Mr Smith's Amazing Sailboats

The Fliptackers
(Section 4 of 6)

Initial Fliptacker Designs
In 1982, after seemingly having finished with his high-speed sailboat experiments, Bernard Smith came up with a new approach to designing the "perfect" hydrofoil sailboat.  Around this time, Ralph Gitomer met Bernard and the two collaborated on testing this new concept.  Bernard's design consisted of the now familiar tetrahedral framework, made up of two pairs of tubes.  A small low-drag hull was placed between the endpoints of one pair of tubing, and a stretched fabric sail was arranged between the other pair.  Small tip foils were placed by the ends of the sail and attached to the framework.  Two sets of lifting foils were also attached to the framework, located fore-and-aft of the hull.  These foils were "bifurcated" or split to ensure that they worked equally well on either tack.  The design was dubbed the "Fliptacker" for obvious reasons.

The new configuration seemed to combine all the advantages of the Aerohydrofoil's foil arrangement but did away with the performance limitations created by the proa layout - where the foils had to operate in both directions. Now the performance offered by conventional foil designs could be fully exploited.  Working exclusively with models, Bernard's Fliptackers did well, proving to be fast and controllable, though on no account could they be made to actually tack.        

Split-Hull Fliptackers
In an effort to make the configuration capable of tacking, Bernard tried another approach. He did away with the windward foils and hull, etc and replaced them with a "split hull" - two lightweight hulls joined together at an angle of 30°.  The framework, containing the sail and tip foils, were hinged to it.  When sailing, only the leeward hull was actually in the water. 

The logic of this design centered around having minimal drag on the sail when the framework rotated from side-to-side during the tacking maneuver. At the midpoint of the tacking manouver, the sail itself would ideally be parallel to the wind (0° & at lowest drag).  But imagine if the sail was fixed to the framework at an angle of 15°, then in order for the sail to be at 0° at the midpoint of tacking, it would need to change through 15° of pitch.  Skewing the framework by 15° off the centerline of a hull would achieve this.  Using the split-hull arrangement allowed the framework to be "skewed" on either tack.  Clever but strange.  

The (free-sailing) models weren't perfect, although the much sought after tacking ability appeared closer to occurring.  The models weren't as directionally stable as the foiled Fliptackers, but it seemed that a crewed version of the Split-hull Fliptackers would overcome any difficulties with steering and tacking, simply because of the sailor's ability to actively control the craft. A piloted craft seemed the next step.

  

Super Boardsailor Fliptackers
Using the Split-Hull Fliptacker model as their starting point, Bernard Smith and Ralph Gitomer now planned and detailed a manned version.  Taken with the success of the sailboard, both in terms of its popularity and its speed potential, this new design was hoped to be one step along the evolutionary chain from the sailboard.

With the prospect of having a full-sized and manufacturable device on the market, it appears that quite some attention was given to making it a practical craft to handle. Some of the new features the design incorporated included:
- Tip foils that yielded when the craft's caught aback - so making handling the craft safer.
- A tetrahedral framework with a unique center joint, allowing the rig to collapse down for easy disassembly and transportation. 
- A collapsible split-hull arrangement allowing the hulls to be arranged closely enough for them to be car-transportable.
- A multi-section sail that can change sail area whilst remaining in tension.

A 4-ft model fitted with the collapsible hulls is shown above. After Ralph's and Bernard's work developing the Super Boardsailor Fliptacker concept, a patent was granted (see the Resources section), though it appears no actual full-sized version was made. 

It was around this time, 1989, that Bernard's second book, "Sailloons and Fliptackers" was published, detailing the major developmental work that had taken place subsequent to his 1963 tome, "The 40-knot Sailboat".  Ralph Gitomer went on to develop his own manned versions of the Fliptacker - more details can be found in the section titled "Other Craft".  Bernard concentrated on the Fliptacker models - returning to the original hydrofoiled concept.  This is detailed in the "Mini-Fliptackers" section.