For the first time, the Vestas Sailrocket 2 has been piloted at over 100km/h over water.
If you’re less of a landlubber and have a more nautical bent, they’re claiming a peak speed of 54.41 knots and a 500m average of just over 50 knots.
The team was out in Namibia doing trials, in their quest to set the outright world speed sailing record, and on super-fast run, not only was the pilot, Paul Larsen, on board, but WIRED journalist Adam Fisher was in the other (back-facing) seat too – and happily for all of us it was all captured on video (below).
The Vestas Sailrocket is what you’d normally think of as being sailing boat, it isn’t all wood and canvas sails, it looks like rocket (perhaps where they got the name from), is made from carbon fibre and the sail is a rigid wing. All pretty mad.
Amazingly, those involved in the project say that in the configuration used in the video, the “Sailrocket is only in crude trim here with a lot more potential still to come.”
Born of the Isle of Wight
The project was started on the Isle of Wight, the brain child of Malcolm Barnsley, one of the Vestas engineers.
VentnorBlog was lucky enough to see the Sailrocket when Vestas invited VB along to the open day they held back in July this year.
