The question was "can you think of a situation where it would be faster to gybe rather than tack when wishing to change from one tack to another on a beat?" I guess I should have made it clear that I was thinking of a circumstance that would occur while racing.
My commenters came up with some interesting answers including my favorite one describing how to dodge an oil tanker in New Haven harbor. Apparently the "yikes we can't tack, let's gybe" reaction is more common than I imagined.
But the answer that I was looking for was to be found in Project Somewhere in a post about Moth sailing in Australia. There's some exciting stuff going on in this class as the top sailors develop their techniques for using hydrofoils. According to the author of Project Somewhere, champion Moth sailor Rohan Veal actually gybes instead of tacks in marginal foiling conditions in order to keep foiling.
These beauties start riding their foils at wind speeds of 8-10 knots and, in skilled hands, can easily achieve speeds of over 20 knots.
3 comments:
Wow, now that is intense! I just did a write up on the flyak hydrofoil kayak. I think this has those beat! Very cool!
oh jeeze, and I thought this was fun -
http://www.kayakwisconsin.net/2006/01/blur.html
so many odd boats in which to mess around!
oh, that's funny, Derrick and I were clearly writing our comments simultaneously, and the minute I finished mine I ran over there to tell him to take a look!
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