A Truly Revolutionary Design

The following Blog Post was first featured on Sailing Anarchy. It's a concise look at the four main features of the SpeedDream design. The Flying Keel, the Sculpted Hull, a true Wave Piercing Bow and the Hull Step. All of these features have been discussed in separate blogs found on this site, but if you want an overall look take a quick read.

The unique lines of the SpeedDream27 prototype.

It’s always good to push boundaries. That’s how new technologies are developed. With SpeedDream we are definitely tinkering near the edge of what can and can’t be done and that’s the trick; tinker near the edge to get a performance gain, but not over the edge so that the project fails. With the launch of the SpeedDream prototype just weeks away, now is a good time to take a closer look at some of the creative ideas that are encapsulated in this ground breaking design. The proof of the pudding, as the saying goes, will be when carbon hull meets cold water, but for now we are still in that area of limbo between computer analysis and hard reality.

There are four main areas where the design has pushed the limits. A keel that cants to 80 degrees and flies clear of the water when the boat heels more than 10 degrees is clearly innovative. A true wave piercing bow, not just a razor sharp bow, but one that inverts buoyancy to resist nose diving is an important feature to keep consistently high speeds. Stepped hulls are the domain of powerboats, but the step in SpeedDream’s hull not only reduces wetted surface, it also balances the boat and sail plan when planing, and lastly a hull that is sculpted to shed water as quickly as possible is a simple idea yet one of great significance. Volvo Ocean Race sailors are cutting their tooth brushes in half to save weight while at the same time allowing their slab sided designs to carry two feet of water on the deck before it finally cascades overboard. Imagine how much a ton of water robs boat speed even if it’s only for a few seconds.

On most conventional racing boats the keel cants to around 45 degrees. The angle is usually limited by some rule restrictions as well as the hull shape and interior configuration of the boat. SpeedDream has no rules and therefore no restrictions. Because of the flat sections amidships the keel can cant up to 80 degrees – and more. This allows it to come completely out of the water when the boat heels more than 10 degrees, but what does this really achieve? First of all there is no drag once the keel is out of the water. Secondly, the bulb out perpendicular to the boat is the most efficient way of generating maximum righting moment. It’s this efficiency that allows for a lighter, more easily driven boat. Instead of piling on sail area to increase power, SpeedDream, along with its flying keel, relies on higher efficiency to achieve maximum speed. By reducing drag and having a light, slippery hull, high performance is accomplished.

Another way to look at it is like this. A catamaran needs to become a monohull before it really starts to pick up speed. Until you fly the windward hull you are dragging it through the water. Think of the lead bulb at the end of SpeedDream’s keel as the equivalent of the windward hull of a catamaran. Fly it clear of the water and instead of a bulky hull with a lot of windage, you have a sleek, aerodynamic bulb doing the same job. The leeward hull, the one in the water, is a perfect planing platform and not the rounded bottom found on most catamarans. The trick, of course, will be learning how to balance the boat to keep the keel just where you want it to be.

We were first introduced to the concept of the wave piercing bow on the ill-fated Team Phillips, but don’t let what happened to that innovative boat put you off the idea of this simple concept. Because of the V-configuration of most designs, with the sharp end of the V pointing down, there is nothing to stop the bow from nose-diving when the boat surfs down a big wave and plows into the one ahead. The center-of-effort of the sail plan is forcing the bow down and while the buoyancy up high near the deck level tries to resist, however once the bow is submerged it wants to keep on going down. Indeed the flat deck presents the worst possible surface to stop the boat from coming out of a nose dive. The sudden drop in boat speed and the immense shock load on the rig and sails eventually take their toll, as evidenced by the rig failures in the current VOR.

