Sailing season’s over in a littler over a month–but my new indoor sailing center will fix all that!
I’m only thinking about something big enough to sail Lasers and 420s (these are one- and two-person boats, respectively). Seems like something the size of the field area in a professional football stadium would work (i.e., allow a reasonable number of boats to sail at the same time). The pool would only need to be about 4 feet deep.
I think the building would have fans on both ends to insure a continuous flow of air. Or maybe one big set of fans somewhere that circulates the air in a loop–this may reduce buffeting effects (<–that’s a setup for a Margaritaville joke if I ever heard one).
The big problem–heat. Not only would I need to keep my big-ass pool from turning into a big-ass ice cube, but I imagine that we couldn’t just bring in unheated air for the wind in the winter time. Not only would that cool the water dramatically, it wouldn’t be pleasant to sail in all the gear that would be necessary to withstand the temperature.
So we have to heat the water and the air. For the water, I’m thinking that there may be a way to fully insulate the pool so not all that much heating is actually required (something like a big-ass vacuum thermos). Also, perhaps there’s a way to locate the facility near a place with lots of waste heat that I could get for “free” (i.e., after building the infrastructure to use the waste heat).
So, what do you think?
ETA: Oops, meant to add a poll. I’d be interested in whether you think this is:
Technically impossible for some reason; or
Technically possible but so expensive that there’s no way in hell it would pay; or
A really super idea that I should get cracking on.
Also, if you have experience in any related technical field (e.g., sailing, moving lots of air, heating lots of water, anything really–I’m a lawyer with a liberal arts undergrad for gods’ sakes), please chime in with your thoughts.
Seems really small for boats big enough to carry humans - I think you’d need a minimum fetch of at least several hundred yards. Note that your income potential will depend on how many indoor yachtsmen can be active at once (it needs to be a significant number).
If the air circulates in a closed loop and the building is well insulated, that should not be a big deal. The cost of the energy necessary to keep lots of air moving might be an issue.
Probably #2. Certainly very expensive to set up, with no obvious large bunch of folks ready to beat your door down with money in hand.
There is a proposal to build an indoor ski center in one of the hottest climes in California, in Tulare. So do what they do,but turn all the plugs around the other way in the socket
Yes I am. In the really cold winter months most sailors I know use that time to carry out maintenance, repairs, cleaning (hull) and that sort of thing. Where I come from, some hard-core sailors will still take their boats out in winter, where possible, but I don’t think those types of people would be attracted to sailing in an artificial environment packed in with a bunch of other people. Especially if they have to cart their boat to and from your pond every time they feel like a sail.
Make it either a sailing school for kids/beginners or a weekly dinghy regatta (with proper judges and a cup etc.) and you might have something going.
But a large part of the sailing experience is really working with the natural elements to find the best course to sail and to predict changes. Will you have currents? Will the wind be variable? Without those kind of things you won’t attract serious sailors, IMHO.
I could see something like this set up in one of those inflatable golf driving range domes.
Those things are fairly large and stay a comfortable temperature in the winter.
I know nothing about sailing but wouldn’t sailing in an area the size of 1 or 2 football fields be like sailing in a bathtub to most hardcore sailors?
You can create awesome golf simulations, both on the computer and in front of a screen where you hit balls against a wall and it registers how far it goes.
It can take a golf course and recreate it digitally down to the square inch. But it won’t capture the ability to lie down on the green and see the three breaks to the hole.
It can tell you the wind speed and direction and account for it on the screen. It won’t capture the feel of the wind in your face or how that ball’s going to grip in the wind as it travels down the fairway.
It can tell you that you’re in a sand trap, but it will never capture the feel of trying to dig into a ball and launch it 5 feet upward past the lip of the sandtrap onto the green.
In short, it can be really life-like. But it’s not real. It will never be real for a thousand variables you can’t program into the machine but you can feel when you’re out on the course.
If you’re using this as a training course, awesome. If you’re using this to simulate the real thing, the best you can possibly hope for is enough people to shrug and say “it’s better than nothing.” I wouldn’t hold my breath.
If this is way out in the country, you might get a good deal on the land, but no matter how you cut it, you are going to need a LOT of land. Probably at least four times what you mentioned in the OP. And to keed a mass of air moving at, what, 10-15 knots, over that entire space is going to take a lot of energy.
I think it could be done, but I’m not sure that you’d pull in enough business to make it worth it. What sort of rates would you charge?
Even for a Laser, you’d want a bigger space to sail in. A Laser on plane can probably do 15mph. That’s a mile in 4 minutes. Any body of water less than 1/4 mile on a side and you’d be tacking every 20 seconds. If you wanted to set up a race course, you probably want at least 1/4 - 1/2 mile between the marks. And it’s not just linear distance, because sailboats tack, so you need a wide area.
Add in the lack of scenery and the no doubt exorbitant price, and I think most sailors would just spring for a drysuit and go frostbiting. If you dress for it, sailing in the winter can be surprisingly pleasant (on a sunny day).
I was just looking at a map of the last place I sailed. Surprisingly, a little corner of the lagoon measuring about a half mile across is plenty of space. I gladly share it with maybe a dozen other boaters. Not much more than that, though.
He lake I used to do a lot of sailing upon [Silver Lake, near Perry NY] had a YMCA camp and always had a cloud of little sailboats with kids learning to sail, sort of like a small cloud of butterflies +) I could see the little dinghy based sailboats they used in an endeavor like this.
OK, so a square that’s a half mile on each side and 4 feet deep. I think that’s about 27 million cubic feet of water, or 200 million gallons. Does that take this idea completely outside the realm of physical possibility?
Anyone want to hazard a guess at how much it would cost to heat all that water or mover air at 15-20 knots over that much space? I’m hoping that with the power of the Dope we can find someone who works at a big-ass aquarium or something.
That’s about 7 million square feet of floor space.
Expo Center, in Tulsa, is one of the largest column-free enclosed spaces in the world. It was originally built to house the International Petroleum Exhibition and is large enough that companies could set up complete drilling rigs inside. It’s an amazingly huge barn of a building. But it only has about half a million square feet of floor space.
Your plan would require 14 buildings the size of Expo Center … which cost $3.5 million dollars to build … in 1966.
OK, now I’m rethinking this half mile thing. Look at this picture and tell me that this space doesn’t look big enough for six lasers to sail around a course (and it’s only 710,000 square feet):
People that can afford to sail in wintertime can also afford air fare to places where wintertime means 75 degrees during a bad cold snap.
Seriously—you think you can handle 6 boats at a time. How much do you think people will pay to sail around your indoor pond? $50/hour maybe? If you’re open and booked full for the equivalent of an 8 hour day, you’re grossing $2400/day. Figuring in your costs…I’m not seeing a way to make a decent living there.