Left: there is cool and contemporary accommodation below (Part I) but the exposed steering position reminds you that the Eagle 53 is primarily a daysailer. But that gives those driving this project the room to experiment more aggressively than would be possible on a bluewater design… for now. Using the initial C-foils performance is already proving exciting and manageable, but by the time the first phase of development is complete – probably next winter – these unusual but logical curved T-foils (above) should be built, and once installed development can begin on a fully automated flight-control system. At that stage expect some of the Ultim teams to pay an interest – at least one of which are already working on a similar system but tailored for an even smaller crew than on the Eagle…
Voilà, the wing can now be left up
without worry. With a square-top mainsail hoisted on the trailing edge the combined hybrid wing and mainsail cross-sectional shape form an efficient asymmetric airfoil. With adjustments to the wing rotation a wide range of cambers can be quickly achieved to add power or to depower. Reefing the mainsail adds further to the Hybrid Wing’s versatility. A carefully designed package of headsails
add to the wide range of sail area combina- tions that are possible. A fully battened self- tacking jib is flown from the forestay; for- ward of the forestay is a roller furling screacher that flies from a masthead halyard and tacks to the end of the bowsprit. This dramatically increases sail area for VMG downwind sailing and light-air reaching. Our next step was to test the hybrid
concept in the real world. The first proto- type was built by Vinnew Pard in a garage- style environment for my 21ft Sizzor trimaran. Sizzor had a few years of fine- tuning under the belt with its conventional carbon rotating mast sailplan so made for a useful benchmark. We put the new hybrid sailplan through its trials at my home in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. Our initial conclusions were ‘green
light’ positive. Compared to the proven control rig, the hybrid configuration pointed higher upwind or could hit the same angles but at higher speeds. Off the wind the ability to add camber with addi- tional mast rotation produced amazing power which translated to more speed and lower angles sailing VMG downwind. Then one morning during the pro-
gramme, at 0400h, a Florida thunderstorm marched through my backyard. I heard the whistling wind and in a panic jumped out
of bed and ran outside in my undies to see if the Hybrid Wing was OK. To my sur- prise, right behind me was Tommy wearing the same attire. We could have stayed in bed… the test wing was feathering in the gyrating winds without a problem. Despite our initial excitement we were
now forced to hide our prototype proof of concept in a warehouse until a patent was approved. Once the critical papers were received and securely filed away we decided it was appropriate to raise the stakes, trialling the Hybrid Wing in the Everglades Challenge in March of 2014. This is a 300-mile adventure race from
St Petersburg through the Everglades Park finishing in Key Largo. Sizzor is a single- handed high-speed home-built trimaran that produces enough adrenalin to often allow me to finish the course without sleeping. The 2014 race was no exception. After
a long and fast first night I was hit the next morning by some vicious thunderheads that caused me to lower all sails except the Hybrid Wing. When the huge downdraft puffs hit I just released the wing rotator and the foil instantly feathered directly into the wind. As the puff steadied in direc- tion I pulled the rotator back on a little and blasted along until the next severe downdraft arrived. Not only did I finish first out of about 100 starters but I set a solo course record of 1d 11h 18m. In hindsight I’m not sure I could have
survived the thunderheads even with my conventional rig double-reefed.
Getting serious Fast Forward Composites went from dream to reality under Tommy Gonzalez’s leadership and the guidance from master boatbuilders Wolfgang Chamberlain and
Vinnie Pard. While the first Hybrid Wing was still being tested Tommy had also pur- chased a building for Eagle’s construction in Bristol, Rhode Island. He then assembled his build team, their
first task being to convert the building into a clean-room manufacturing facility complete with ovens, autoclaves and the associated equipment required to build a composite boat as advanced as the Eagle was going to be. Meanwhile, the Eagle design team assembled by Paul Bieker were close to having the final CAD files ready to start mould building. This certainly remained an evolving
process… As the Eagle took shape it grew steadily from 45 to 53ft. Different foiling packages were considered. Testing began to develop an early experimental com- puter-assisted foiling system that was installed on an existing Stiletto 23 cata - maran. Fast Forward Composites were already living up to their name. That said, some on the design team were
still far from convinced that the Hybrid Wing was ready to jump from the 21ft, 200lb solo Sizzor to the 53ft foiling Eagle. Yes, we had learnt a lot, resulting in plenty of evolutionary ideas and refinements fol- lowing the Sizzor test programme… but we still had some convincing to do. So, in the summer of 2015, Fast Forward
Composites in collaboration with Gunnar Salkind and myself designed and built the tooling for a larger trial rig, this time for Caliente, a 40ft ProSail cat. Construction was meticulously undertaken by Hall Spars. Some of the next refinements included:
l A square-top wing profile with associated ‘top-hat’ bearing assembly to project the shrouds and forestay outward to a wider top stance.
SEAHORSE 41
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