A true wave piercing bow is not only razor sharp allowing it to cut through the wave ahead at the bottom of a big surf, it also has inverted buoyancy. Just as on conventional designs the sail plan will try and force the bow down, but with SpeedDream the inverted buoyancy immediately resists this force. Inevitably, however, the bow will be submerged but instead of a wide flat deck presenting itself, the inverted V of the wave-piercing bow, aided by the buoyancy in the hull immediately starts to rise and without resistance the boat comes right out of a nose dive barely slowing down. This accomplishes two main things; the boat speed remain consistently high and the shock loads on the rig and sail plan are dramatically reduced allowing for a lighter rig and sails.

While a flying keel and wave piercing hull may sound like the most radical features of SpeedDream, it’s in fact the stepped hull that may be the biggest breakthrough. Stepped hulls are common on high speed powerboats and have been around for quite a while. The step in the hull acts in a similar way as a chine on the side of a hull. The chine is there to provide a sharp edge that quickly separates the flow of water that is attached to the hull. The water, unable to make the sharp turn, separates from the hull thereby reducing drag. The same thing happens with the step. Water flowing under the boat is attached to the hull and generates surface friction. Halfway down the hull it meets a quick 90 degree edge and separates only to reattach much further aft. The step causes the separation and the result is two smaller areas of attached flow rather than one big area. Surface friction is drag and as such is a speed robber, so the goal is to have as little of it as possible.

The reason stepped hulls are more common on powerboats is because you can turn on the engine and get to the required boat speed where you know that the water will separate nicely into two smaller areas. Sailboats are not that predictable as they rely on wind and wind does not always cooperate. Computer models show that in 12 knots of wind the SpeedDream prototype will be sailing at 17 knots, a point at which the flow will be nicely reduced into two small areas of drag. This is most certainly a performance benefit, but it’s not the whole story. Without the step the wetted surface is concentrated toward the back of a planing boat. The age old problem of the center-of-effort of the sails pushing the bow down reappears. With a stepped hull the areas of drag are separated into two areas; one aft and one forward, and it’s the area forward that resists the downward thrust of the sail plan. In other words you have a much more even planing surface.

Some pundits might argue that we are trying out too many new ideas at once and they may have a point. That’s the reason for a prototype. It’s likely that we will build a second, perhaps even a third one before deciding what combination gives us the edge. These ideas also need to be scaled up to a boat around 100-feet. There is a lot for us all to learn and by mid-summer we will have a much better idea of the full potential of SpeedDream – stay tuned.

Announcing the SpeedDream Technical Team

Reviewing plans as the hull starts to look line a SpeedDream.

The cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead probably said it best when she noted, “never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world.  Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” At SpeedDream we feel the same. A good idea may simply die on the vine if there is not the will, the time, and most important of all, the people to push and pull it into reality. With that in mind we are thrilled to introduce the technical team behind SpeedDream.

The team leader is SpeedDream’s founder and visionary Vlad Murnikov. With a degree in engineering and an eye for innovation Vlad continues to surprise the sailing world with his creativity and ingenuity. Vlad will oversee the entire process from the build of the prototype to the build of the record setting monohull, as well as points in-between.

The prototype design has morphed into a full collaborative effort between Vlad and Rodger Martin and Ross Weene at Rodger Martin Yacht Design. Martin, a very experienced and successful designer in his own right has nothing but praise for the SpeedDream concept and Vlad’s creativity. “Every so often someone comes along with something so original and so amazing, yet so simple that you can’t help but say to yourself, why didn’t I think of that,” said Martin after reviewing the original drawings of SpeedDream. “I think that there is some brilliance here as well as some plain old building on good and proven ideas. Ross and I are excited to be a part of the process and happy to contribute our expertise.”

The all-important appendages that include a flying keel and a leeward lifting foil, as well as more basic ones like the twin rudders and daggerboards, are being designed and engineered in collaboration with Steve Koopman of SDK Structures. Koopman who has been the chief engineer for Oracle Racing and before that Alinghi, has vast experience at the cutting edge of engineering and technology. His input into the mechanics of a keel designed to fly clear of the water will be invaluable.

