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.
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.
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.
Note that it hasn't gone hydroplaning yet (apparently the surfaces are not yet fitted), but they're slowly working up to it.
> while the customers were still asking for 1880's style 'brown' cloth sails for the traditional Dutch fleet
That is missing the point a bit. For quite a lot of fleets, keeping the tradition alive is a very important aspect of sailing/racing said boats. The other aspect is that for these "one design" classes, the rules, including what the material of the sail is, are meant to keep the old boats competitive and, probably the most important aspect, not end up with pay-to-win situations.
No, you are missing the point a bit: the brown fleet was what brought in the bulk of the bacon, but meanwhile everybody working at TD was far more interested in the future of sailing than the past (case in point: Maurice Paardekooper's experimental kevlar sails for his laser class boat), but the high tech future of sailing was - and still is - a complete money pit without much in terms of practical applications. Of course they made also lots of conventional sails, spinnakers, mainsails and so on for regular sailing vessels, but that was cut-throat and there were many providers of such sails.
The brown fleet was a money pit as well but for the providers of the sails (I believe these days mostly Gaastra but possibly others, Gaastra was going more and more in the direction of sports goods) it was still a money maker.
The key here is that Dokman was amazingly knowledgeable through his long term interaction with the people running the brown fleet vessels, who - as you pointed out - also love to have an edge in their races and TD sails were amongst the best there were at the time: absolutely legal with respect to techniques and materials used but meanwhile engineered with the best software that we could lay our hands on or build ourselves.
So you could be a recreational or for-hire vessel on most days and a potential race winner if you decided to enter a contest, and they looked spectacularly clean. That gave us the best of both worlds, a step-up into high tech while still mostly using traditional materials and techniques.
Edit: Theo died a while ago and I still see TD sails every now and then and it always reminds me of a great time. I didn't have a house back then (housing shortage in NL is not something recent) and slept above the sailmakery :)
(not the traditional 'sword' visible on the side, a large wooden structure on a hinge that could be lowered for stability, these vessels are extremely shallow because they're made for inland waters and shallow 'Waddenzee', the typical draft is less than a meter).
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?
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.
They claim simulations estimate ability to stay aloft at 30 knots in 3 meter waves. WOWWWW. My stomach churns for multiple reasons imagining that, and the pitchpole flip at the end. Urgh.
I’m not sure it’s mentioned anywhere here, but it’s likely that this boat will set the world’s record for speed around the globe — if it circumnavigates, and it is hard to imagine it won’t.
I’m not sure why, but I find that fascinating. No other boat, motor or nuclear reactor, can go around the world as fast as a modern sailboat.
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?
> 50k hours of design, 200k hours and 100 people to build
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?
53 comments
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.
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.
Note that it hasn't gone hydroplaning yet (apparently the surfaces are not yet fitted), but they're slowly working up to it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjiGtwd8q4Q
around ~1 minute the interesting bits start.
> while the customers were still asking for 1880's style 'brown' cloth sails for the traditional Dutch fleet
That is missing the point a bit. For quite a lot of fleets, keeping the tradition alive is a very important aspect of sailing/racing said boats. The other aspect is that for these "one design" classes, the rules, including what the material of the sail is, are meant to keep the old boats competitive and, probably the most important aspect, not end up with pay-to-win situations.
The brown fleet was a money pit as well but for the providers of the sails (I believe these days mostly Gaastra but possibly others, Gaastra was going more and more in the direction of sports goods) it was still a money maker.
The key here is that Dokman was amazingly knowledgeable through his long term interaction with the people running the brown fleet vessels, who - as you pointed out - also love to have an edge in their races and TD sails were amongst the best there were at the time: absolutely legal with respect to techniques and materials used but meanwhile engineered with the best software that we could lay our hands on or build ourselves.
So you could be a recreational or for-hire vessel on most days and a potential race winner if you decided to enter a contest, and they looked spectacularly clean. That gave us the best of both worlds, a step-up into high tech while still mostly using traditional materials and techniques.
Edit: Theo died a while ago and I still see TD sails every now and then and it always reminds me of a great time. I didn't have a house back then (housing shortage in NL is not something recent) and slept above the sailmakery :)
Here are some in their natural environment:
https://primary.jwwb.nl/public/p/r/h/temp-wqhdccofnxpbaxjxoo...
(not the traditional 'sword' visible on the side, a large wooden structure on a hinge that could be lowered for stability, these vessels are extremely shallow because they're made for inland waters and shallow 'Waddenzee', the typical draft is less than a meter).
More of the same vessel:
https://www.rensiena.nl/foto-s-van-restauratie-1998-2000
Edit: it's a beautiful machine, regardless. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Ruh3hASFyGw
I’m not sure why, but I find that fascinating. No other boat, motor or nuclear reactor, can go around the world as fast as a modern sailboat.
> 50k hours of design, 200k hours and 100 people to build
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?