Better than a plane on a treadmill
 

Hah, that's pretty cool.

It's almost like wind could be a source of energy. :idea:

Anybody who sails should have thought this might be possible. It is fairly trivial to sail cross wind faster than the wind, the challenge is to turn that energy into motion parallel to the wind.

The airfoils on the windmill bit are still working perpendicular to the wind, so it does not surprise me that they can propel he vehicle forward generating energy at the wheels which can be used to increase the airflow over the airfoils, rinse and repeat.

Quite ingenious though. I like it.

As soon as I saw the title, I knew this was DWFTTW.

This still doesn't help us beat the tool with mylar sails that takes 5min to get the spinnaker up.

Right. This doesn't really help from a water sailing perspective. In some ways it take s us back the the America's cup where they had the cat or was it trimaran with the wings on it that just dominated.

Sails are so 0th century. :) If you want to go faster than the wind downwind, you need to use something a bit more modern and/or complicated.

I think this is stupid. Wind is never going to be practical to power a personal vehicle like a car.

The cats and tris are faster because of the hull speed physics, less beam = higher hull speed. No hydroplaning action needed if you have a cat.

Sails rule.

Back in April:

How do you keep your drink from spilling?

Ha. True on hull resistance, but wings are just a skoch more efficient than sails.

Edit: The Current America's cup winner! Check out the article...
http://www.popsci.com/files/imagecac...artsailing.jpg

More Goodness on the boat/wing...

You use nature's cup holder.

The person in the passenger seat?

That might work.

I've never been drinking on a boat where I ever had to put down a non-empty drink. When it's your turn to wakeboard, you better finish up that beer before jumping in the water!

No doubt tris are cool, and new technology makes them scary fast. Funny thing, my aunt's father won the 1980 Observer Single-handed Trans-Atlantic Race with a custom tri named "Moxie", setting a world record for the crossing in just under 18 days. Philip Weld - he was 65 at the time.

Man... when I was a little kid, I had a huge thing for sailboat racing and America's Cup. But that was like 20 years ago... I'm surprised they decided to open up the rules so much. People were bitching that it cost too much 20 years ago just to develop a hull shape... now the rules are so open, it's going to cost several fortunes over to build a winning racer! Tri's with massive wingfoils are cool from a technology standpoint, but it feels like F1 in the 90's... it's just a technology demo... the spirit of racing seems to get swallowed up by the gizmos.

Woah... this thing is crazy!



Does the huge mainmast rotate to remain perpendicular to the sea?!

Yeah, I agree that the real skill of sailing goes out the window when you bring an onboard computer into the mix, analyzing/controlling nearly everything.

There are few things that are more skill-dependent than using the gut and the eyeball to trim the sails and calculate how close to the wind to keep it.

Wow, had not seen a picture from that angle flying the main hull!!! Is it really a trimaran if only one outrigger is in the water?

Yes, the wing is ball mounted so it can be tilted I believe. The PDF I linked to said something about it.

Um... the PDF you "linked" to is a tiny little picture:

http://bmworacleracing.com/de/_images/infografik.jpg

Sorry, fixed above and here...

http://bmworacleracing.com/de/yacht/pdf/The_USA.pdf