Sail Rocket has gone ballistic and posted a 65 knot run with a peak over 67 knots. The speed game as we know it is over, they've raised the bar so high the kiters will not even bother jumping for it.
"Ok mental speed,s!!! On the GT-31 gps 67.74 and an average 500m 65.37! Yihaaaaaaaaaa..." www.sailrocket.com/
Update from Trimble WSSRC certified GPS, 65.45 over 500m peak of 68 knots. Outstanding performance and how do you beat it?
WOW! now what can we learn transfer technology wise from the rocket to windsurfing?
A Triumph for Technology, Skill & Engineering, and congratulations to all that made it happen, well deserved
One downside being that windsurfers and kite-surfers will probably never be able to match this, whereas in the past someone with kit worth around $5000 could break a world speed-sailing record.
insane 
and it doesn't appear to be mirror flat "kitesurfing record" water either which is awesome - meaning hopefully the tech can be put to real world use for transport etc 
Does this mean we need to go back to solid asymmetrical wing sails for serious speed sailing. After all our current single surface soft sails are really only efficient up to about 30 - 40 knots.
well the outright record may be out of reach for now - but who nows what technology some smart cookie will come up with to put us back in the game!
In the meantime you may like to take solace in the fact that though Sailrocket II may be faster, it can't sail back.
Thats awesome, shows that the technology exists to well and truely smash the 50kt barrier.
Wasn't it only a week ago that the speed record was 55ish knots? I don't think many people expected these guys to put another 10kts on top of that! I guess in perspective 65 knots is 120 kph!!
For the time being, I love the sport and what I can achieve on a daily basis, for little expense.
Worth recalling how it works. They say it's unlike 99% of other sailing craft. That's an underestimate. They've taken righting moment out of the equation. If you ignore spars and the bits required for steering, stability, housing the skipper and floating it when at rest, it just boils down to a foil in the water connected along a straight line to a foil in the air. It's not riding on that angled foil, that L-shaped foil in the water stops it being hauled out of the water by the foil in the air.
It helps that they also have a huge engineering background, they've also installed 47,000 wind turbine generators in the last 30 years.
For the time being, I love the sport and what I can achieve on a daily basis, for little expense.
Aerodynamically inefficient, not user friendly inefficient. I don't have any data to back myself up but if you look at the history of hang gliding, the first single surface gliders had a lift to drag ratio of about 4:1. Later the leading edge was cleaned up (a bit like a cambered sail) and the LD went to about 10:1. Now the top gliders have more of a conventional wing section and the LD is about 15:1.
Sailrocket has also lifted aeordynamic efficiency to another level. Check the masthead shot on this video Sailquick posted on the other thread.
These guys put an enormous amount of effort into getting the concept working. So many variables to control in a lightweight structure, that need to be tuned within fraction of a degree for the potential speeds to be unleashed.
It makes for a complicated design, with a lot of things to potentially go wrong. Paul has got some balls to push that thing so hard.
Its taken him many years of hard work and sacrifice to earn this real prize. I reckon its just awesome that they got on with it and got it done. Without Paul's seemingly endless enthusiasm, and "right lets just get it done" attitude despite the hardships this would never have happened. I mean, the dude was living in a sea container in the arse end of the world when this all started.
If you didnt know, Paul is from Perth, and also windsurfs...
Awesome - those speeds are mental. Can't wait to see the video.
I think this record will stand for a long time (but I could be wrong
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Interesting write up on sailrocket and the history of speed sailing...
newatlas.com/new-world-speed-sailing-record-6537kts-75mph-121kmh/25065/
A little bit similar but the major difference is that gravity is part of the equilibrium in the kiter's case and hence the kite can get overpowered. That single red arrow through the big hooked fin in the sailrocket diagram does most of the work, and as long as the super high strength material doesn't fail it will hang in there when a gravity balanced craft gives up.
The kiter diagram shows that the force, shown by the red arrow, which is equal and opposite to the aerodynamic lift, is the sum of two forces in the kiters case - gravity and hydrodynamic lift.
For sailrocket the majority of the hydrodynamic force is generated by that one hooked foil to balance the aerodynamic force. One foil in the water one in the air, (with a few other control foils that do relatively little work). It's a concept that has been around for a long time, just nobody thought it was feasible or was brave enough to take it on until now.
