Nifty pictures here. It's totally cool, a big racing hydrofoil up planing on foils. I think they are going to sail for the America's Cup in this crazy contraption.
This is an idea that has been around for fifty years that I know of. I read a book "The Forty Knot Sailboat" back in 1967. The idea is to cut the water drag by getting the hull up out of the water and up on plane. Doing it with hydrofoils gives a smoother ride than banging the entire hull from wavetop to wavetop. Ordinary planeing hulls will beat them selves to pieces if they are planed in all but the calmest of waters, so the smooth ride bit is important.
The 1967 book claimed that a hydrofoil sailing yacht would be faster than motor yachts, fast enough to outrun a storm. The author said that conventional sailing yachts could do little to avoid a storm, they just had to heave to, batten down the hatches and spend a day or so getting bounced around by waves and drenched by rain. Whereas a hydrofoil could sail fast enough to get out of the path of the storm and avoid getting shellacked by nasty weather.
Off shore cruising, say a run across the Atlantic, is still a sailing yacht activity. Motor yachts cannot carry enough fuel to venture offshore, unless they are as big as a small steamship.
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