I will try Steve,
1. We have sailed through weed with two identical F14’s, and both caught weed on their rudders and were forced to extract that weed. One cat had T foils the other didn’t. The T foil cat slid the rudder up in the case and extracted the weed, slid the rudder back down and continued sailing. The other one had “kick” up rudders and swung the rudder up cleared the weed and swung the rudder back down. Conclusions were that the swung rudder was quicker BUT the difference was very little. Definitely not enough to be a deciding factor in “rejecting” the T foils.
2. When you look at the so called “drag” from T foils, you have to approach the question not from a “static” two dimensional perspective as if the boat was standing still and the bows went up and the transoms went down, (or visa versa) if this was the case there would be enormous loads (not drag) transferred from the foils directly to the transoms, but instead the hulls are moving forward THROUGH the water when the bow “dips” (or rises) and therefore we have a three dimensional “global” situation. Think of the foils not so much as resisting the vertical movement of the hulls, but more so as directing the direction of the hulls through the water in the vertical plane, exactly the same as the rudders do on the horizontal plane. Because of this the change to the angle of incidence of the T foils to the actual direction of the movement of the hulls is very small (only a few degrees) and as such the resulting drag is approximately the same as that caused by the rudders when steering in a straight line (which never in actuality really happens as even in a straight line we are always steering a little up to counter leeward drift) This is why when you calculate (quite simply) the potential “load” that the area of the foils can generate (IE for the Stealth numbers have been bandied about of 100 or more kg’s) it would appear that the transoms need to be substantially reinforced to take that extra load, BUT in reality due to that “force” not being by any means a static vertical load the transoms can handle the T foils without any additional reinforcing.
Our testing so far, between two identical F14’s, one with foils and one without showed that over the full range of our extensive testing the cat without foils could never match the cat with foils under any sailing condition.
3. The so-called drag does not seem to be a “variable” with the different sea states. The drag is a constant relatable to the actual speed of the foils through the water. The greater the hull speed the better they work I.E their efficiency goes up with speed greater proportionally than the increased induced drag.
4. Read my original posts you will see that we yardsticked TWO identical F14, one with and one without T foils
5. I think that my academic qualifications together with my lifetime spent designing, testing, building, and selling catamarans may just qualify me to perhaps have my “testing” practises accepted as valid.