The highly technical and extremely important task of structural engineering is being carried out by one of the most experienced teams in the world. James Anderson, Garry Jolliffe and Francisco Santos of SP-High Modulus, the marine business of Gurit, will ensure that the exacting engineering standards are met in order to build a light and strong hull shell and structure. “SpeedDream is all about pushing the boundaries of speed and technology in an efficient and robust manner. It’s a fascinating project to be involved in. Our job at SP-High Modulus is to engineer a boat that is as light and as structurally sound as possible, but one that can handle the unique demands that are going to be placed on it by this revolutionary design, especially as the project scales up in size,” said Anderson who is the North American Engineering Manager for Gurit. Gurit through the celebrated solo sailor JP Mouligne, winner of the 1998/99 Around Alone race, are supplying the carbon for the boat.

A powerful and light boat needs a powerful and light sail plan. Tyler Doyle of Doyle Sails has carried out extensive CFD analysis on the hull and rig, and working in conjunction with Axxon Composites, the Romanian-based carbon spar manufacturer headed by legendary mast makers Eric Ducheman and Phillippe Boclet, they have developed a super-light wing mast and carbon sail plan that will provide the necessary power to push the prototype into speeds never before achieved by a boat of its size. The rig coordination is being done by John Green who pioneered mast-making in the 70s, 80s and 90s as head of Sparcraft, and the all-important deck layout has been designed by Skip Mattos of Harken. Lastly, the job of building the boat to exacting standards falls to the capable team at Lyman Morse Boatbuilders where the prototype is currently under construction.

Build meeting at Lyman Morse - (l to R)  Steve Crane, Vlad Murnikov,  Drew Lyman, Brian Hancock, Valery Zakhovaev, Cabot Lyman

Collectively the SpeedDream Technical Team have all the capability of an Americas Cup campaign yet their dedication to a project like SpeedDream speaks volumes about their enthusiasm for fast, innovative boats.

SpeedDream's Stepped Hull

White arrow pointing to the step in the hull

One of the most interesting design features of SpeedDream is perhaps the most controversial and also the last one to be included in the prototype design, and that’s the addition of a lateral step in the hull creating what is known in naval architecture as a stepped hull. While stepped hulls have been around for a long time it is new and innovative to see a stepped hull on a sailboat, especially a monohull, especially a smaller boat. Let me explain.

Stepped hulls are common on high speed powerboats and have been around for quite a while. The step in the hull acts in a similar way as a chine on the side of a hull. The chine is there to provide a sharp edge that quickly separates the flow of water that is attached to the hull. The water, unable to make the sharp turn, separates from the hull thereby reducing drag.  The same thing happens with the step. Water flowing under the boat is attached to the hull and generates surface friction. Half way down the hull it meets a quick 90 degree edge and separates only to reattach much further aft. The step causes the separation and the result is two smaller areas of attached flow rather than one big area. Surface friction is drag and as such is a speed robber, so the goal is to have as little of it as possible.

The reason stepped hulls are more common on powerboats is because you can turn on the engine and get to the required boat speed where you know that the water will separate nicely into two smaller areas. Sailboats are not that predictable as they rely on wind for their speed and the wind does not always cooperate. At low boat speeds the step is damaging to performance, because at low speed water just aft of the step is turbulent and confused causing more drag, not less. As soon as the boat picks up speed, the step separates the wetted surface into two smaller areas reducing drag with a commensurate speed increase.

Looking from underwater clearly shows the step in the hull.

It was only after comprehensive computer analysis where it became clear that the performance of our prototype, even in the low wind ranges, was quite remarkable. The slender hull with plenty of sail area and a flying keel for quick stability allows SpeedDream to rapidly accelerate and in just 15 knots of wind the boat should be sailing close to 17 knots of speed, perhaps more. You never see steps in small monohulls because they never quite reach the speeds necessary for it to start working. But SpeedDream is different and the decision was made to experiment with the step. Only real life tests can confirm or disprove the computer modeling, and as always, venturing into the unknown,  we look forward with a bit of trepidation – but, hey, somebody has to do the first step… 

