Wings of change
Soft wingsails are under rapid development for the next America’s Cup, and this is a technology many believe will eventually influence mainstream sailing. North Sails’s Burns Fallow and Michael Richelson have worked with Emirates Team New Zealand’s engineering and design team. The doublesided soft sail that will be used by Cup teams has twisting capabilities, like a hard wing, meaning “it has serious potential, especially offshore as it will create a twisted wingsail that can be reefed,” says Ken Read.
“It’s stand by and let’s watch this happen before our very eyes.”
Other companies have also been playing with soft double-skinned wingsails. But Peter Kay points out: “What’s holding it back is they virtually all rely on unstayed masts because mechanically that’s the best way of doing it. However, that means the structure of the hull has to be built for it. So it’s the likes of Beneteau that have been experimenting – you need a boatbuilder big enough to carry it through.
“Solve the obvious problems of complexity it could be an idea for the future because a [soft wingsail] does a lot of things cruising sailors would like: points higher, heels over less and, with automated learning, you could see a future where there are feedback loops in how you trim them. If that became common you could imagine it could be incorporated into the whole electronic means of driving the boat.”
Automated systems
Mike Sanderson also believes that automated systems have a place in the foreseeable future. “Big, high performance cruising cats are going to require some sort of automated sailing system to avoid extreme loads. Whether that would be done by a PLC (programmable logic controller) and captive winches or hydraulics I don’t know.”
Sanderson believes the limiting factor right now is “having to build boats for a worst case scenario. If a skipper wants to motorsail in 60 knots with the staysail, you have a clew load that could just spike. If we had some automation and boats that could do a bit of thinking, you mightn’t have to design to a worst case scenario, you could built boats that were cheaper and lighter.”
Automatic trimming and reefing is something we could well see in a decade, and ties in with efficient trim and best speed.
“I can’t help thinking the actual physical handling of boats offshore will develop,” says Peter Kay. “With autonomous cars and developments in shipping that’s the way things are moving.”