Amazing. I saw the introduction of 'high tech fabrics' into sails up close when I was working with/for TD Sails in the Netherlands. The owner was - besides a very nice guy - into materials technology and math and the combination was quite interesting. He was also a visionary, spending a lot of money on CAD when everybody else was still laying out sails by hand and attempting to automate the fabric cutting stage. This was just when water jets were becoming feasible but I don't think he ever managed to get their cutting table to work.

Theo Dokman more or less predicted that the sailing industry and the aircraft industry would converge in terms of high tech while the customers were still asking for 1880's style 'brown' cloth sails for the traditional Dutch fleet.

He would have been super happy to see this, this (and some predecessors) validates pretty much everything he talked about. I'm absolutely amazed at the specs of this vessel, if you take into consideration the length of the hull and the speeds it can attain and in what kind of sea states it is able to do so. The difference between 'theoretically possible' and 'let's build it' here is so large that I wonder what the total bill for putting this out there was.

Note that it hasn't gone hydroplaning yet (apparently the surfaces are not yet fitted), but they're slowly working up to it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjiGtwd8q4Q

around ~1 minute the interesting bits start.

I grew up watching racing thanks to my grandad's interest but all with all the tech involved in these high end machines it's like watching jetplanes or something mechanical, maybe it's because I can't connect anymore to what's happening on a human level. I love the thrill of a fast boat but it's lost me on the accessibility that I remember from the 80s and 90s. I remember how crews and captains would be celebrities, now it seems it's a tech game?

Edit: it's a beautiful machine, regardless. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Ruh3hASFyGw

I love me some hulls out of the water but I have a quibble with the term “flying” when there’s still something in the water and taking everything out of the water is dangerous, even of it is only a tiny fraction of the boat… have hydrofoils always been spoken of as flying or is that more recent hype?

There is indeed something beautiful about traditional boats but this is a different kind of beauty. And 40 knots in 3 metre waves? Wow! Like F1 cars don't drive like road cars the automated control means this is not a boat but something else wonderous.

At some point it's more a "weird shaped airplane flies close to the water" than a sailing boat. It sure does look super cool tho.

Thought it said Gintama for a moment. The boat looks pretty neat though.

Does the tech advancing yacht racing transfer to industrial or social uses?