News Around the World
When speed flows through the veins… The late Peter Hull’s foiled trimaran experiments of the 1960s (inset) pre-date by five or six years the similar experimental tri-foilers of Eric Tabarly and the other pioneers including the ‘father’ of L’Hydroptère, Alain Thébault. Simon Hull is also no slouch in the speed sailing stakes, purchasing Michel Desjoyeaux’s Orma 60 (above) then developing it further with input from A-Class champ and multihull designer Pete Melvin. Adding a T-foil rudder helped fix any Imoca-style arse dragging…
All of this was intended as a proof of concept towards a much
more sophisticated machine he planned to build to make an attempt at crashing the 50kt barrier. ‘Dad went across to Australia at least once that I am aware of to have a look at some of the Australian speed record boats,’ Simon recalls. ‘Over the years he read all the magazines about various guys around the world who were starting to play around with foiling boats. He would give his sometimes jaundiced view on what was good about it, or where he thought they had got it wrong.’ When the America’s Cup boats began embracing foiling with the
2013 catamarans in San Francisco Peter Hull watched them with interest and was sharp enough to be highly critical of their rigs and sailplans. ‘The first thing he said was the aero drag was ridiculous.’ By the time the current monohull class made its appearance in
Auckland for the 2021 regatta Peter’s mental faculties had sadly deteriorated and he paid less attention. But he would have been delighted to see them nudging the 50kt mark. More particularly, he would have been justly proud at how the ideas he expounded in the 1970s for his never-built ultimate speed machine were ratified in the state-of-the-art machines created 50 years later. Steeped in this atmosphere of feverish creative energy, technical
curiosity and limitless imagination, Simon Hull’s own sailing career almost inevitably leaned towards high performance. His succession of yachts began with a rebuilt P-Class dinghy, Lasers and a Paper Tiger catamaran, before progressing through a series of ever-larger keelboats, every one of which underwent significant, sometimes quite radical modifications to the underwater appendages. The NACA ‘bible’ so familiar in the Hull household was put to good use on new rudders, keel fins, trim tabs, lifting keels, canting keels, canards and even horizontal foils. Having to fit in sailing with building a successful business and
family commitments, Simon was always time-constrained but reckoned that, alongside optimising sails, the quickest way to get a boat going faster was to play with the underwater appendages. ‘And I have never been scared of doing that!’ Nor did that ferment slow down when he progressed to multihulls
with the purchase in 2009 of the VPLP-designed Orma 60 Géant, previously campaigned by French round-the-world ace Michel Desjoyaux. Renamed Vodafone, the big red trimaran became a familiar
28 SEAHORSE
record- setter on the New Zealand racing scene. Memorable among its many achievements was smashing the Auckland-Fiji Race record. Despite drifting in total calm for eight hours shortly after the start, Vodafone completed the 1,110-mile route in 59.5 hours at an average speed just under 19kt. Initially Vodafone had a set of C-foils, which enabled semi-foiling
but with a bow-up attitude. At the same time Emirates Team New Zealand was developing its AC72 catamaran for the 2013 America’s Cup Challenge, famously blasting up Auckland Harbour on its previously secret foils. The foiling genie was fully out of the bottle and the Cup would never be the same. American multihull designer Pete Melvin was working with the
Kiwi Cup campaign but came out for a sail on Simon’s trimaran. ‘He suggested two modifications: a T-rudder and a complete redesign of the aerofoil fairing around the main beam and junction with the trampoline. ‘We made both those changes and the improvement in the
performance was incredible, gaining about 1.5kt at the top end over 30kt. Before the change we used to drag a rooster tail behind us shooting up about 3-4m in the air. Afterwards, there was no rooster tail – the boat was really level. In offshore conditions in a decent swell she would come down waves with all three hulls out of the water, just flying on the leeward foil and T-rudder. Fantastic.’ From there the next logical step was full foiling. Simon travelled
to Lake Garda to compete in the inaugural 2018 GC32 World Champion ship, where he was up against superstars of the America’s Cup and of the French offshore scene. Sailing against such illustrious competition as a first-time privateer, Simon and a bunch of Kiwi young guns fresh out of the 2017 Youth America’s Cup proved their mettle by winning a race, finishing 10th overall and 3rd in the owner- driver category. Still on a steep learning curve, later in the same season they went one better by winning one of the owner-driver GC32 events in Europe overall. In every respect those and other GC32 events represented a big
step up. But then again maybe not such a big leap for somebody who grew up with high-speed foiling as a constant topic of conver- sation at home, starting with that home-built affair with his father on an Auckland North Shore beach approaching 60 years ago. Ivor Wilkins
IVOR WILKINS
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104
