86
extraordinary boats
HELEN FRETTER ON THE G
THE G4 is a 40ft foiling catamaran, the latest
version of which features a fully automated
foil control system designed to make foiling
accessible to crews with all levels of experience.T
PRACTICAL
SPECIFICATION
LOA 12.14m 39ft 10in
LWL 12.74m 41ft 10in
Beam 6.78m 22ft 3in
Draught (foils up) 0.60m 2ft 0in
Draught (foils down) 2.40m 7ft 11in
Displacement (lightship) 2,835kg 6,250lb
Sail Area:
Mainsail 73m^2 786sq ft
Jib 32m^2 345sq ft
Fractional Code Zero 39m^2 420sq ft
Masthead Code Zero 115m^2 1,238sq ft
Price (approx) €1,000,000-€1,500,000he G4 has had an interesting start in
life. The first G4 was sold by Gunboat,
and the bright orange Timbalero III
made a very public debut at Les Voiles de St
Barth in 2015, when she spectacularly capsized.
But Timbalero III also caught plenty of
people’s eyes for her radically different sailing
experience. One of them was Larry Page,
CEO and founder of Google, and a fully paid
up member of the San Francisco Bay foiling
kitesurfing community, which sees some of
Silicon Valley’s biggest tech billionaires take
to the waters around Alcatraz every Thursday
night to go kite foiling. Page placed an order for
the second foiling G4.
Then Gunboat went bankrupt. Dutch
company DNA, the performance sailing arm of
Holland Composites, which had initially been
involved in the development and build of the
G4, bought the rights to sell the catamarans.
The rebrand meant that the pause button was
pushed briefly, but when work resumed there
was the opportunity to not only incorporate
some of the lessons learned from St Barth, but
also to do something even more radical.A boat that drives itself
The new brief, according to Thijs van Riemsdijk
of DNA, was to make the G4 like the latest
Tesla, the self-driving car. At the time, the DNA
team in Lelystad, a small industrial city in the
Netherlands, had not even seen the latest
Tesla, but since then they have worked to
develop a near self-foiling yacht.
The latest generation G4 has kept the same
hull, mast and J-shaped daggerboard foils
as the first boat, but the control systems are
wholly different.
A specially developed onboard operating
system is controlled by a touchscreen. Before
sailing, the helmsman chooses from one of
four modes: ‘low riding’ or non-foiling; ‘foiling
cruise’; ‘foiling sport’; or ‘race’ mode. Each of
the four modes is pre-calibrated to that owner’s
preferences and abilities.
A gyro installed under the rotating mast
monitors pitch, heel angle and velocity, and
each mode has pre-set optimum speeds, rates
of acceleration, and heel angles. There arehydraulic rams controlling the daggerboard
height, mainsheet and traveller position.
Electric actuators on the daggerboards and
T-foil rudders allow them to be finely trimmed
at the touch of a button. Positioning and rake
settings are displayed on 10 inch Sailmon
screens in the cockpit.
Or for a more hands-off approach, in
‘auto-trim’ mode the G4 operating system
automatically trims both mainsail and foil
height and rake to maintain a smooth, even
flight. It is truly futuristic stuff.
If the boat’s gyro senses that it is heeling
too far or too rapidly, the ‘auto-dump’ function
kicks in, easing mainsheet and traveller and
retracting the daggerboards.Automated systems keep the G4 foiling safely –
perfect for the less inexperienced sailor looking
for some foiling fun