Inside the Batmobile: a first look at Ferrari Hypersail

Some weeks the foiling world comes at you in every size. I had just finished two days on the commentary mic at the Kiteboard Grand Slam in Cagliari, Sardinia, where I watched Riccardo Pianosi, the eventual winner of the men's fleet, clock more than 40 knots on a foil barely a metre long.

From there I flew to Pisa for a behind-the-scenes look at an altogether bigger Italian foiler. Ferrari Hypersail is a 100-foot monohull that sets out to redefine the very nature of offshore round-the-world racing and record breaking. And having now seen it with my own eyes, I can tell you it is every bit as audacious as it sounds.

Secrecy is part of the Ferrari way. There would be no filming inside the factory, and before any of the visiting journalists, myself included, were allowed into the shed, a Ferrari-red sticker was pressed over the camera lens of every phone.

Suitably kitted out in hard hats, protective boots and yellow hi-vis jackets, we were finally ushered inside. And there, waiting for us under the lights, was this 100-foot Batmobile of a boat.

Our guide for the day was technical team leader Marco Ribigini, who began with a walk around the base of the hull. He talked us through the careful shaping of the underwater sections, or at least the parts that will be underwater when the boat is in displacement mode (which we were told, would be sitting at a rather awkward looking 8 degrees of leeward heel, a bit like a non-foiling AC40). Every curve, it quickly became clear, has been argued over.

Then we climbed five metres up to deck level to walk the topsides. Standing up there gives you a real sense of the sheer scale of the thing. As Marco pointed out detail after detail, the overwhelming impression was of the intricacy that has gone into every single aspect of this boat. I will be coming back to the hull and deck layout in more depth in a future article.

Next we crossed the yard to where Ben Agathangelou was waiting to explain the foils and appendages. Ferrari Hypersail is a Swiss Army penknife of various interconnected attachments. Agathangelou, the project's fluid dynamics manager, took us through the various elements in great detail, more of which another time.

I also got to have a go on the winch-by-wire system, a new way of operating a grinding pedestal. Rather than being tied to the rhythm of a conventional geared winch pedestal, this version lets the grinder keep developing power at a much more consistent rate of effort. Winch-by-wire is patented, one of 20 patents filed in connection with the Ferrari Hypersail project.

The idea came from an unlikely place. Matteo Lanzavecchia, the project's Chief Technology Officer, as well as Ferrari’s Head of Sports Cars Vehicle Engineering, told me the inspiration struck while he was riding his e-bike. He found himself wondering whether a similar gearing approach could be applied to a sailing winch, and winch-by-wire is the result. More on that to come, too.

When we ran a poll on The Foil asking which of the two boats was more likely to break the record, the vast majority of you backed the trimaran, Gitana 18. That suggests the wider sailing world does not share Ferrari Hypersail's belief that a monohull could ever beat a multihull on a non-stop circumnavigation of the planet.

But consider this: both of these outlandish boats were drawn up by the same designer, Guillaume Verdier. So what does he know that the rest of us don't?

Having visited the yard, and having seen the attention to detail and the sheer scale of ambition behind this project, you have to wonder whether Ferrari Hypersail is really onto something. Could this be the defining boat of its generation?

We will be digging deeper into the hull, the foils and the technology behind Ferrari Hypersail in the coming days and weeks.