L'Hydroptere plans to circle the globe
- Thu, 4 Mar 2010
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The team behind Hydroptère, the hydrofoiling trimaran which last year broke the world speed sailing record at an average speed of 50 knots, have annouced an ambitious new project.
Alain Thébault and his team aim top build two new boats with the aim of sailing around the world in approximately 50 days on what they have dubbed 'l'Hydroptère maxi'. To reach this objective, the team, with the help of the "papés" (retired engineers) and of their scientific adviser, The Swiss Technological Institute in Lausanne, decided to follow the same experimental process as that employed by Alain Thébault in the development of l'Hydroptère and to consider an intermediate step, that being to build a test model on a reduced scale, to be named 'l'Hydroptère.ch.
This will serve as a lab boat whose main purpose is to test geometries and behaviours in varied real conditions for the development of l'Hydroptère maxi. As a Swiss-French project l'Hydroptère.ch is being built in two shipyards, one in Brittany and one in Switzerland, and the test boat should be launched at the beginning of the summer (2010).
Find out more at The Hydroptere Website
