High Seas Hydrofoil Sailing Adventure (With Boatbuilding Tips)
Written: Dec 21 '03 (Updated Dec 22 '03)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Part adventure, part how-to manual. Exciting to read. Full of hard earned technical advice.
Cons: out of print
The Bottom Line: Highly recommended to sailors, boatbuilders, hydrofoil hobbyists, lovers of adventure books, and admirers of rugged individualists. The author built an innovative hydrofoil yacht and cruised the Pacific alone.
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| beesquare's Full Review: Hydrofoil Voyager : Williwaw, from Dream to Realit... |
"If some one told you that a Force 4 puff of wind on 380 sq. ft. of sail could lift a sailing yacht weighing a ton and a half right out of the water, and make it go faster than the true wind speed, you might not believe him. But that is exactly what can be done." So begins Hydrofoil Voyager, David Keiper's story of how he designed and built the 31'4" sailing yacht WILLIWAW, then logged almost 20,000 miles of cruising around the Pacific alone to test and fine tune the design. You'll never get closer to boat building, open-ocean sailing, and hydrofoiling without actually doing it yourself. Keiper tells his own story, and the precision of his telling — he seems to recall every wave, squall, and leak — pulls you into the adventure with him. Read, and you are there, thrilled as the hull surges up to sprint on its foils; impatient as the sea goes flat in a dying wind; inventive as some new crisis presents itself for a solution hundreds of miles from land.
Hydrofoil Voyager is rich with hard-earned insight on how to design, build, and sail your own boat, hydrofoil or not. By "living" through a design's trial by sea, you gather the lessons as they become evident through experiences during the voyage. You confront the problems along with the author, and you arrive with him at solutions by following his reasoning (not all of the "how to" nuggets are buried in the story, however; if you prefer your data bulletized, go to the appendix "How to Build a Hydrofoil Sailing Yacht").
Design and construction details are not the end of useful information in Keiper's book. The author (with readers in tow) also faces the perils of infectious disease on remote islands, creates ways to pay for extended voyages, and solves the thorny problem of recruiting female crew (yachting is largely a male sport, unfortunately).
Will there be a Hydrofoil Voyager, Part II? Keiper muses in the book, "somehow, the time, the place, the situation, and the money, all have to come together as they did when I created WILLIWAW. I trust that these things will all come together... I would be happy to work in partnership with others to bring about the reality of hydrofoil trimarans sailing all over the world." Unfortunately, the continuation of Keiper's vision was not to be. He died unexpectedly in June 1998 at the age of 67. His book Hydrofoil Voyager has gone out of print.
The book is illustrated with numerous black and white photos and one color photo. 158 pages long, including 19 chapters and 3 appendices.
Please note that this review is an update of the text originally published by this author in the International Hydrofoil Society newsletter, and currently posted on the IHS website, of which I was the webmaster until recently (see http://www.foils.org/williwaw.pdf). More information on Dave Keiper's hydrofoils is available on this site, as is information on just about every aspect of hydrofoils. Go to http://www.foils.org.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
beesquare
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Location: Metro Washington DC
Reviews written: 22
Trusted by: 0 members
About Me:
Beware of the man who has read but one book. - Casanova
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