Annals of Innovation–ET Strikes Again!: No, not the creepy, long-fingered alien with the gin-rasp, voice…..The “Extra-Terrestrial” also happens to be the affectionate nick-name of another French sailing superstar named Yves Parlier. Parlier has won a boatload of solo races across the Atlantic and is one of the sport’s true innovators. He’s best known however, for his exploits in the most recent Vendee Globe solo round-the-world race. Dismasted in the Southern Ocean while chasing the lead, he refused to retire as most ordinary terrestrials would. Instead, he limped into Bluff, New Zealand. Using only materials he had on board, and his God-given engineering genius, Parlier built a makeshift oven in which he baked a carbon-fiber splint for his broken mast. All alone, he raised the new spar with a Rube Goldberg contraption of levers and blocks, and sailed back home to France, half a world away. Of course, his voyage took much longer than he originally intended, so he ran out of food (in the Vendee no outside assistance is allowed). No problem for ET: he just started eating seaweed. For this performance he justly won heroic status in France, and a place in the Wetass Pantheon.

Now ET is after new adventures and new records, and he has just launched the most radical catamaran to touch water in years. It’s got twin rigs–one on each hull–and the hulls are stepped like the hulls of a seaplane. Why? So they hydroplane up out of the water, in theory reducing drag at 40 knots to one-tenth the drag of a conventional multihull. ET is planning to sail the boat in two solo races across the Atlantic and back this summer, and will also target a number of speed records. If this thing works it will be incredible to watch. Come to think of it, even if it doesn’t it’s going to be pretty spectacular….



ET’s Spaceship: Holy Hydroplane! I want to see pictures of this thing sinking, I mean submarining, I mean sailing…