Hydroptère

The Hydroptère (or, in French, L' Hydroptère ) is a trimaran with wings, who held from 2007 to 2012 the official world speed record for sailing across a mile and has repeatedly improved. The yacht is 18.28 meters long and 24.0 meters wide, has a displacement of 4.7 tons, a mobile ballast water of 800 liters and a sail area of ​​400 m². It was the French windsurfers and sailors Alain Thébault, based on a design by the French racing yacht Eric Tabarly, designed and developed in cooperation with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne.

On 9 February 2005, an average speed of 33.3 knots was achieved at a channel crossing ( 61.67 km / h ) and on 4 April 2007 with 41.69 knots ( 72.21 km / h ), the prestigious world record for sail -powered watercraft brought back temporarily on a nautical mile from the windsurfers. On this trip was 44.5 knots ( 82.41 km / h ), a new record for the 500 - meter distance set.

In December 2008, the ship capsized in a promising record attempt with 55 knots (102 km / h). Some crew members were slightly injured and severely damaged the boat. During this trip a top speed of 61 knots was previously briefly reached (113 km / h).

In 2009, the Hydroptère sat for the first time the records over both short distances over 50 knots: 51.36 knots ( 95.22 km / h ) over 500 meters and 50.17 knots ( 92.91 km / h ) on the mile. It also 100-km/h-Grenze was briefly exceeded at a wind speed of only 30 knots. The fact that both records were in one hand at the same time, was previously only rarely the case. More remarkable, however, is that they are almost identical, and thus the potential is demonstrated to sail much longer distances with consistently high speed. At times the record surfers it took a lot of luck and best wind and wave condition to ever pass through the test section without an accident.