What helped us in making decision to use the stepped hull were additional tangible benefits, associated with a more balanced lift distribution along the hull. As the regular planing hull gets up on a plane, the wetted surface and hydrodynamic lift is concentrated at the back of the boat, behind the center of gravity, potentially promoting boat to nosedive. What makes the matters worse is that the applied driving force of the sails is up high and forward and as a result the sails are additionally forcing the bow down into a nosedive as it plummets down a wave. To deal with the problem some boats (like VOR70) have water ballast tank located near the transom, adding weight.  On a stepped hull most of the lift is generated on the forward lifting surface, ahead of the center of gravity, thus helping to counteract the driving force moment and prevent boat from nose-diving.

Looking from windward you can clearly see the step in the hull.

When you combine a stepped hull with a wave piercing bow that slices through the waves ahead, you get a boat that is much more stable and capable of sailing flat at more consistent speeds. Record setting is not about high surfing speeds; it’s about consistently high speeds. A stepped hull will go some way toward achieving this consistency.

The stepped hull on SpeedDream will increase performance by reducing the drag and separating it into two smaller areas, which are better positioned to keep the boat sailing flat and fast rather than nose-diving. It’s a win win for sure.

SpeedDream's Wave Piercing Bow

Razor sharp and swept back - the bow on SpeedDream revolutionary on a monohull.

Any good yacht is a sum of its parts and SpeedDream is no different. Where it is different, however, is that all the important parts have been attacked with a fresh approach by bringing new technology and new thinking to proven ideas. The Flying Keel simply took the canting keel idea, which has been around for more than a decade, and with fresh thinking took it one step further. Instead of canting 40 – 45 degrees, the Flying Keel cants all the way to 80 degrees allowing it to fly clear out of the water. Same with the sculpted hull. The functionality and elegance of the SpeedDream hull is nothing short of exquisite and part of that hull shape is the long extended wave-piercing bow.

While wave-piercing bows have been around for a long time, most sailors regard them as the exclusive province of multihulls. They think of wave piercing as narrow, and the twin hulls of a catamaran are indeed narrow when compared to most monohulls. The problem with wave piercing is that it’s largely misunderstood. Yes narrow is part of it, but there is so much more.

Let’s start with one basic fact. Long, narrow boats slice through the water with relative ease and less resistance when compared to squat, beamy boats, and in many ways narrow boats are much more sea-kindly that wide ones. Despite this there has been a trend away from narrow to fat in large part driven by the water ballast craze that needed to get the weight as far outboard as possible. When water ballast gave way to canting keels the boat got a bit more slender, but not much. 

SpeedDream is unencumbered by rules and the keyword behind the concept is efficiency; in all areas. A narrow hull with a long, extended wave piercing bow is the most efficient way to drive a boat through waves. Yet the bow on SpeedDream is more than that and this brings me to the second, and most misunderstood part of a wave piercing bow. 

 

Short video illustrates hull form and wave piercing bow.

Take the V-shape of most conventional hulls. Narrow at the bottom; fat and flat at the top. Plunge this boat down a steep wave, and as it hits the wave in front of it, the bow digs in sinking deep into the trough ahead. There is plenty of buoyancy up front but the shape for recovering from a nose-dive is all wrong especially once the fordeck is buried. The flat deck presents a wide, unforgiving surface to the weight of water. Think of it as dragging your hand through the water, palm forward. There is a load of resistance. Turn your hand 90-degrees and it starts to slice through the water with very little effort. Now look at the bow sections on SpeedDream.

First you will notice that the forward third of the boat is inverted. The buoyancy is on the bottom, not the top. Granted there is not as much buoyancy as you would find on a more ‘conventional’ design, but this is a wave piercing bow, not a boring run-of-the-mill bow. Instead of being swept forward, or plumb like most boats, the bow on SpeedDream is raked elegantly aft. The rake is for practical reasons, not gratuitous aesthetics. You want to maximize waterline length and so at the waterline, where it counts, the bow is at the full length of the boat. But there is no need to leave any unneeded weight and windage up front, so as quickly as possible the bow rakes aft to a deck that it pointed, rather than flat.

