l'Hydroptere, the world sailing speed record holder visits Cowes
by BT on 11 Jun 2010
l’Hydroptere, Cowes, Isle of Wight SW
The French hydrofoiler, l'Hydroptere is currently docked outside the Offshore Challenges offices, in Cowes IOW.
A couple of young Sail-World correspondents took a quick look, yesterday, and filed this report and images:
We were amazed at how old l'Hydroptere looked. Apparently the centre hull is 26 years old. We were also surprised to see how small the outer hulls were, they must have only been 15ft long.
Also, the steering is all hydraulic and there is only one very short rudder (which they must be able to get away with by trimming the angle of their foils, which cant on massive hydraulic rams.
They would have to adjust it a lot because as soon as the rudder is out of the water it is game over).
The foil that they have on the bottom of the rudder to control forward and aft pitch is fixed. So we worked out that the only way they can bring the bow up or down is by kicking the rudder up or down past 180 degrees.
It is a pretty amazing piece of kit, although she looks extremely overbuilt.
I can't imagine how fast the newer, lighter one will be.
They were out sailing the other day and apparently they overtook the RedJet fast ferry which was travelling at 35 knots.
I am pretty sure that nothing has ever overtaken the RedJet before.'
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