Scale Model

From Wiki

The TriFoiler project really began with this model in 1981. It was inspired by boats like Crossbow and Sidd Shutt's hydrofoil trimaran. It started out as a desire to break the world speed record for sailboats. Notice how big the foils were:

This was typical - I would start out big and find out they work better small like this:

For my senior project in school I decided to write a Velocity Prediction Program (VPP), redesign the model based on the VPP, make changes to the model and test the model to verify the VPP. It was a very ambitious project. The VPP predicted that much smaller foils would go faster and it would not tip over with a much bigger sail. The main question put to the VPP was: If the weather foil pulls down to increase stability, would the increase in power make up for the increase in drag? The answer was yes, so I made the sail two times bigger and the foils about half the size. I also went to the L-shaped foils and the whole amas pitched. I also painted it white as shown here: