Winging It: America’s Cup Racers Push the Sailboat to Its Limits

Via Scoop.it – Wing sail technology
John Kostecki has one instruction for me: “Hold on.” It’s a sunny day in New Zealand’s Hauraki Gulf, off the coast of Auckland, and I’ve just boarded Kostecki’s boat. Actually, calling it a boat suggests something a lot more substantial than what I’m standing on. It’s the barest skeleton of a raft, a wisp of a catamaran 22 feet wide by just under 45 feet long. Called an AC45, it’s a bantam version of the next-generation America’s Cup yacht, and it’s unlike anything else on water. Above me is not a sail but a solid wing, mounted vertically like a fin. At 70 feet tall, it is longer than the wing of a Boeing 727. Yet the craft that this massive airfoil propels is almost fully dematerialized—a CAD file in wireframe hovering over the bay. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing to hold on to. Wired : http://www.oracleracing.com/web/media/files/m5126_Wired_mag_article.pdf
Via www.oracleracing.com