will be. For example it is easier to estimate the drag on a standard NACA section bulb than some arbitrary shape. Likewise it is easier to estimate performance on a standard low speed monohull sloop, than it is for some weird and wonderful high speed craft of dubious morality. ie the highly non-standard craft will basically require a customised performance prediction module –probably some piece of software rebuilt from the ground up. Then you finally build something and learn that, actually, your estimates were wrong and so back to square 1 (1.2)

 

So all in all taking an engineering design approach is quite an imposing project if the alternative is to grab some likely looking and local components, bolt them together, and go sailing to see what happens... where is the middle ground? I guess thats one difference between millions of $$ for R&D and not millions of $$ -

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Just to shine some light on this subject (having a fair amount of professional knowledge of the field)

 

No-one is going to give you millions to do this. You might get to 10's or 100's of thousands but even that will be a push - there is just not sufficient public interest to generate the necessary sponsorship.

 

Waves are the big enemy - your hydrodynamic parts effectively need to be a certain size relative to the waves to operate efficiently so if you have small budgets you have small boats and need somewhere with small waves. Surprised no-one has mentioned NZ's pre-eminent spot of Glenorchy in Queenstown where you get high winds (30kt+) coming down the dart river valley and dead flat water often several times a week (basically whenever there is strong rain on the west coast). Lake Pukaki (Mt Aoraki) is potentially even better with 3-4km of dead flat water on a reaching course to the dominant strong wind direction.

 

Achieving ultimate speed is about doing many runs - 100's to 1000's. You will never get there if you can only do a couple of runs per day, particularly if you are campaigning in a spot that only gets good wind once a month. You need frequent 30-40kt winds and a craft that can do 50-100 runs per day to get in one where everything is just perfect. That's why windsurfers held the record and why kitesurfers do now even though specialist speed sailing boats probably have higher speed potential - they are just too slow at cycling through runs, too prone to damaging themselves when on the limit, and too slow and expensive to fix or modify.

 

It also costs a lot of money to have 'official observers' at the course to sign off on the accuracy of your speed runs, this can eat up significant portions of your budget.

 

Forget conventional hydrofoils for ultimate speed, they absolutely do not work for small craft over about 40-45knots due to the onset of cavitation, unless you are very large like hydroptere (gets away with higher speeds due to higher water pressures several metres down that delays onset of cavitation). You will never get the budget for boats that big unless you can find an interested billionaire or get a big name celebrity involved. Realistically it is a small planing craft with supercavitating fins or nothing.

 

Also forget sailing rigs and wings - far too expensive and easy to break in a machine that is on the limit. As well as entailing all sorts of problems with creating and controlling the necessary righting moment, this fundamental problem is what leads to the boat destroying high speed crashes that plague speed sailing (which is what ultimately sinks all such projects), but isn't an issue for kites. Kites really are the only answer for realistic budgets, but need to be bigger and stronger than standard kitesurfing kites.

 

Fortunately you have one of the premier traction kite designers in the world living in Ashburton (Peter Lynn) as well as his son (also Peter Lynn living in San Fransisco) who was involved in the kite sailing project mentioned up-thread http://project.kiteboat.com/ They are both engineers who are very interested in speed sailing. Peter senior has been designing and building sailing and kite-sailing craft for 35 years, invented the kite-buggy, and invented 3 types of ground-breaking traction (motive force) kites, one of which (The Arc) is the highest lift to drag and most scalable traction kite in existence. Also did 30kt on a crude self built hydrofoil cat over 20 years ago. They are both close friends with land sailing speed record holder Richard Jenkins who also worked at the kite sailing project just mentioned. I have known these guys for years and they would be the sort of people who could break 60knots quicker and cheaper than anyone else in the world, but would still need a budget of probably $1-200k to develop the boat and get the campaign done, probably less if others were doing the boat and fin construction.

 

Finding the money is the hard part.

