Everest looking to scale new heights

Andy Rice talks to the RS 300 designer who is bringing foiling to the UK

The well-publicised antics of Rohan Veal in his foil-borne International Moth have inspired British boat designer Clive Everest (below) to develop his own foiler. Clive is best known for developing the RS600 and RS300 singlehanders in the mid-1990s, although he also designed a number of fast International Moths in the late 80s/early 90s. More recently he has designed the hulls for the C-Class cat that will be represent the British Invictus Challenge’s assault on the Little America’s Cup, and for his own sailing pleasure he has been charging around in an A-Class cat.



“I've been sailing the A Class for the last three years, but I was looking for something new to do,” says Clive, whose day job is as a self-employed electronic engineer. With a young family, Clive was not keen on travelling, but wanted something challenging that he could race at his home club Hayling Island Sailing Club. “They don’t allow catamarans at Hayling, but I still wanted something that would be fast and fun to sail. I was totally inspired by what the Moths are doing - to develop a foil-borne boat that could compete on standard courses against normal dinghies.”

Clive used to be pretty handy in a Moth, finishing 2nd in the Worlds, on equal points with Roger Angell who won on countback. But now he is pushing 40 years and 13 stone, he didn’t feel the Moth circuit was the place to go back to. “It’s 15 years since I last raced a Moth competitively. I didn't fancy going down the Moth route.” The top Moth sailors have tended to weigh in around 10 stone, and Clive believes foil technology will only accentuate that trend. “I think hydrofoils will make Moth sailors lighter, not heavier.”

He is also concerned that the Moth class doesn’t appear too keen on driving hydrofoil developments forward. “They banned the original tri-foil configuration that we tried using a few years ago. And they've deemed that if a boat starts a regatta with hydrofoils, they have to keep them throughout the series, whereas sails and other equipment can be changed as often as sailors like. There are some inconsistencies in the rules that suggest they are not really encouraging these developments. So I’m doing my own thing, a bigger boat and without their restrictions.”

Clive is building his ‘foiler’ round an RS300 hull, which RS boatbuilder Richard Woof (Mr RMW) is constructing specially for the project. “I chose the RS300 hull shape because it’s a good light weather boat. That's what counts for a foiler, because above 7 knots it will be out of the water anyway.”

The hull will be lighter and lower profile than a conventional RS300. “RMW have moulded it for me with carbon fibre laminates, and it has been cut off 150mm above the waterline, so doesn't include the flaired topsides of an RS300.” Once the hull is complete, it will go off to Roger Angell to be decked, again in carbon fibre. Trapezing racks, again in carbon, will protrude from either side of the hull, giving a beam of 7’6.

For the foil arrangement, Clive has opted for a ‘trifoil’ configuration. “I’m using the same basic philosophy that Icarus and Mayfly used when they were going for the speed record, and which Brett Burvill used in the Moth,” he explains. This entails two large, fixed foils, one attached to each trapeze wing and angled underneath the hull, with a T-foil rudder on the stern.

This arrangement involves no moving parts, unlike Rohan Veal’s intricate self-levelling arrangement that he is pioneering on his Moth, and it should offer a much more stable ride. Clive has huge admiration for the Aussie sailor’s work. “It's a feat of engineering that they've made it work at all,” he says. But Veal was forced to go down the more complicated double T-foil route because the trifoil configuration was deemed to make the Moth a catamaran. Now there are rumblings of banning Veal’s current arrangement.

It was this sort of politics that Clive was keen to avoid, and by developing his own project he is free to pursue his own free-thinking. Clive is a self-confessed speed freak and he wants something that will give him maximum velocity for the minimum of fuss, hence his choice of the simpler trifoil arrangement.

While he has been quite precise about the construction of the hull and the foils themselves, he is looking to complete other parts of the boat with bits cobbled together from existing classes. The rudder and rudder stock will be cast-offs from a 49er, the mast is an extended RS700 tube, and he is shopping around for bits of broken carbon mast to create the trapezing racks.