Send SpeedDream down the front of large cresting wave and for sure the boat will plunge into the wave ahead. Being narrow it will, for the most part, simply slice through the wall of water. Should the bow, however, start to be forced down, the downward thrust will be arrested by the forward buoyancy. Furthermore, rather than fighting against the blunt sections of a flat deck, the entire foredeck of SpeedDream becomes a long extended sharp bow allowing the boat to quickly and easily slice back up through the water fully recovering from being forced to nosedive. 

So while YouTube videos showing knee-deep water cascading down the foredecks of Volvo 70s and IMOCA 60s are impressive to watch, think about what’s going on. The shock-loading on the mast, sails and deck gear spikes dangerously high when a boat surfing at 35 knots suddenly slows to 18 knots. The worst part is that designers and engineers need to account for these shock loads and in doing so they have to build a boat that is overweight for most ‘normal’ conditions, but able to withstand the sudden spikes. It doesn’t make any sense. Why not be kind to your boat and sculpt and engineer it to glide gracefully through and over just about anything the ocean throws at it?

SpeedDream's Sculpted Hull

SpeedDream's sleek hull showing breakwater forward, middeck sculpted to quickly shed water and mesh in
cockpit to allow water to pass though and quickly exit the boat. Built for efficiency in all areas.

The keyword for SpeedDream is efficiency. Most designers try and increase boat speed by increasing power. They do this by piling on sail area and in return they have to add righting moment in the form of lead on the keel. This in turn translates into a heavier boat that is engineered to handle the extra weight and loads. It’s a vicious circle and what you end up with is a boat that is unwieldy and hard to manage especially if it’s constrained by a rule that limits length. 

With SpeedDream there are no rules leaving a clean slate for creativity. Indeed had lead designer Vlad Murnikov followed in the footsteps of other designers he might just have designed bigger and bigger boats of the same kind that already exist. For sure bigger is faster, but it’s not always better.

As already noted, SpeedDream is about efficiency. Rather than add power it’s better to increase efficiency in the form of a light, slender hull. With a narrow, wave-piercing bow and almost delta shape to the hull, the boat will slide through the water effortlessly. There has been a conscious effort to reduce drag and one clear way to do this is to have a light boat. Another way, of course, is to design a boat that allows the keel to fly clear out of the water once the boat heels more than 10 degrees. No keel in water = no drag whatsoever.

Below the waterline SpeedDream is clearly efficient, but it does not stop there. How many great YouTube videos have you watched that show big boats kicking up spray and plowing through waves? Water comes cascading down the deck two feet deep. Some of those same racing sailors cut their tooth brushes in half to save weight, yet they endure an extra ton of water on the deck at times. It makes no sense. The sculpted deck and cabin are all designed to allow any water that comes onto the boat, to wash off as quickly as possible. Starting all the way forward, a small breakwater feature deals with the initial water that comes on board. It quickly deflects it back to where it came from. If there is a lot of water the mid-deck slopes gracefully allowing the heavy wet stuff to roll off to leeward as quickly and as easily as possible. The two coach roofs aft are designed to provide protection for the helmsman and crew, but they too are sculpted to shed water efficiently and effectively. The same goes for the main cabin structure.

All this is good but most seasoned sailors know that quite often unexpected waves show up from all angles and often boats get pooped causing the cockpit to flood. On boats with a conventional cockpit the flooding can take a long while to drain, painfully long in fact if the drains are not large enough. Back aft on SpeedDream the helmsman and crew walk on a mesh that allows any water to pass immediately through and onto a sloped surface below that quickly allows the water to exit the boat.

All of this is an effort to reduce drag and increase the overall efficiency of the boat. As a result there is no need to gratuitously add power in the form of sail area which in turn brings it’s own added complication with heavier rigging, sturdier mast and larger deck gear. The wave-piercing bow is also a critical component but understanding how it works is not strait forward; it’s instead the subject of our next blog.

