Bret Cahill wrote:

The 'traditional' modern solution to that is multiple hulls, although
that has the penalty of what might be politely called a second stable
orientation. I didn't mean that we couldn't improve on the performance
of the tea clipper, I meant that maybe we need to revisit the use of
commercial sailing ships when oil gets unaffordable. Imagine what the
East India Company could have done with carbon fibre masts, automated
sail handling and modern aerodynamic theory. And radar.

Mind you a kite has several alternative stable configurations too -
stalled, aback, in the water, and knotted. It's all very well designing
for clear weather and flat seas, unfortunately commerce doesn't wait for
good weather, or confine itself to the trade wind zones. It would be
nice to imagine a kite with a control system that could fly it through a
hurricane without breaking anything

Tim Jackson