Turtled Tries
 

My only two experiences on multihulls consisted of pitchpoling a Hobi
in a thunderstorm and a ride on a Corsair F31 tri at the St. Pete boat
show. I'd love to have an F31, but $160,000, sheesh. Maybe I can
afford and old Searunner. Right now, I just want to get back to
regular sailing. However, I have read about masthead floats for
multis and seen one once (seriously weird and ugly), SO.......Useless
Idea #3731

Use auto airbag technology to quickly fill an airbag at the masthead
if the mast goes beyond horizontal. This beats using a cylinder to
fill it because of the weight of the cylinder. The airbag would NOT
quickly deflate and might keep the tri from going turtle.

Turtled Tries
 

Parallax wrote:

Use auto airbag technology to quickly fill an airbag at the masthead
if the mast goes beyond horizontal. This beats using a cylinder to
fill it because of the weight of the cylinder. The airbag would NOT
quickly deflate and might keep the tri from going turtle.

The idea, but not the technology. Airbags must be almost explosive to do
any good. That's why they kill children. OTOH, there are slower, higher
volume gas generators used in military and other applications. On guy
used one to power a one-shot turbocharger on a VW bug a couple decades
back. Imagine this big condom running up the mast to flip the boat back
upright.