In what is believed to be a first, Dan Leech and Sean Milner have fitted foils to their R Class yacht.
“Last Easter a group of moths were sailing in Canterbury and the moth is a one person boat,” explains Milner. “They were on foils so we thought the concept might worth on a two person boat.”
The benefits are obvious - less drag means more speed.
“A normal R Class boat goes 10 knots upwind,” says Leech. “The other day we got clocked at 18 knots.”
“In the boats we sail conventionally it's quite noisy, the waves and the boats being carbon fibre, it's like a drum,” explains Milner. “But on the foils it's dead silent.”
While Leech - a naval architect - designed both the hull and the foils, Milner built them.
They have been fine-tuning them for months and it has had its moments.
“You are going downwind at up to 25 knots trying to throw into a gibe while half a metre out of the water can be hairy,” says Leech. “We are not too flash at that - learning to do it.”
On the day we filmed them it was case in point: a broken foil put a premature end to an afternoon's sailing.
However, Leech says the pros outweigh the cons.
“I don't want to go sailing without the foils,” admits Leech. “It's a bit dull.”
Depending on conditions, the pair will use the foils for at least some of the time during their attempt at a national title hat-trick in Wellington this Waitangi weekend.
More importantly, they want to promote the innovation. They hope it will be commonplace in the years ahead.
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