Welcome!

Hello and welcome to my new blog.  This is the first blog entry for my wingsail project.  Ever since reading a Popular Science article many years ago, I've been fascinated with the concept of the wingsail.  Basically, it's a rigid airfoil (wing) that is used to propel sailboats, instead of the traditional sail.  The article I'm referring to was about the Walker Wingsail.  Mr. Walker was a British aeronautical engineer who built a company around the concept of wingsailed trimarans/catamarans.  He created two different models, the Blue Nova and the Zephyr.  Both beautiful boats over 40 ft.  The wingsails were computer controlled and it was all just so very cool.  They have crossed the Atlantic (one under hurricane conditions) and by all accounts were great boats.  Unfortunately, Mr. Walker ran into some money problems and the company went out of business.  I think only a handful of the boats were produced.  You can even find one or two for sale if you do a web search.



Zephyr

Blue Nova

Well, I have come up with a wingsail design of sorts.  I don't know if it's completely novel, but I'm going to prototype it. Now that the kids have grown up and flown the coop, I'm thinking I'll have more time for something like this.  I've managed to acquire an old, neglected Nacra 5.2 catamaran.  It was actually free!  I intend to fix it up a bit, then modify it and fit it with the wingsail.  I don't know where all this is going exactly, but I've got a lot of work to do and maybe I'll learn a few things along the way.  My goal is to have the finished product in the water by summer of 2013 for a trial run.  I probably won't divulge the design of the wingsail until later in the blog because the idea is not fully baked yet.  We'll start with documenting the restoration of the pontoons, daggerboards, rudders, etc.

Found the boat on craigslist and I picked it up in early April 2012 from a family that just wanted it out of their yard.  Towed it to a friend's house, as my home (at the time) had no place for it.  It was in bad shape, starting life in New York state, then towed to California, and ultimately Austin.  It has been sitting without touching a body of water for about 15 years. I did have to buy a couple of trailer wheels/tires from Wal-Mart to replace the rotted ones it had, as well as a new set of trailer lights and wires.

 

 

Moved into another house (with a larger yard) in August 2012.  There were lots of house-related projects, but finally finished the gate in December 2012 and got the boat home

 

 

 

One more thing.  Don't expect  this project to happen very fast.  I have other projects and interests that also demand my time, including church, family, painting, mobile game development, and hydroponic gardening (vegetables only!), etc.  And, a full time job.