Hydrofoils: Design, Build, Fly Review

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(More customer reviews)Right from the preface your book touched a chord with me. I may have a technical background, but nothing satifies more than the practical challenge of building knowledge based on "doing". Here is a book that covers in detail all the ideas and data realted to my pet subject! Fortunately, in sailing you cannot predict all variables and and this goes even more for hydrofoil sailing which adds a further dimension. Having built and tested many configurations of sailing hydrofoil over the years I can attest to the accuracy and it is refreshing to have an accurate description of what is happening. Refreshing explanations of all those things you thought you understood but were not quite sure.
I have gleaned heaps of hydrofoil stuff, borrowed Grogono's book, Marchaj, [...], Tom Speer etc, but have never come across a condensed, comprehensive resource like this before... if only it were around 15 years ago when I first started mucking around with foils!! Simple tables, a ready reckoner, just what I missed in discussions with the theorists. Data consolidated, I even found some graphs I had invented for myself, which I now find were aparently already developed by others...
I am really impressed that magnificent design ideas such as Dynafoil and Moth get proper coverage. In Hyfibe I can see the embodiment of many best principles, it is now a real challenge to apply these to a sailing craft!.
This book is comprehensive and well presented and finally confirms so much of what I had gleaned over the years but had no speaking partner to check with. It also provides all the elements which I can readily develop into new designs. A fantastic resource of really neat ideas well worth testing. Totally recommended to anyone contemplating designing, building and flying with hydrofoils!
Dr. Ian Ward

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This is a book on how to design, build, and fly hydrofoil boats.It begins with the history and theory of hydrofoils, and continues with an explanation of flight characteristics, such as; stability, control, lift, drag, cavitation, and ventilation.Foil configurations, weight and balance, flying height, and roll management are covered as well as calculations of stress, hull configuration, and wing sizing.One section demonstrates methods for comparing designs, and explores specific design ideas for motorized, human powered, and sail powered hydrofoils.Piloting and trouble shooting are followed by a bibliography and index.This very complete book includes over 270 illustrations, charts and tables on the subject of creating hydrofoil boats.Because hydrofoils fly like airplanes, except in a denser fluid, the book's subject could be described as aerodynamics adapted to hydrofoils.It is the best book available for hydrofoil enthusiasts.There is no other book like it.

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Gipsy Moth Circles the World Review

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(More customer reviews)I recall the thrill and deep emotion that came over me in 1967 when I saw TV coverage of England welcoming home Francis Chichester (soon to be "Sir Francis") from his "singlehander" circumnavigation of the planet. (I still tear up thinking about it.) I am not especially Anglophilic, but the man and the moment epitomized for this American all that is great and good about England and her people, even if the British Empire ain't what it used to be (which is very likely a good thing).
Alas, almost four decades later, I didn't find Chichester's memoir of the voyage an especially engaging read. "British understatement" is an understatement. One can admire the man's restraint in not overdramatizing the more perilous episodes of the voyage -- capsizing off Australia, rounding the Horn, etc. -- but the drama that certainly did accompany this maritime feat is hardly there at all. Nor is there a strong sense of the emotional and physical toll on a 65-year-old man (however fit) of operating a 53-foot sailing vessel 'round the clock, alone, for 226 days, snatching sleep a few hours at a time. Much of the routine is ... well, routine, and it begins to run together after a few chapters.
Chichester's mostly matter-of-fact recounting of the voyage is full of details about sails, masts, booms, navigation and other nautical equipment and tasks, details that are likely going to leave most 'lubbers (such as myself) a bit glassy-eyed. Find yourself a sailor's glossary, because there's none in this account. Although the book contains boat diagrams and a sail plan, keeping track of the genoas, staysails, and jibs becomes stultifying. There is also several pages' discourse on supplies and foodstuffs one would want for a long ocean voyage. (Take plenty of fresh eggs, but paint them with beeswax before stowage!)
In an epilogue, J.R.L. Anderson, himself no slouch of a sailor, and a more polished writer, succeeds in putting Chichester's achievement in perspective. "He has succeeded in making dreams come true, his own private dreams, and the dreams that most men have from time to time ... He has lived not alone his dreams, but ours too." Only occasionally does Sir Francis himself grant us such a personal insight, before returning to his litany of sail-setting, navigating, and trying to eat and sleep on the rolling sea in a boat heeled over 20 or 30 degrees.
All in all, a great man, a great feat, a disappointing book. If you are a yachtsman, or want to be, or if you are planning your own nautical sojourn, you may find this book more informative and entertaining than I did. Perhaps "British understatement" is what this volume is really about, after all.

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The Sailor's Classics library introduces a new generation of readers to the best books ever written about small boats under sail

When 65-year-old Francis Chichester set sail on his solitary eastward journey around the world in 1966, many believed he wouldn't return alive. But when the old man returned nine months later, he had made history's fastest circumnavigation.

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