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Just to shine some light on this subject (having a fair amount of professional knowledge of the field)

 

No-one is going to give you millions to do this. You might get to 10's or 100's of thousands but even that will be a push - there is just not sufficient public interest to generate the necessary sponsorship.

 

Waves are the big enemy - your hydrodynamic parts effectively need to be a certain size relative to the waves to operate efficiently so if you have small budgets you have small boats and need somewhere with small waves. Surprised no-one has mentioned NZ's pre-eminent spot of Glenorchy in Queenstown where you get high winds (30kt+) coming down the dart river valley and dead flat water often several times a week (basically whenever there is strong rain on the west coast). Lake Pukaki (Mt Aoraki) is potentially even better with 3-4km of dead flat water on a reaching course to the dominant strong wind direction.

 

Achieving ultimate speed is about doing many runs - 100's to 1000's. You will never get there if you can only do a couple of runs per day, particularly if you are campaigning in a spot that only gets good wind once a month. You need frequent 30-40kt winds and a craft that can do 50-100 runs per day to get in one where everything is just perfect. That's why windsurfers held the record and why kitesurfers do now even though specialist speed sailing boats probably have higher speed potential - they are just too slow at cycling through runs, too prone to damaging themselves when on the limit, and too slow and expensive to fix or modify.

 

It also costs a lot of money to have 'official observers' at the course to sign off on the accuracy of your speed runs, this can eat up significant portions of your budget.

 

Forget conventional hydrofoils for ultimate speed, they absolutely do not work for small craft over about 40-45knots due to the onset of cavitation, unless you are very large like hydroptere (gets away with higher speeds due to higher water pressures several metres down that delays onset of cavitation). You will never get the budget for boats that big unless you can find an interested billionaire or get a big name celebrity involved. Realistically it is a small planing craft with supercavitating fins or nothing.

 

Also forget sailing rigs and wings - far too expensive and easy to break in a machine that is on the limit. As well as entailing all sorts of problems with creating and controlling the necessary righting moment, this fundamental problem is what leads to the boat destroying high speed crashes that plague speed sailing (which is what ultimately sinks all such projects), but isn't an issue for kites. Kites really are the only answer for realistic budgets, but need to be bigger and stronger than standard kitesurfing kites.

 

Fortunately you have one of the premier traction kite designers in the world living in Ashburton (Peter Lynn) as well as his son (also Peter Lynn living in San Fransisco) who was involved in the kite sailing project mentioned up-thread http://project.kiteboat.com/ They are both engineers who are very interested in speed sailing. Peter senior has been designing and building sailing and kite-sailing craft for 35 years, invented the kite-buggy, and invented 3 types of ground-breaking traction (motive force) kites, one of which (The Arc) is the highest lift to drag and most scalable traction kite in existence. Also did 30kt on a crude self built hydrofoil cat over 20 years ago. They are both close friends with land sailing speed record holder Richard Jenkins who also worked at the kite sailing project just mentioned. I have known these guys for years and they would be the sort of people who could break 60knots quicker and cheaper than anyone else in the world, but would still need a budget of probably $1-200k to develop the boat and get the campaign done, probably less if others were doing the boat and fin construction.

 

Finding the money is the hard part.

 

Fully agree with all this.

 

I Spent time in Ashburton at the Lynns over a xmas break while Pete jnr was first starting to experiment with crude foils.

 

Interesting stuff.

 

Pete Lynn Snr has experimented with all sorts of strange craft over the years testing hulls.

planning cats with A class rigs (which I broke when a shakle let go) - planing trimaran with steering done from a front central hull (complete with tornado rig)

 

Most of this was all to experiment with portable hull forms for traction kite use.

 

I posted some links a while back.....There has got to be merit in pursuing traction kiting for a "pure" speed sailing attempt (ie not on a board- cool as that is- it's a different class to a "proper boat".

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OK Thanks for your post. Much appreciated. So, back to designing something, which takes the TriFoiler - the blue one - a step or two further; do you know anybody who has the smarts, who would be helpful in designing such a craft please ? Does anybody know anyone ?? Cheers. DHRB

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