Sailing up the East coats of Barbados on foils would have been fine. All it would have taken are legs to the foils about 8ft to 10ft tall. This is the same problem that exists with the production foil boats today. The legs are too short to get the hulls up out of the waves in real water and the drag pulls the boat down off the foils, slows the boat down until it can't be foil born.
Bill,
Your wish has been granted by Nigel Irens and Sam Bradfield and they plan to cross the Atlantic with it. Pics here:
http://www.multihullboatbuilder.com/scat/ Are you ready to place your order?
Boats with short foils (vertical) won't fly in a chop but the boat at the site shown here can handle a two to three foot chop because it's legs are almost six feet long.
http://www.windrider.com/wrrave.shtmlThe point is moot with the Rave because once a 120-160 lb. pilot is going 12-13mph in wind of 10-11 mph, it's liftoff. Sustained liftoff, not a hopping. Chop is no problem with the Rave. I've hit a two foot chop off the shore of Quietwater Beach near Key Sailing in Pensacola. Also, out there behind Tristan Tower. An early French review of the Rave mentioned the most strange feeling of riding so smoothly above a big chop. But on a boat that only has to get up to 12-14mph for liftoff, you don't have to wait for the choppy weather.
Once the Rave is up the only resistance is to overcome is about 10 square feet of foil surfaces being pulled by 300 sq. ft. of sail; the boat simply takes off like a rocket and the trick is to keep it from flying out of the water. Flaps keep it flying level. The pilot on a Rave can fly his foils as deep or as shallow as he pleases. The proper attitude is to keep it skimming just above the surface, bow down.
The most common reason foilers can't get up in Biscayne Bay is all the grass and that's a shallow bay in places but I've flown there. It was lonesome.
Regarding them not being popular, they're expensive and the economy hasn't been this bad since 1958. Also, boat manufacturers are terrible marketers. Foilers are a tiny niche market in a shrinking part of sailing whose overall demographic has been shrinking for quite some time.
The problem with the Hobie in a chop is those little fragile skids riding forward of the bows. A chop plays hell with those things; a design limitation if not a flaw. That's why you never see a Tri-Foiler in water that is only a little confused and relatively flat.
The Rave, however, with T-foils about six feet deep will sail eerily smoothly above a three foot chop. Once foilborne on the Rave the chop is just something to look at. The Rave's foils are riding through the water below the chop and the wands controlling the flaps on the port and starboard foils are slapping the top of the chop so fast that the wands don't a chance to drop into the short troughs so they ride pretty much at a level as if they were on smoother water. The Tri-Foiler can't do that with their skid system.
You're correct. No foiler with short legs can do it in a chop but a foiler with more than 6' long legs would be impractical unless your crossing the Atlantic for which their is a 37' version of the Rave with T-foil legs that are just plain scary. I'll post that web address when I can find it.