SpeedDream's Flying Keel

There are a number of unique innovations that, when combined, will make SpeedDream one of the fastest boats ever built. Over the next two weeks we will look at each of these features separately starting with the “flying keel”. While canting keels have been around for more than a decade and have proven themselves to be ‘de rigueur’ on most high performance racing boats, the flying keel on SpeedDream takes things one step further, one giant step further.


On most conventional racing boats the keel cants to around 45 degrees. The angle is limited usually by some rule restrictions as well as the hull shape and interior configuration of the boat. SpeedDream has no rules and therefore no restrictions. The design team, led by Vlad Murnikov, has ingeniously come up with a way to cant the keel up to 80 degrees – and more. This allows the keel to come completely out of the water when the boat heels more than 10 degrees.

Other than scaring unsuspecting sailors out for a pleasant day on the water, the flying keel serves many purposes. First of all there is no drag once it lifts clear of the water. Secondly, the bulb out perpendicular to the boat is the most efficient way of generating maximum righting moment. It’s this efficiency that allows for a lighter, more easily driven boat. Instead of piling on sail area to increase power, SpeedDream, along with its flying keel, relies on higher efficiency to achieve maximum speed. By reducing drag and having a light, slippery hull, the high performance is accomplished.


Instead of thinking of SpeedDream as a monohull with a funky keel, try instead to picture the boat as a catamaran. The hull in the water is the leeward hull of a catamaran while the keel and bulb flying out to windward represents the windward hull. Multihulls only really get moving when they “fly a hull”. SpeedDream should be able to out-perform a catamaran because the flying bulb has as much righting moment as the windward hull on a catamaran with a whole lot less windage to drag along. Better yet, the shape of the hull in the water is much more effective for planing. A catamaran has slab-sided hulls and a rounded bottom that digs in when the windward hull lifts out of the water; by contrast the flat planing sections of SpeedDream are just perfect to reduce wetted surface. In fact the hull is designed so that when the boat sails at just the right angle of heel – around 15-20 degrees – the flat planing sections are at their most effective.

So what’s not to like about a flying keel? Yes it’s a little unorthodox and if you are like most people you are wondering where you might dock a boat that has such a long keel. That’s been taken care of. The keel is telescoping. It retracts into itself reducing the draft by 40%. For now there is just an “all the way up” or “all the way down” setting, but imagine the possibilities if the keel angle and length can be computer adjusted to keep the boat at the perfect angle and pitch. The possibilities are limited only by imagination and that’s the simple beauty of the SpeedDream project; there is no lack of imagination.

Hard Water Sailing

One of the things the SpeedDream team is going to have to get used to is the raw speed that even the tiny prototype will achieve. It’s fine to go fast, that’s not the issue. It’s how you manage the boat and sail it safely when water is whizzing by under your keel and pummeling you directly in the face and body with fire hydrant intensity. You need to be able to breath, think, and make split second decisions. You need to hone your reflexes and learn how to relax.

With a cold winter in the Northern Hemisphere keeping sailboats under wraps and sailors indoors, SpeedDream Test Pilots Cam Lewis and Brian Hancock decided to take another approach. They took to the ice, in ice boats. Lewis is a veteran and sails comfortably with the windward runner in the air and at speeds well over 50 miles and hour. Hancock, on the other hand…. well let’s just say that there was no ice in his native South Africa.  For him it was a learning experience.

On a comparatively mild Friday afternoon on Megunticook Lake in the Great State of Maine, Lewis, Hancock and a half dozen other enthusiasts took to the ice for one of the best sailing days in recent memory. The lake surface was glass smooth, the speeds were high and the feeling of cruising effortlessly at 40 miles per hour exhilarating. We can’t wait for the prototype to launch so that we can do it all over again, only this time on a sailboat and the only ice in the celebratory drinks at the end of the day.