Ever turned up to a beautiful lagoon and the wind is just too light for you to ride? Put off by the Hydrofoil options which are bulky and expensive?
UPGRADE YOUR EXISTING BOARD with the stubby hydrofin!
Our Stubby Hydrofin™ will allow you get out there and have fun in more conditions by allowing you to ride in lighter winds and stay in the shallower waters!
Our Hydrofin design consists of 3 foils, the main foil in the middle provides the lift, the back foil creates the stability, the front foil keeps out of the water. This design is bi-directional.
When it flies it FLIES.
I LOVE This idea, can I buy it?
Sadly in the end this is very hard to make this a productional item, I haven’t stopped thinking of ways to solve this but with limited time and resources this isn’t moving forward at a rate I would have liked. In the meantime I wanted my thoughts.
What is it people want?
Talking to people about my design on the beach, the market is open for people who simply want to try new concepts. Of course, people will always want a full blown solution that has been tested to death but there are plenty of those out there already.
What are the challenges?
Whilst technically it is possible to create a low profile hydrofoil, the biggest challenge I have found is in repeatability, you get the conditions right, it sails along no issues, but in different tides, water conditions and wind directions, the performance isn’t the same, this seems to be the issue of ‘accessing’ just the top of the water.
The other challenge is manufacturing to meet a cost that people are prepared to pay for.
What have we tried?
The first concepts revolved around a single fin, 3D printing the core and putting a layer of carbon fibre on top. Whilst the materials are not that costly, the manufacturing time is high. It can work well with a single fin at the back. This only works well then for a single direction and keeping on your heals.
The next concepts involved a bi-wing 3D printed design, for additional lift in a limited space, which was largely complicated and hard to make.
Finally, the design is changed to the 3 foils as shown at the top of this page. The design has evolved beyond this to improve stability and production options, it is still very much being trialled and tested.
Extensive analysis
We have run the analysis to optimise the design performance and reliability. Running fluid analysis allows us to understand the lift and drag of the design. Performing structural analysis allows us to make the design strong enough to withstand whatever you can throw at it.
Towing tank testing
We have also had the opportunity to test the Hydrofin profile and the proximity to the board with the help of Southampton and Solent University