A post from a trifoiler sailor at my club.
In any case, is sound like the angle of attack is incorrect for the forward sensors. Yes, if they are wrong a lot can go wrong.
I had my trifoilder out in 25 winds with 2.5 wave before and no problem.
The Crab pot and hitting things is always a problem.
There are a bunch of Mods that can or may be made to the craft to make it more stable and safer to sail. The Speedometer in my was sent out with the higher range and goes up to 45. Remember, my craft was the one highlighted
in Pop Sci so they may have made more mods to that one.
In any case, the sensor is very important to ensure:
They have a limit to its float rotating. I went through some cals and I made mine so they can an angle of attach of 15deg to 30deg. That is adjusted by the length of the small line attached to the toe of the sensor. The lower it goes, the higher the angle of attach. Also, the J Foil can also be adjusted to ensure its angle of attach is correct. It is very very sensitive and requires high tq to be adjusted. I
had to adjust mine as the right J Foil always lower.
I never had any of my Amas sink, ever. Up wind, down wind, any time. My angle of attack of the J foils always had the front up and out of the water, even at slow speeds. I think that there is something wrong with your angle of attack with J and sensors.
There are problems with thr Tri-Foiler but they can be over come with easy solutions.
The foils when landing do not retract easy and you have to jog left and pop the non-leeward, then jog right and pop the non-leeward. But then you have nothing in the water to steer with and stop leeward motion. They have a goofy leeboard to help with this. They should have a drop down rudder like in the 17' Hobie that is build in the hull.
The craft needs a splash shield and water redirector. I made a small mod
where I placed beads of silicon in a V shape off of the top and it really helps bleed off water and then followed up
with damm right at the ****. This almost totally stopped the water from coming in the ****.
They have a mod to drain water. But I perfer to not punch holes in the hull and use electric pump. There is a nice dry area stern with sealed lid. Can put just about anything in there.
The wires hum at high speed and bug me. This also occured in WW I with theold Bi-Planes. They found putting a foil around the wire, stopped this, and I suspect cut down on resistance but very little.
TOM
