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No Fear of Flying
Veteran sailor David Vann finds himself humbled by, and then addicted to, the mighty moth
By David Vann
Photos by Giacomo Biagi
Franco Ferluga gets the Bladerider up on its foils
IF BATS GREW TO 11 FEET LONG and you could ride on the back of one, it would feel like this. Erratic flight, low over the water. A balancing trick. No sound of water against a hull, no resistance. A quick touch of the rudder and you can dart to the side; a light tug at the sail and you tilt; shift a few inches forward and the boat accelerates. This is nothing like sailing. It’s like a human flying machine.
The Bladerider and other hydrofoil moths are the hottest, fastest sailboats you can buy. They go 26 knots. That’s waterskiing speed, faster than a wakeboard, more nimble than a windsurfer. Even racing catamarans are dull by comparison, says Rohan Veal, two-time world champion and rep for Bladerider. “This is the dinghy you never have to leave,” he raves. And you can get one for only $12,000, store it easily, and use it almost anywhere.
I arrive to test-sail one in Trieste, Italy, near the borders of Slovenia and Croatia. It’s a perfect summer’s day in the Adriatic, bright sun and warm water. I imagine skimming past seaside villas and olive groves. Franco Ferluga is my teacher, just back from the international moth-sailing championships in Weymouth, England. He looks like a gymnast, short and muscled, and he asks about my experience with moths. That would be none. He looks worried and asks what experience I have with racing dinghies. Uh, also none. I’m a big-boat sailor: 90-foot monohulls, a 52-foot trimaran, and even one ride on Roy Disney’s racing yacht, Pyewacket. But none of that will help today.
Franco smiles. “OK,” he says, patting me on the back and shaking his head. Then someone in his sailing shop suits me up with shorts, booties, a life vest, and a tight white shirt that reveals my recent training regimen of gelato and more gelato.
It’s a three-minute walk down to the Italian yacht club by the water. Kids learning to scull. Some beautiful classic wooden yachts. But the Bladerider is something new. It’s all carbon fiber, a black missile with wide trampolines that look like wings. Franco mounts the mast and then tips the boat on its side and slides in the two hydrofoils. The aft one doubles as the rudder. The forward one has what look like ailerons, the hinged part of an airplane wing, and is controlled by a thin “wand” on the nose of the craft that hangs down and senses the height above the water. Like the sonar of a bat. The boat knows where the surface is and adjusts constantly in flight, and the sailor can tune this while under way. Not this sailor, of course—with me, the boat’s on its own.
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