Sailboat: L'Hydroptere

L'Hydroptere is the fastest sailing boat in the world. She is the result of over 25 years of high techology and the dream of a man, the french yachtsman Alain Thébault: to make sailing boats fly. To take off, Hydroptere has "marine wings", the foils, which are placed under each of the floats of the trimaran. Once the boat reaches 10 knots, these immersed “wings”, deployed at 45 degrees in the water, generate an upward thrust. With the appropriate angle of attack of the foil, the sum of the pressure at the intrados and of the depression at the extrados generates an upward thrust with a reduced drag, which raises the boat like the wing of a plane. This is called the “lift” i.e. the same principle that allows the wings to make a plane take off. Then the hull and the floats of Hydroptere fly five meters above the sea surface. Only 2.5 m² of the boat are in contact with the water and she is able to sail from 20 to 45 knots (from 37 to 83 km/h) in 10 seconds. And same result in the sea and in the air, the higher the speed, the greater the lift. Thanks to this technology Hydroptere accelerates faster than a 2x250 HP speedboat and can sail to over 50 knots with peaks up to 60. After earning all sailing speed records from 2005 to 2009, now she is configured for oceanic records, the ultimate barrier for flying boats.

The model is L'Hydroptere in her oceanic DCNS livery / configuration and in minifig scale.

The model is made only in bricks, using LDD. The writings on the hull and on the mainsail are made using the advanced building technique called lettering, without stickers or custom parts at all.

Lenght: 75 studs (included the bowsprit)

Span: 80 studs

Mast: 92 studs

Lenght of the foils: 20 studs

Brick count: about 2000

As you can see in the last attached picture, there are 6 included minifigures, representing Alain Thebault and his team.

To see pictures in higher resolution, see my flickr photostream by clicking the following link:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/129019614@N07/?

There you can see all my boat models too. If you like Hydroptere or some of my other models, please support: you also know that minifigs want to sail, help them to get on board!