Fast: The SailRocket

So you’re tired of cross-navigating the lake in your two-seat Sunfish sailboat and its top speed: 9.5 knots--that is, if you can catch with wind.  However, If you’re fitted snugly into the Vestas SailRocket (www.sailrocket.com) you don’t desperately look for wind gust, the wind comes to you.  Fast.

The L-shaped craft, sponsored, not surprisingly, by Vestas Wind Systems, said to be the largest wind turbine manufacturer in the world, has already reached a top speed of 52.26 knots, or 60.1 mpg, in April 2009 off the coast of Namibia.  That’s enough for a record in its class, but the SailRocket team wants to go for the overall speed sailing record, currently held by a kite surfer at 50.57 knots.  Adapted from the 1960s designs of American boating maverick Bernard Smith, the SailRocket does away with the conventional sail affixed to the hull, and instead attaches it to outrigger connected at a right angle to the 9-m long hull made of carbon/epoxy composite.  From the rearward cockpit, Captain Paul Larsen controls the boat with foot steering stirrups for its large rudder, among six other controls that manage secondary rudder and the sail itself.

“We think that the concept has the potential to take speeds beyond what current designs can achieve and therefore others will be forced to come along this route whether they like it or not,” Larsen says via email.--SEA