WONDER WINGSAILS

DO SUPERYACHT DESIGNERS HAVE THE ANSWERS TO THE FUTURE OF EFFICIENT SAILING AND SHIPPING? MARK CHISNELL REPORTS ON WHY VARIANTS OF THE WINGSAIL COULD BE COMING TO AN OCEAN NEAR YOU

- MARK CHISNELL

On a summer weekend there’s always a bustle of activity on the foreshore at Hamble-le-Rice, on England’s south coast. The whirr of electric air compressors has been the soundtrack to the rise and rise of the inflatable paddleboard. And it may be about to initiate another transformation, simplifying sailing to the point where it returns to its birthplace; commercial shipping.

Matt Sheahan reviewed the Inflatable Wing Sail (IWS) in this magazine more than three years ago and was impressed by the invention of Edouard Kessi and Laurent de Kalbermatten. Based on an unstayed, telescopic mast, the IWS inflates via an integrated air compressor to a surprisingly low pressure, just two millibars. It creates a soft, symmetric wingsail with many of the efficiency advantages of a hard wingsail (amply demonstrated in America’s Cup and SailGP racing) but none of the problems – it’s very simple to raise and lower, and just disappears down to the deck when you don’t need it. Matt predicted that the much-simplified handling could mean a significant future for the IWS in superyachts and commercial shipping.

Simplifying the way that sailboat rigs work is far from a new idea. The IWS follows in the wake of many of these initiatives with its unstayed mast, an idea that has its origins in the Chinese junk rig. Gary Hoyt’s Freedom Yachts utilised this approach in the mid-1970s. Meanwhile, in the 1980s, a building beside the very same River Hamble produced the AeroRig, a free-standing mast with a rotating boom on which both headsail and mainsail were set. The forces were easily balanced and controlled by the mainsheet alone.