ABOARD THE WILLIWAW; DAVID KEIPER: HYDROFOILS ARE FUTURE OF SAILING

Williwaw is an Eskimo word for a wind that flies swiftly off a mountain. That's the name David Keiper gave to the world's first trimaran hydrofoil.

Trained in physical and biomedical sciences as well as engineering, Keiper designed the trimaran hydrofoil in response to his first sailing experiences in the 1960s. He was sailing a 20-foot sloop at maximum speed (about 7 knots) and recalls, "The mast was bending like it was going to break."

The scientist began researching ways to counteract the tremendous drag forces such a boat is subjected to and arrived at the conclusion that a boat that flies, a multihull hydrofoil, was the answer.

Thus the ocean-going Williwaw, which regularly turns 20 knots and is capable of 30, was born.

Keiper, a resident of Cape Girardeau for four years, has just published "Hydrofoil Voyager," a book that recounts the trips he took to the South Seas aboard the Williwaw and outlines the design he predicts will become the sailing yacht of the future.

Keiper's travels aboard the Williwaw during the 1970s took him 20,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean, sometimes with a small crew, sometimes alone. He spent much time traveling about the Hawaiian Islands, then moving on to Samoa, Tonga, New Zealand and the Cook Islands.

Keiper was 33 when he first "left employment," as he says. He did some consulting work and cut back on expenses, discovering that cruising the ocean in a small boat doesn't really cost much.

It was the traditional lure of the sea and adventure that drew him. "It was an escape and fun to go somewhere with just wind power," he says.

"The romance of the seas reached me."

There were wonderful days (see excerpt). At times he chartered the boat to surfers looking for pristine waves or to sightseers so he could keep on sailing.

There were some testy times, too. Like flying 15 feet across the deck after releasing the main sail a bit faster than expected. And the Williwaw tilting at a 45-degree angle down a huge wave near New Zealand. "The boat stood up on its end for about two seconds," Keiper says.

In American Samoa, he was sought out by men looking for an American husband for their daughters and granddaughters.

On his way to Tahiti, some of the Williwaw's flaws began to appear, particularly the glue that became brittle and began to crack. The Williwaw never made it to Tahiti.

The boat finally was lost in 1977 in Kauai's Hanelei Bay while Keiper was on a trip to the mainland. The person he had entrusted the boat to chose an unwise anchorage and the boat was destroyed in a storm.

"The hydrofoil sailing yacht was an ambitious project for me," he writes in the book. "Previously, the largest thing I had built was a modest-sized bookcase."

Built it in the back yard of his house at Black Point, Calif., about 30 miles from San Francisco, the 31-foot Williwaw was a product Keiper continuously refined, beginning on San Francisco Bay and continuing across the South Seas.

The downside of hydrofoil boats is that they require a wind of at least 10 knots before they begin flying. They wouldn't be practical in a region of light winds. But once airborne, hydrofoil yachts are not only fast and easily maneuvered but skim across the ocean so lightly that seasickness is hardly a worry.

He says the hydrofoil sailing yacht hasn't become popular yet for one primary reason: "People don't believe it works."

To prove it does is one of the missions of Keiper's book, which was published in August and has been favorably reviewed by at least two sailing magazines.

After losing the Williwaw, Keiper became a "Landlubber Again," the title of a chapter of his book. He began research into nutritional medicine, which resulted in the book "How to Keep Your Bad Habits and Still Avoid Flame-out."

He lost heavily in the stock market crash of 1987, was divorced and remarried.

Keiper and his wife Helen moved to Cape Girardeau because she had a cousin in Marble Hill, it was near water, they liked the countryside and discovered they could buy a nice Victorian house at one-twelfth the cost in San Francisco.

Here he has been writing and hopes to begin building hydrofoil sailing yachts for other people, noting that many of the foremost hydrofoil developers lived in the Midwest.

Does he miss his other life? Not the cities, he says. "I miss the sea."