> Bret Cahill wrote:

>>> ?> Come back Cutty Sark, all is forgiven.

>>
>> A mast on a conventional sailing vessel tacking sideways or up wind
>> applies a lengthwise torque to the vessel creating a list that spills
>> the wind out of the sails.
>>
>> The new cup race boats have tilting keels that counter the bending
>> moment and keep the mast vertical and go 50 knots, about as fast a
>> nuke airfraft carrier.

>
> 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