110+kms an hour in 25 knots???

59.23 knots, a new sailing record. The boys at luderitz have some serious competition..... This weird thing starts slow but up on the plane and its certianly boogying along.

and when its goes pear shaped....

yeah epps, I dont think It would go as fast on a port tack.. They did some work on the pods so the thing doesnt flip, at speed the pods cavitate providing bugger all water resistance once it gets going. I loved doing the apparent wind theory thing with learners, but this is taking it to the extreme.

From a guy that is into the whole thing....


Correct me if I'm wrong but cavitation for foils starts at 50 knots, and what I think sailrocket has done is redesign their foils so once they reach a certain speed, the entire underside of the foil cavitates, so you have reduced drag when that happens, but below 52-53 knots this cavitating foil induces a lot of extra drag as the cavitating bubbles loop back into the foil. At least that's one theory. I'm not sure anyone knows exactly how their foils work, because they are not working via a modelling program (found it didnt work for their situation), they tune the foil and go out again over and over again. They've been doing this for ten years . . . . So they are doing something really advanced here, that nobody else in the world is doing, and all from a practical standpoint not really any theory. It might be years before we really understand why this particular foil lets them break through the foil barrier of 52-53 knots. I dont see hydroptere ever catching them, it's going to take an entire boat redesign for a megayatch foil to get up to sailrocket speeds.

Of course, kiteboards right now are not foiling, they are planing, so theoretically the only top speed for kiters is how much wind we we get in luderitz and the size of their balls.

Looks like a lot of money involved in that achievement. I wonder is a catamaran configuration kiteboard would be faster, but controlling such a beast would be a problem.

They have the advantage of a slippery sail (like a windsurfer) and the stability of twin hulls, a considerable distance apart.

I think I will stick with my raceboard

Where ever they have flamingoes.....

Are shucks... I just googled where they live and came up with a list of 35 countires.

Mick, the instructor from canrnarvon brought up his modified hobey cat hull one year for the Exmouth expo.We used a 12m kite with one guy controlling the kite, one on the tiller, It was awesome fun.

Yep I spent a fair bit of time flying around on Mick's kite cat, me flying a 14 mtr kite and Mike on the tiller, we were flying around and charging upwind when all the kiters were standing on the beach waiting for the wind to pick up.
Once we started to know what each other was doing and timing the turns right I started downlooping it on the turns and it turned like it was on rails.
Gotta find myself an old surfcat hull and modify it one day, if you could rig up the tiller so you could foot steer it someway so one guy could operate it, it would fly.