L'Hydroptère: fastest sailboat on the planet

I thought the French had the fastest sailboat...

this is a french boat.

what the hell they have some massive reef in!!!
they broke the record with a reef in place!

well since its hydrofoil I pressume they need to keep her level within certain tolerance range to get max lift, so they gain more speed by keeping her level and reefing, then having larger sail area, keeling and losing the lift.

You got to wonder how much marine life they kill dolphins etc

not nearly as much as the pollution you produce living on land, driving a car, ect...

True, a good point, I built an electric bike to try solve that stinky problem - look up maco10810 - if you use a solar driven sterling motor you can charge the batteries and have a zero carbon footprint.
Imagine a car with a solar tracking dish on the roof charging your batteries while you are at work.

And from a design prospective that boat is fantastic, I am not knocking the design its great, well done to the designers for achieving such an efficient solution its really good.

cool Idea, but would a solar sterling engine produce more power for it's size and weight than a solar panel? I always wanted to make the ENTIRE surface of a car one big solar array instead of painted metal. It would look cool and would be a way of mounting solar panels without disrupting aerodynamics.

On board charging can be done they have a race every year and they only run on solar power but the vehicles are not practical for every day use.
At the moment the way to go is to have a solar panels all over the roof of your house charging an interchangeable battery pack for your car- also all caravan equipment runs on 12V DC so you could convert your house to run on 12V DC saving you your electricity bill and your fuel bill, which is a huge chunk of money per year.

If they hit a dolphin going 50 knots, you would know it, the boat would probably sink.