Numéro : 2512 - Year : 2008

Speed search with sail

François LEFAUDEUX, Ingénieur général de l’armement (2S) - Paris (France)

It is in the human nature to try to go faster. The history of Sailing and sailing ships is a good example of this permanent will. From Antiquity to the nineteenth century, the impetus has been War and Trade. With the introduction of mechanical power for ship propulsion, sail has become the exclusive domain of Sport. One of the branches of this Sport, the search for maximum speed, has known recent developments. This quest for speed has interested Naval Architects and Scientists far more than the design of sailing ships under any given Rule, such as the America’s Cup Rule. By the classical process of trial and failure, the best ways ahead have been found and explored. Record speeds have been increased tremendously. This paper tries to discuss the state of the art in this very specific domain at a time where the breaking of the symbolic fifty knots threshold seems at hand and even, may be, the one hundred kilometres per hour limit…

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