Our mission to change the sport of sailing stems from our long history running a sailing program in our small lakeside community. Although our journey has brought us to design what we believe to be the best boats for all ages, our passion for bringing the joy of sailing to youth is at the heart of everything we do.
We have created the fastest, most stable, and most versatile sailing dinghy. The boat is designed to operate at a 15º heel angle, regardless of wind speed (so that only one hull is immersed) greatly reducing form and skin friction drags. The revolutionary Wow!!10 uses a curved hydrofoil which lifts the boat to the water surface even in light winds where it acts as a planing board, vastly increases anti-heeling force, and provides roll dampening. And, a trampoline forms wings which enable the skipper to hike out on the windward edge of the foil. In very light winds the foil can be removed and the wings rolled up and stowed. The combination of the foil and wing is called a hydro-wing.
The Wow!! Series of boats – Wow!!10, Wow!!14 and Wow!!18 – use a triple whammy approach to maximize speed without compromising stability. (1) The sails are much bigger than those of current kids’ boats. (2) To counter increased heeling, the planing foil’s center of lift moves to leeward with increasing heeling angle, and the crew moves out to the windward to the foil tip, amplifying hiking force. (3) In addition, the area of foil lift decreases with increasing boat speed, reducing drag. At very high boat speeds, the boat may skip like a flat rock thrown on a lake so there is no theoretical limit to boat speed. The Wow!!10 is extremely light and is designed to ideally sail at an approximately 15º angle so it sails on one hull, decreasing drag at all points of sail.
If the boat heels suddenly in a puff, the leeward foil part of the dips further into the water, generating an anti-roll force. If the boat capsizes, the crew rights it by mounting the windward tip of the foil. This feature makes the boat more fun for kids, who often love to capsize.
Since the Wow!!10 is designed for kids, but is a wonderful boat for adults, the weight advantage for kids is lessened when racing because the boat is designed so the foil’s area of lift increases with increasing crew weight.
Jason Eveleth ran a sailing camp for 16 years and has been teaching kids to sail in Mountain Lakes, NJ, for many years. During that time, he observed that the creative sailing races and games, which are the foundation of his program, would be more fun with much faster boats. He set out to design a boat which makes play faster, safer, higher scoring and more exciting. With a background in science and engineering, he used his hi-tech skills and experience to create the Wow!!10 technology that outperforms current single-handed, dinghy class sailboats.
As a mechanical engineer from Vanderbilt University and a recreational sailor, Mark Scully’s passion lies in design and manufacturing engineering. He is spear-heading the modeling, construction, and manufacturing of the Wow!!10.
