[PCW] Sails and Kites

[John Foster]

    Message: 2
    Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2007 08:54:53 -0700 (PDT)
    From: David Law <davidinsg@yahoo.com>
    Subject: [PCW] Sails and Kites
    To: power-catamaran@lists.samurai.com
    Message-ID: <20070319155453.13817.qmail@web54613.mail.yahoo.com>
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

    Sir I have been following this forum and was wondering something, as
    a child I played with kites, when they were up great and loads of
    pull but say your in your boat and have to turn to avoid a sail
    yacht, will the air spill like a parachute and the kite dive into
    the water.
    if so you then have a power vessel with no power and a long trail of
    kite and rigging in the path of an oncoming yacht.
    can someone tell me why this will never happen ?
    Regards
    David

Perhaps you have forgotten that your child's kite was a single line kite. Modern kites, for kite surfing and kiteboating and KiteShip large ship propulsion assistance kites are kites with multiple line which permit them to be flown actively instead of being passively up in the sky like a single line kite.

A kite for towing a power boat is not a simple sky hook. Think of the kite as an asymmetrical spinnaker, on rather long kite lines, which needs a certain amount of attention to be paid to it from time to time.

<http://www.kiteship.com/> is the KiteShip site. 

Their commercial stuff is described at <http://www.kiteship.com/marine.php>

OutLeader is the brand of KiteShip's kites sized for pleasure sailing and power yachts.

The pictures and video clips at <http://www.kiteship.com/photos.php> will probably explain the concept much better than reading about it.

Look at the picture "Launching from 38' power cat with no mast."

Look at the picture "Pocket Maxi AAPT with world-record 4,500 sf OutLeader kite" to see a kite size that might be appropriate for a rather large Power Cat.

Then look at the short clip entitled "For Power Yachts too!" and some of the other clips to get an idea of the concepts.

John