In his Santa Cruz shop, Kahn’s team has created new daggerboards, replacing
the so-called C-foils with L-foils that angle inward to provide controlled lift
to the hulls. They’re the same basic design as those in the AC72. Without foils,
a boat’s speed is limited by the drag of the hulls. “But once you get the foils
out on a cat,” says Kahn, “there’s nothing but a little bit of drag that keeps
you from going faster and faster and faster” — up to 30 knots at its fastest so
far. Kahn’s boat is one of the first of its size to try foiling like this.
At Kahn’s home on the docks — built there for easy access to the harbor’s boat ramp — he shows off the foils as Pegasus sits beached on his driveway. They’re thin, tapered fins with a gently curving S-shape. At the Pegasus workshop, filled with dripping resin and flying fiberglass, Kahn’s team shapes them by layering sheets of carbon into wooden molds.
That shape has remained largely unchanged, but there’s one more crucial element: the elevator, the bottom to the foil’s “L” that provides that crucial lift. It attaches to the fin separately, allowing the team to make minute changes that could make all the difference in the boat’s foiling hydrodynamics.
Kahn got his first taste of the water on the coast of France, where he began windsurfing as a 14-year-old. To see him sailing on his heavily modded cat with Christensen is to see that teenage adrenaline junkie sparring with the wind. Almost as soon as the boat leaves the harbor, Kahn is off the boat, feet straddling the side of the hull as his body dangles off the edge. He’s held in place by a trapeze attached to his body harness. A long tiller extension allows him to steer a sailboat that he technically isn’t even on.
Pointing to the winglets placed perpendicular to the boat’s two normal rudders (another source of lift, along with the foils), Kahn describes his beast as “more like an airplane than a sailboat.” But that comparison is most apt when the boat gets going in the 12-knot breeze off the coast of Santa Cruz. Every time the boat hits 11 knots or so, the cat’s stiff, lightweight carbon body rises above the waves, revealing a glimmer of sunlight between the water and the base of the hulls.
The wind isn’t quite as strong as the boat would like it, and ocean swells break over its twin bows, driving the boat back into the water almost as soon as it starts to rise. But those brief moments, the hulls hovering weightlessly over the water, are mesmerizing.
“I can’t say how cool it is,” says Kahn. “The feeling is really that of flying.”
The boat’s clearly still in experimental mode. As Christensen and Kahn leap over the waves, sea water sloshes through roughly hewn holes where the daggerboards pierce the hulls. Ideally, those holes will be plugged, eliminating the drag from the water inside. But “that’s the last half of a percent of performance,” says Kahn — and the boat still has plenty of optimization ahead.
One of the original prototypes for a sleep and motion tracker that Kahn used on his Transpac races.
At Kahn’s home on the docks — built there for easy access to the harbor’s boat ramp — he shows off the foils as Pegasus sits beached on his driveway. They’re thin, tapered fins with a gently curving S-shape. At the Pegasus workshop, filled with dripping resin and flying fiberglass, Kahn’s team shapes them by layering sheets of carbon into wooden molds.
That shape has remained largely unchanged, but there’s one more crucial element: the elevator, the bottom to the foil’s “L” that provides that crucial lift. It attaches to the fin separately, allowing the team to make minute changes that could make all the difference in the boat’s foiling hydrodynamics.
Kahn got his first taste of the water on the coast of France, where he began windsurfing as a 14-year-old. To see him sailing on his heavily modded cat with Christensen is to see that teenage adrenaline junkie sparring with the wind. Almost as soon as the boat leaves the harbor, Kahn is off the boat, feet straddling the side of the hull as his body dangles off the edge. He’s held in place by a trapeze attached to his body harness. A long tiller extension allows him to steer a sailboat that he technically isn’t even on.
Pointing to the winglets placed perpendicular to the boat’s two normal rudders (another source of lift, along with the foils), Kahn describes his beast as “more like an airplane than a sailboat.” But that comparison is most apt when the boat gets going in the 12-knot breeze off the coast of Santa Cruz. Every time the boat hits 11 knots or so, the cat’s stiff, lightweight carbon body rises above the waves, revealing a glimmer of sunlight between the water and the base of the hulls.
The wind isn’t quite as strong as the boat would like it, and ocean swells break over its twin bows, driving the boat back into the water almost as soon as it starts to rise. But those brief moments, the hulls hovering weightlessly over the water, are mesmerizing.
“I can’t say how cool it is,” says Kahn. “The feeling is really that of flying.”
The boat’s clearly still in experimental mode. As Christensen and Kahn leap over the waves, sea water sloshes through roughly hewn holes where the daggerboards pierce the hulls. Ideally, those holes will be plugged, eliminating the drag from the water inside. But “that’s the last half of a percent of performance,” says Kahn — and the boat still has plenty of optimization ahead.
One of the original prototypes for a sleep and motion tracker that Kahn used on his Transpac races.
