Ferrari Hypersail Technology and Innovations - we speak to the team and take a look

Ferrari Hypersail is a project like no other, and has brought together experts from automotive, aeronautics, and of course the marine world, to build a yacht which is teeming with new ideas and new engineering. It is truly pushing the boundaries of what is possible and trying to do it in as efficient a way as possible. Seeing the hull for the first time is awe-inspiring. I’d seen the yacht through the virtual reality googles at Maranello earlier in the year, but nothing quite prepares you for the size and scale of the boat. When the foils and spars are attached its going to look even more impressive, and I am looking forward to that moment early in 2027 with anticipation. Bringing the engineers together to design and build a yacht like this has been an incredible task. Each have their own ideas as to what makes a good system, so getting the best out of each of them, and then turning that into a harmonious whole required months of work, but the overall result is extraordinary as well as beautiful. The team are still expecting issues to arise. So many of the systems are untested in the real world, and the salt air and conditions they will encounter will push Ferrari Hypersail to the limit, but the attention to details is phenomenal, and any problems won’t be down to corners being cut, as this is a yacht were the finest of details have been considered. During my trip to the yard I spoke to Technical Team Leader Marco Guglielmo Ribigini, the Tech Team’s Gianluca Fenati, who came from the Formula 1 team at Maranello about some of the challenges of bringing an engineering team like this together, and also Enrico Voltalini about his pathway in sailing, and what it means to be involved in a project like Ferrari Hypersail. Everywhere you look in the shipyard there is something impressive, but the wing arm interface is an engineering marvel. Each side of the hull there is a mechanism made of milled titanium which will hold and move the wing arm up and down for each tack, and on the end of each of those wing arms is the massive 9-metre-wide hydrofoil, made of carbon and titanium with that 0.6mm titanium shield, protecting the carbon fibre structure from cavitation erosion. The loads on the interface are immense, and I astounded to find out that the wing arms are also retractable, bringing the foil closer to the hull when up and in dock. #sailing #ferrarihypersail # ferrari