Ferrari wants to build the fastest boat in the world powered only by renewable energy

The front area of the deck is being fitted with 100 square meters of solar panels. Ferrari Hypersail Share articleMILAN — Ferrari wants to break endurance records. This time across the oceans. The Italian automotive brand has spent the past three years developing a 100ft (30m) monster of a hydrofoiling boat called Hypersail, which it hopes will become the fastest craft to have ever sailed around the world. In the right weather conditions, Hypersail should be able to achieve in excess of 1,000 nautical miles in 24 hours. When John Elkann, Ferrari’s executive chairman, first announced the project to the world, he was asked why. “Because we couldn’t not do it,” was his response. The Athletic was invited to Ferrari’s offices in Milan for the unveiling of the boat’s livery: a combination of black and yellow — not a hint of classic Ferrari red in sight. Explaining the surprising color choice, Marco Ribigini, team director of Ferrari Hypersail, said yellow was the “second soul of Ferrari.” It is the color of the city of Modena, the birthplace of Enzo Ferrari, and is the exact shade — Giallo Fly — as the helmet of Italian racing driver Luigi Musso, who drove for the Ferrari Formula 1 team in the 1950s. Elkann, a keen offshore sailor himself, says Hypersail follows in the footsteps of Ferrari’s passion for endurance, drawing inspiration from the Ferrari 499P hypercar, which has won the famous 24 Hours of Le Mans three years in a row since the team’s return to endurance racing in 2023. But 24 hours of endurance on the road is one thing. To achieve its stated aim of winning the Jules Verne Trophy, awarded to the boat that breaks the non-stop sailing record around the world, Hypersail is going to have to beat the current time of 40 days, 10 hours, 45 minutes, set by Frenchman Thomas Coville and his crew on board the 100ft trimaran Sodebo in January this year. Ferrari has set itself an enormous challenge. The French have dominated high-performance ocean racing for decades. When the Jules Verne Trophy was established in 1990, the target time for sailing non-stop around the world was 80 days, echoing the adventures of Phileas Fogg in Verne’s novel Around the World in 80 Days. In 1993, Frenchman Bruno Peyron completed the first successful Jules Verne circumnavigation in 79 days, six hours, 15 minutes. Today, Sodebo’s current time is almost half that, yet there is more to be shaved off the record, which might even come down to as little as 30 days. Ribigini says Hypersail is more than a Ferrari passion project. It has brought together two very different worlds: sailing and motor racing. “The project is entirely led by Ferrari, and the reason why Gianmaria Fulgenzi, who is the CTO (chief technology officer) of Ferrari at the moment, but is also the head of vehicles, decided to install this group inside the technical direction of Ferrari is to guarantee the tech transfer from the world of automotive and sports cars to this new world,” he says. “Hopefully, in the next few years, we will see some know-how coming back from the Hypersail to the cars.” The accepted wisdom in yacht design has been that the fastest ocean passages can only be achieved by multihull craft, such as the current crop of Ultim trimarans, which have three hulls in parallel and have set the big records of the past decade. Officially known as the Ultim 32/23, these measure a maximum of 104ft long and 75ft wide. The huge width is what enables the boat to harness so much power from the wind in its sails. A single-hulled yacht — a monohull — has not even been contemplated previously for taking on the might of the multihulls. If it wasn’t for Guillaume Verdier being the naval architect for Hypersail, few sailing experts would ever believe that this Italian job could possibly beat the likes of Sodebo or the rest of the French Ultim fleet. It made sense for Ferrari to enlist the services of the most feted marine engineer of his generation. “I was in New Zealand, and John Elkann gave me a call saying, ‘We may start a free-thinking project to see where we go, and it will be quite exciting to see what we can do together’,” Verdier said. “A few months later, he called me again. This time I was in France at my mother’s place. He said, ‘Let’s get started’. That was about three or four years ago.” It’s hoped and expected that Hypersail will be able to reach peak speeds of up to 50 knots (57.5mph), possibly more. But from 42 knots upwards is where hydrofoiling craft hit their equivalent of the sound barrier — cavitation. This is the phenomenon when water flows around an object at such high speed that it starts bubbling ferociously, almost