10:50 AM Sun 18 Oct 2009 GMT
Vestas Sailrocket is in Walvis Bay, Namibia. The Sailrocket Team are attempting to break the World Sailing Speed record. This is the final record attempt for the team. her is the latest on their record attempt:
Whilst Friday easily delivered the forecast 30 knot winds, disappointingly, yesterday's ideal forecast failed to materialise.
Despite the strong forecast we still battled across to speed-spot just in case an opportunity arose. I knew it was going to be top end stuff so as a last precaution we added an extra 20kg of ballast to the nose. Power was not going to be a problem in those winds. Just getting across the lagoon was hard work and the wing strained against its restraints. Walvis Bay was pumping out a solid, steady wind that was just too much for us. We recorded the wind for about half an hour for future reference and then headed home.
Yesterday's forecast was for 25 knot winds so we all psyched ourselves up for a big day. The morning just didn't show signs of powering up as there was a light WNW wind that didn't budge. By lunchtime I guessed that we had been duped. It was very frustrating as we had all been commenting on how the forecast has been absolutely spot on for the past weeks. So we hung around to 5pm before canning the day completely.
As it stands there are no great forecasts coming up. Of course that will change... but now I start to hear the clock tick as day by day options fade away. We would have enough time to fix any big issues and come back again if they happened now. In a weeks time we will be stuck with whatever gremlins we have. There is nothing we can do. Hopefully we will only need one or two good days to finish this job once and for all.
Cheers, Paul.
About Vestas Sailrocket:
In conventional monohulls and multihulls the leverage of the sail force is countered only by a weight/buoyancy leverage. This results in a very definite limits to stability in both the roll and pitch directions. Many speed record attempt designs suffer from the 2 principal side effects of this limitation - limited drive force and unsteady response to gusts.
Vestas SailRocket employs a wholly different concept (first documented by Bernard Smith in the 1960s) in which the sail and keel elements are positioned so that there is virtually no overturning moment and no net vertical lift. When used correctly this concept results in a boat which no longer has obvious stability limits and in which the only significant response to gusts is a change in speed! Website:
click here
by Paul Larsen
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Troughton Island, WA
