Technology
Coming to a store near you ... the best of all worlds
We have long been huge fans of the Skeeta production foiler, fast, light and... user friendly! Now Skeeta and their builders Cobra International have something for those (lucky) kids too
Since 1999, when Dr Ian Ward and John Ilett independently put centreline foils on International Moths and revolutionised the sport of dinghy sailing, some of the greatest innovators in small craft design have been chasing the Holy Grail. The challenge was to develop a foiling dinghy that delivers the same levels of performance and exhilaration while also being less fragile and complex than a Moth, much less difficult to sail and affordable enough to suit the average sailor’s budget. Jim and David French, a father-and- son team from Melbourne, Australia realised they’d cracked it in 2016 with their Skeeta design, a beautifully simple flying scow. The next step was to find a manufacturer for large-scale production and the best candidate was Cobra International. Unless you’re into board sports, Cobra International could well be the biggest boatbuilder you’ve never heard of. Based in Thailand with about 100,000 square metres of hi-tech production facilities and a highly skilled workforce of 2,500, they currently produce about 80 per cent of the world’s windsurfers, large numbers of surf and SUP boards, and
78 SEAHORSE
carbon composite components for larger craft. On a tour of the Cobra site you would easily come across boards and parts for Hobie, Phantom, NSP, Starboard and more. Outside the marine industry they’re a major supplier of prepreg carbon parts for premium automotive and motorcycle brands and are also active in various other sectors including electric boards, civil engineering, UST drones and even robotics.
While other designs have addressed some of the Moth’s inherent drawbacks, Jim French says the Skeeta ‘has gone further to solving most of them'. He and David have also created a scaled- down version designed for kids, the Nikki. Thanks to their relative simplicity, both boats can easily be rigged and launched in 15 minutes, but the most obvious difference between these and most other foiling dinghies is that they have a scow hull form, rather than a narrow skiff shape. That makes them inherently more stable and forgiving. In displacement sailing mode with the foils unclipped from its centreboard and rudder, the Skeeta is suitable for novices, almost as
Above: the Skeeta foiling scow is
designed to offer all the thrills of an International Moth without the violent spills, thanks to its unique fully articulat- ing centre- board foil which makes the boat easier for average sailors to master. With Cobra’s efficient
production, the Skeeta is also a lot more affordable than most other foiling dinghies
easy to sail as a Topper or Laser and yet remarkably quick. In foiling mode it’s nearly as fast as a cutting-edge Moth – you can expect around 18kts of boatspeed in 8kts of breeze and up to 30kts in optimum conditions – but it’s much easier to handle. Its unique, fully articulating and freely pivoting foil on the centreboard gives a gentler ride than other foiling systems while greatly reducing the risk of violent crashes and pitchpoling. It also avoids the need to adjust the rudder foil’s angle of attack while sailing. ‘It’s still relatively unknown that the flap on a foil causes lots of problems,’ Jim French explains. ‘With a flap, the front part of the foil is always in laminar flow but if it’s angled downwards as the boat’s crashing, it will keep pulling the boat downwards until the bow goes underwater and the boat does a somersault. With the whole foil moving instead, it can save itself from a crash. With our system, as soon as the wand senses the bow going down it flips the foil up and the whole foil is lifting. If the foil becomes ventilated or breaches the surface, the hull will just touch
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