Goodall Design Foiling Viper

About

The Foiling Viper by Goodall Design represents the latest in foiling technology and engineering. On the same platform at the F16, the boat is equipped with modern Z-foils located forward of the centreboards; connected by a belt-system allowing instant, symmetrical changes to both boards from the trapeze. The rudders come with a differential setup up to six degrees; enabling full upwind performance. The boards have no concept of height regularisation so it is purely up to coordination of crew-work to stabilise the flight of the boat. paired with this is a modern suite of sails including a decksweeper main and a flat spinnaker to account for the enormous apparant winds felt downwind. All-in-all the foiling viper is a high-tech monster that requires the crew’s all to get the most out of it. In racing conditions, we have recorded speed of 19 knots upwind and 26 knots downwind and there is plenty more performance yet to come.

The foiling viper does not belong to a racing class so most training and racing was spent alongside local Olympic NACRA 17s. In July 2023 we experimented with a new sail design. The spinnaker was swapped out for a code zero akin to those found on larger catamarans like GC32 and ETF26. The theory behind it was to attempt to stabilise the foiling downwind in high wind conditions. By having a flat sail we can control precisely the pitch of the boat. Doing so, we sacrfice some depth and VMG in the hopes to gain a lot of speed. Testing was postponed in favour of prepration for upcoming world championships.