Electric-Powered Silent 60 Packs a Giant Kite Wing

Photo: Silent Yachts

Kite-surfing has become the go-to sport for board lovers, but now a kite will be standard equipment on a 60-foot motoryacht. Austrian boat-maker Silent Yachts has rolled out its Silent 60, a solar-powered catamaran with a kite wing instead of conventional sails.

Photo: Silent Yachts

The new model stretches the length out to 60 ft (18 m) and features a redesigned hull with a longer waterline and an inverted or reverse bow, meaning the boat's most forward point is at the bottom rather than the top.

Photo: Silent Yachts

"It's more tool than toy," Silent Yachts' CEO Michael Kohler says of the 130-sq.-foot Wingit kite. "It can add five knots to a boat's speed, save energy and increase the boat's efficiency. It generates 10 times more power per square foot than a conventional sail."

Tethered by Kevlar lines to a two-foot-high foredeck mast, the kite is inflated before being sent aloft. It flies up to about 400 feet, where wind is more intense, doing figure eights as it pulls the boat forward. Controlling the kite's movement is simple as an automated app is available which the owners can use. To bring the kite back down, the controls will move the kite above the boat where it has the least amount of pull on the boat. From here you can easily winch it down and collapse it over the foredeck for stowage.

Photo: Silent Yachts

Source:

www.sail-world.com

newatlas.com

robbreport.com

www.luxuo.com