The team behind the Vestas Sailrocket 2 program are in Walvis Bay in Namibia to continue their quest to set the outright world speed sailing record.
Paul Larsen:  We just got back in from a great session and I’m happy to say that Vestas Sailrocket 2 is now in the 50 knot club. We did three runs culminating a great final sprint where … Pictures and more
This is the 18th run of VESTAS Sailrocket 2 since her launch in March this year. We are trialling her new ventilated foils here which we believe will enable boats to exceed the limits previously imposed by ‘cavitation’. We know they will work at high speed but believed that getting there would be the biggest problem. 40-45 knots was seen as confirmation that they were working. On this run we did an effortless 42+knots without even sheeting the wing in fully in. This may well be a very significant run which marks the step into the future of high speed sailing and ventilated foil performance. We believe that this is the fastest that one of these foils has ever been on a sailing boat. VESTAS Sailrocket 2 is built purely to be a testbed for these foils and to clearly demonstrate their potential. At this stage we haven’t done it yet… if we do, then we will look back at this run as being truly the first. If it looks easy, I can tell you that getting to this stage certainly wasn’t.