As we went to press this month, the Vestas Sailrocket team was preparing to fly to Walvis Bay, Namibia, for a new attempt on the Outright World Speed Sailing Record with their radically styled, second-generation speed sailing boat. Vestas Sailrocket 2 is designed to be signifi cantly faster and safer than its predecessor, says Paul Larsen, pilot and project leader.

“Since we started pursuing the Outright World Speed Sailing Record nine years ago, the record has been raised by exactly 9 knots. The current record holders, the kite surfers, have taken it out of the reach of all the previous contenders and it is going to take a very special boat to get it back. Vestas Sailrocket 2 is a boat that aims high. The only satisfactory outcome for us is the outright record.

.“Many lessons have been learned since the first Sailrocket was launched in 2004. The first boat shows the scars of the many learning processes we have been through over the years. In the end, it performed as predicted; although she briefly emerged as the fastest boat in the world, she never achieved the outright record title. The record was like a mirage: as we got faster, so did the record.”

The Outright world speed sailing record is set by taking the average speed of a craft between two points set 500 m apart. All records are observed and ratified by the sport’s governing body, the World Speed Sailing Record Council (WSSRC). It is open to all waterborne sailing craft, from kite surfers to maxi multihulls. In late October 2010, American kite surfer Rob Douglas set the current record in Luderitz, Namibia, with a speed of at 55,65 knots (104 km/h). In a month-long session, the kite surfers took the record off the mighty French hydrofoiler Hydroptere and raised the record by over 4 knots. They are expected to go faster still in the coming year. (Source: Sailrocket.com)