Meet Steve Killing
Meet The America's Cup Yacht Designer Who Influenced The ENVGO NV1's High-Performance Design
Meet The America's Cup Yacht Designer Who Influenced The ENVGO NV1's High-Performance Design
Steve Killing, pictured second from right, served as a member of the 2013 design team for Emirates Team New Zealand. Steve has since provided valuable input into the design of The ENVGO NV1.
"The people you work with are more important than the project itself. The team at ENVGO is enthusiastic, skilled, humble, and practical – all the attributes that make a great design partner. Combining that with a challenging project made it an easy decision to join."
– Steve Killing, Former Emirates Team New Zealand Yacht Designer and Naval Architect
2013 was the first time that America’s Cup sailboats discovered that full flight was practical. When the rules for that event were crafted there was no intent or vision that large wing-sailed boats would fly. My involvement began when the class moved to rigid wing sails on catamarans and since I had designed the boats that won the world championship in 25-foot C-Class catamarans they felt my experience would be useful. It was an exciting opportunity for me, a solo independent designer, to join a team of 30 experts to design this new boat.
The idea arose that we could improve speed by lifting the hull partially out of the water, but it soon became evident that achieving full flight was a worthwhile goal – the reduction in both frictional and wavemaking drag was significant. I helped out with the original clandestine testing on a secluded lake in New Zealand’s north island of a 25-foot test boat towed from the center of effort of the sails by a speedboat. It was a successful albeit moderately controlled series of flights. Other aspects of the project that I was involved with included hull shape modeling, foil development, and the testing of wing heat shrink coverings.
The thing that keeps me from retiring after 50 years of yacht design is the variety. No project is the same as the previous one. To keep that variety, I have branched out into ‘anything that floats’ including racing and cruising sailboats, canoes, kayaks, dragon boats, rowing shells, classic wooden powerboats, radio-controlled model yachts, historic vessels, electric launches and now hydrofoiling electric boats.
I tend to be a technical yacht designer with attention to aesthetic details as well. I’m excited by the technology that permits us to design with more accuracy and predictability. We used to draw on mylar with a pencil and plastic battens and did calculations with a slide rule. Then we had calculators, then simple computers, and now a powerhouse and CAD software on my desk. We used to design by rule of thumb and that led to tank testing and now to Computational Fluid Dynamics. It is all very exciting.
The concept of NV1 was fairly well developed when I rejoined the team to help with structure and surface modeling. I gave my input but the internal team was keen to control the foil shape and overall concepts and that was fine by me.
ENVGO’s Founder, Mike Peasgood, first called me after he had heard from his contacts in the marine industry that I might be able to provide some useful input for the project. At that point, they had tested a radio-controlled model of the hydrofoiling concept and were beginning the final design on their one-person test platform.
I get many calls like Mike’s and am positive but always proceed with caution when the proposal is off the normal path. All companies are well-intentioned, but only a few have the organization, practical attitude, and marketing vision that is necessary.
At this stage in my career, the people you work with are more important than the project itself. ENVGO is enthusiastic, skilled, humble, and practical—all the attributes that make a good design partner. Combining that with a challenging project made it an easy decision to make.
The NV1 project is ambitious. A commercially viable recreational powerboat that both planes and flies on hydrofoils with only speed and direction input from the operator is a big ask. From other hydrofoiling projects like the C-Class catamarans and America’s Cup I have learned that foiling is rather straightforward, but maintaining a constant height above the water and waves is not. While David Weiss, who also partnered with ENVGO, was defining the aesthetics and concept of the boat, my responsibility was the hull shape, 3D modeling of the composite surfaces (hull and deck), CFD (computational fluid dynamics performance analysis), and the structural design.
There is no doubt the styling of NV1 will stand out. However, style alone will not stand up on its own; the boat has to perform as advertised. There are a lot of companies exploring the electric hydrofoiling space at the moment. It is a logical area of development for marine vessels as the automotive world is moving quickly in the electric direction. Those who succeed will be the ones who do it carefully and with a big vision. The NV1 is tackling the flight control challenge with employees skilled in vision control. Unique to NV1 is the battery cooling system, aft strut deployment, ride height software, and differential steering….those items are, and need to be, transparent to the operator. The buyers of this boat will be first adopters and the experience needs to be, and will be, like driving a luxury automobile – easy to operate yet exhilarating.
Boats built in the next few years are step one in the development of sustainable boating. A few, including ENVGO, will emerge as successful and I suspect the next generation will look quite different and be even more efficient. It takes forward thinking to begin a project like this and I commend the ENVGO team for making the leap.
The efficiency of the boat is key to the success of electric boating. Gasoline is unfortunately a very efficient fuel for its weight and volume, but not acceptable in the impact on our lakes and atmosphere. As we marry boating with electric power, weight becomes a critical factor. I am keen to see the development of battery technology in the future which will allow us to have an energy storage density similar to gasoline.
I also see the features incorporated into the control software as key to the current enjoyment and future development of NV1. Because it is software based it will be relatively easy to incorporate new features.
Solving the energy density storage challenge will allow designers to explore new corners of the design space. I can see electric boats becoming more of the norm for cottagers, and more accepted by sailors for auxiliary power.
The NV1 will be exciting, eye-opening, easy to use, and fun to drive. At this early stage of electric hydrofoiling the boat will, by necessity, be expensive, but that can change over time. I would love to see the boat used from the cottager’s dock for tours of the inland lakes, trips to the island, charging up with solar panels at the dock while I am away during the week, evening low-speed cruises and maybe even water-skiing on the weekend.
