The forces and dynamics are just awesome. You see a man in red shorts high up in the air gripping a wheel with despair. Look at the overtowering height of sail and mast and then look at the tiny little bit of rudder up there on the right for your visual enjoyment and picture it's twin on the port side, down deep in the water, pushing the boat anywhere but where the wind blows it next. Things have gone awry for a bit, or maybe forever.
I sailed where the wind was almost never constant. It shifted around unexpectedly. Pitchpoling this boat would be epic.
3 comments:
If you search the Internet you may come across a video of a Hydrofoil Catamaran. The film looks like it is from the Seventies. I have never seen one outside of the video, if any still exist in one piece I would love to see it and watch it sail, from a safe distance.
MSG Grumpy
The picture I am looking for is from breakfast one day in Annapolis back in 1977. It was a poster on the wall of the little restaurant on the waterfront of a catamaran DD with schooner rigged masts breasting a cresting wave. It was in front of me as I ate and I thought for sure I'd be able to find it again. Not in over 40 years have I seen it again. It was two FRAM Destroyers welded together and sailing along at 40 knots under sail.
What you write of sounds like Crossbow or Quarrel. They were some devastating hydrofoil catamarans.
As I look and imagine the very quick elevator feel to going up. Up. Yeah, given 50 bucks in 1913 I'd have bought one of those finicky flying machines and died trying. I grew up with some of that on a flying plane in the inland waterway with waterspouts storming ashore on the coast a half mile off. It left you feeling both the lift and the speed. I can see why people sign on for these designs and the wrecks, should you survive them, glorious epic tales.
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