Hydroptère: World’s coolest yachts

Yachting World has been asking top sailors and marine industry gurus to choose the coolest and most innovative yachts of our times, and Pip Hare nominates Hydroptère. Here’s the report:

“I thought Hydroptère was the most incredible boat for a long time,” says Vendée Globe solo sailor Pip Hare of the groundbreaking 60ft (18m) foiler. “It was the first flying boat we’d ever seen. It crossed oceans and also was going for the 50-knot record.”

The experimental hydrofoil was the brainchild of skipper, helmsman and project founder Alain Thébault, together with design studio VPLP. It was built on principles Thébault proved as early as the Nineties and launched in 2008 – over a decade decade before the Ultimes evolved into the foiling offshore multihull class we know today.

Hydroptère blasted into the record books shortly after she was launched, grabbing the 500m record for the D Class (44.8 knots) and the nautical mile record (41.6 knots). The team’s ultimate goal was the outright sailing speed record over 500m. In 2009, she pushed this to 52.8 knots, and in the same year set a record of 50.1 knots over a one-mile course.

But that record was in turn pulverized in 2012 by Paul Larsen in Vestas Sailrocket 2, when he set a new world sailing speed record of 65.5 knots.

For Yachting World’s list of cool boats, click here.