Jim's home | Trimaran home | This boat's home
Éric Tabarly had this idea in the 70s. A boat with surface piercing foils that could be retracted. Practical. Here he is in his 70s era prototype.
And a wonderful poster from 1979 showing design concepts. My lovely wife had this printed in poster size and it's on my garage wall today.
Eric teamed up with Alain Thébault to build more prototypes, and eventually the famous Hydroptere foiling trimaran. The 90s prototype really spoke to me. When I saw it, I thought, "I could make that". Well, it's not so easy. I at least had a successful boat to copy. Designing something from scratch is risky. I thought I'd minimize that risk by building something that's proven to work.
Note the horizontally oriented winglets at the tips of his foils. Contrast his to the vertically oriented winglets on my foils.
With Alain Thébault managing this project, L'Hydropter was born. Larger and larger versions were built with higher speeds. That boat was sailed from LA to Hawaii, abandoned there, and as of this writing has been purchased and is being restored in the SF Bay area. Below are a few pictures of this spectacular boat.
One thing worth watching is this video, Hydroptere - The epic in 7 minutes. To jump to video of the first prototype click here. And click here to jump to video of the second prototype.
