Increase Speed for Sailing Vessel Designs: Remain vertical
- Because a yacht or sailing vessel has a sail that leans over from the wind, the use of the maximum sail area exposed to the wind to maximise thrust on the forward motion of the vessel is not achieved. If the sail can remain vertical and hull friction in the water be minimised then greater vessel speeds should be achieved.
- There are various ways to keep the sail mast vertical. a) have a counter-weight system (possibly computer controlled pneumatics but other means also possible), moving a weight on a horizontal or upward tilted series of posts across the vessel or out from the sides of the vessel. Crew positions and weight will also have to calculated in to ensure mast verticality and manual over-ride until the systems better perfected.
- To reduce hull friction, it should be possible to adjust side fins below the water line, from horizontal at low speed to angled (possibly also increased in size) with greater speed, gently and progressively lifting the boat out of the water where the thinner hull creates less friction. Obviously the wavelength either side of the boat must co-incide by the appropriate known means to reduce drag to the minimum.
- It was so many years ago that I considered this that I cannot remember the optional sketches and ideas I thought of (drew and wrote down somewhere …) for hull, sail shapes and material types, but I know that one of the sails I considered was similar in theory to an aircraft wing, where the convex bulge increased in size with height, faced the wind and the negative pressure pulled the sail into a vertical position. At present with material sails, the opposite happens, where the convex shape of the sail pulls the sail away from the wind.