The Sailing Yacht Research Foundation (SYRF) is publicly sharing the design of a 14 Meter wide and light hull. SYRF hopes that the entire sailing community will use this as an educational exercise to better understand the capabilities and limitations of current performance prediction tools.

The 14M Project was conceived as a follow up from the 2015 SYRF Wide Light Project, which provided the design and research community with a means of validating computational fluid dynamics (CFD) codes against a towing tank model. By making public the hull surface files and rig dimensions, SYRF hopes that designers and researchers can once again collaborate to improve their understanding of CFD’s ability to accurately predict the performance of wide and light designs.

SYRF’s Technical Director, Jim Teeters, worked with members of the SYRF Advisory Council, including Adolfo Carrau of Botin Partners, to produce a design that reflects the current trends in yacht design both in style and in size. With most new wide and light designs falling into the Fast40+ or TP52 class, and with the Wide Light project already having utilized a 72-foot design, the Advisory Council selected 46 feet (14 meters) as the optimal length for the new design.