The 8 metre mast will support a large, fully-battened mainsail, and a hoistable foresail for downwind sailing in light to medium airs. It can’t really be called a spinnaker or gennaker, as it will be very flat, and tacked to the bow. It is really more akin to the Code Zero sails favoured by Volvo 60s and Maxi yachts. However, experience from the A Class cat and chats on the phone with Moth sailors like Rohan Veal tells Clive that he is unlikely to need the Code Zero in much more than a Force 3. As with an ice yacht, Clive’s foiler is likely to generate sufficient apparent wind in stronger conditions to hit scary speeds with just the mainsail hoisted.

He has created an Excel spreadsheet that helps Clive predict the behaviour of his ‘foiler’ in different conditions, but he admits that there is much he really doesn’t know about his creation. It is a leap into the unknown.

He is adamant that he is not designing a boat for ultimate speed, however. “I’m not going for records. Both the foils and rig are deliberately large to be able to get foiling in light and medium conditions. I want to be able to race conventional high-performance boats in a wide range of conditions. I hope I can have a good race against 49ers and International 14s. But it will be very condition sensitive. Give me a beam reach in 15 knots, and I hope to leave them for dead. But the top speed won't be massive. I’m prepared to compromise my overall efficiency, by focusing on hiking up my weak points.”

He expects to be at his most competitive in a solid Force 3, and admits that his weak point will be in light winds, particularly downwind. But once he gets foiling, at around 7 knots of true wind, the performance is likely to be breathtaking. Rohan Veal reckons to have hit speeds just over 20 knots, so with Clive’s extra power and righting moment he reckons 25 knots should be achievable. He will be trapezing off a boat with a 7’6 beam, but because the hull is deriving its lift from the leeward of the two foils, Clive says it will have an effective righting moment of a conventional boat with a 9’6 beam. That’s the equivalent of a 49er’s righting moment, but without the hull drag.

Mostly Clive intends to blast around Chichester Harbour in his flying machine. A journey out into Hayling Bay might be a very different adventure, however. Anyone who knows the Bay knows the Hayling chop can play havoc with a conventional high-performance boat, and has probably accounted for more broken masts than any other stretch of water in the UK. Clive isn’t quite sure how his beast will react to waves, but you can be sure he won’t be heading out to sea on his maiden voyage. Rohan Veal has had problems taming his Moth in big waves and likes to bring it back down to the surface, to slow it down and dampen the tendency of his boat to want to take off and launch out the backs of steep waves. A brief moment of ‘big air’ tends to be followed by a much nastier moment of nosediving, and Clive suspects he might encounter similar problems.

Ventilation, he says, is the foiler’s enemy. “You pick up a pocket of air on the foils, you lose control over the surfaces, and you nosedive. I anticipate it will be a limited problem somewhere between 20 and 40 knots.” This is why current attempts on breaking the 50 knot speed barrier have tended to abandon hydrofoiling in favour of high-speed, low-drag planing hulls.

Having designed commercially successful hulls such as the RS600 (around 400 sold) and the RS300 (around 200 sold), you wonder if Clive has plans of developing his Corinthian project into something more lucrative. “There is a lot of research needed before it can be seriously considered. But I hope I will be in the right place when that day comes. We're looking at a new branch of the sport here,” he says. “But at the moment this is just a play thing for me. I’ve got no links with anyone like RS on this project.”

Will it not be too difficult for the average sailor to master, though? “People are so adaptable. When the RS600 came out, I remember reading a report about it in the Contender class newsletter, saying it was an amazing boat but that no one would ever sail it in more than a Force 4 because it was too difficult.” Similar things were said about the 49er when that came out seven years ago, and now the Olympic sailors are racing them hard in winds of up to 30 knots.

Clive admits foiling will certainly present new challenges, but that in many ways it will also be easier. There will be no slam-gybing, for example, as foilers are more often than not likely to exceed the true wind speed on a downwind leg. A whole new generation of sailors are likely to experience the eerie feeling of the sail flapping as it flutters across from one gybe to the other. If they do, then there is a high chance that Clive Everest will have done much of the pioneering work that brought the sport to that point.