akin to when it is boiling. At this point, the foils can lose grip in the water, much like the feeling of understeer or oversteer when cornering at high speed in a car. But while the headline figure of peak speed is a head-turner, the more important goal is high sustained speed. Australian professional sailor Glenn Ashby is a two-time winner of the America’s Cup with Team New Zealand. He is also the holder of the wind-powered landspeed record, hitting 138.21mph in December 2022. Whether he’ll form part of the 10-person crew for the big offshore challenges, he’s yet to find out. But he’ll be an intrinsic part of the early development phase. “The Ultims are super, highly-powered, really, really fast boats, and this boat has basically been designed to compete against them,” he says. “We’ve seen how fast the America’s Cup class monohulls go compared to other multihulls, for example. So, we’re very much hoping that this boat will be able to mix it up with the best big multihulls in the world. That’s what the boat’s been designed for.” Ashby’s main role in the Hypersail project has been to come up with an efficient rig and sail plan which can be varied in size for the multitude of wind and wave conditions the boat will encounter around the world. He likens the reefable (able to be reduced), twin-skin sail design to “a 10-speed gearbox”. It’s about being able to change gear both through the really windy conditions down to a light-wind drift, which they might encounter in the dreaded Doldrums near the Equator. “It’s not so much about the top speed with any of these big offshore boats, it’s about your average speed,” he adds. “And that’s something that we’ve really worked hard on with this boat; being able to sustain really high average speeds — high 30s (in knots), well into the 40s — and basically maintain that speed through quite big sea states. That’s been a really big challenge with this boat. “Aerodynamically, it’s much, much cleaner than the big multihulls, and that’s going to be a big advantage for this boat.” While Hypersail will be primarily powered by the wind in its 131ft high sail plan, the boat will be configured to capture all kinds of renewable energy on its way across the oceans, says Ribigini. This is an area where Ferrari is looking to use Hypersail as a giant research and development project. “Since this boat has to spend several weeks on the ocean, if you want to propel this boat using fuel, you would have to fill the boat with petrol,” Ribigini says. “So probably would not be the best practical choice to do. That’s why we decided to go electric instead.” Ribigini says there were two primary reasons why Ferrari opted for electric. “We can manage hardware and software, so we can increase the efficiency of the electric systems, since we have been developing our hybrid cars since 2013,” he says. “And the second is because we can recharge batteries. So, we can create the smallest systems capable of harvesting the energy that you need to use to control the stability of the boat.” The suspension control software from their high-performance cars has enabled Ferrari to develop an algorithm to keep the boat stable, Ribigini adds, which will be vital at all times, but particularly in rough seas and strong winds. The front area of the deck is being fitted with 100 square meters of solar panels, capable of delivering more than 20 kilowatts of electrical power. “To keep the boat fast and stable, we need to control the stability thanks to special appendages that are continuously moving. There is software that controls and helps the helmsman to control stability,” Ribigini says. “Since they are using a lot of power, we have to somehow harvest this power from somewhere else, and this is why we decided to harvest energy from what is around, from renewable energy, like wind, kinetic and solar. So, solar panels are exactly one of these components that close the loop of the energetic and self-sufficient system that we have designed.” Ironically, it’s an auto manufacturer famous for the roar of its petrol-powered engines that is setting a new standard for a sailboat that relies purely on renewable energy. Verdier says the increasing regulation in the car industry and the push to move away from fossil fuels are part of the reason why Ferrari is so enthusiastic about this project. He views Hypersail as a showcase of what’s possible, and of what is becoming increasingly necessary. “It’s a demonstrator of where the future of transport is going,” he says, “aiming for self-sufficiency and showing that it is possible to go around the world with no petrol, no generator, using only renewable sources of energy.” Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms