Mr Smith's Amazing Sailboats

The Mini-Fliptackers
(Section 6 of 6)

And now we come to the final installment concerning Bernard's designs, even though, by rights, this section should form part of the Fliptackers text. The relevance of the Mini-Fliptacker to the actual story of Bernard Smith's work has meant that it deserves its own section.

After the publication of "Sailloons and Fliptackers", and the granting of the patent for the Super Boardsailor design, Bernard returned to the original hydrofoiled fliptacker concept, where foils were arranged at the vertices of a tetrahedral frame. Testing his ideas on models he called "Mini-Fliptackers" (where the term Fliptacker would be used for manned craft), Bernard has fine-tuned the design and has also tested out some variations to the various components.  Eschewing radio control, the models were all free-sailing.

"The Ultimate Sailboat"
This is the title of Bernard Smith's current manuscript. Graphic illustrator Michael Crumpton of ArtFormFunction has recently completed the illustrations for the book. Once published. "The Ultimate Sailboat" will form the final installment of his trilogy on the design of high-speed sailboats. Not one for short gestation periods, Bernard's third book will follow over 10 years on from "Sailloons and Fliptackers", which itself, as the sequel to "The 40-knot Sailboat", was over 25 years in the making. "The Ultimate Sailboat" provides an overview of his work to date, telling the history and the developments of his design work, plus the detail improvements made in recent years to the fliptacker configuration.

The significance of the Mini-Fliptacker to Bernard's story becomes known now. A portion of "The Ultimate Sailboat" is given to a step-by-step guide on how to construct a 6ft Mini-Fliptacker. Listings of suitable materials, recommendations for building techniques and clear schematics, means that anyone so interested should be able to create working free-sailing Mini-Fliptackers. This resource, freely available once the book is published, can be used by enthusiasts to create their own Mini-Fliptackers and hence to later experiment with their own variations of them.   

(The above image is by Michael Crumpton and is typical of the illustrations that will be appearing in "The Ultimate Sailboat")

"The Ultimate Sailboat" will be a great way of disseminating the information and knowledge that Bernard has gained over the 40 years of his experimenting with high-speed sailboats, both full-sized and model.  It may well be that the Mini-Fliptacker - his last model and the one that best incorporates all that he has gleaned from the field of high-speed sailing design - will be the one that he will become best known for. It will be the foundation for the next generation of speed sailing enthusiasts to base their work on.