Yesterday was a dismal day. The only thing that could possibly bring us undone did. Having made both the steering mechanisms totally independant, the only thing that could take them both out... did.

I'm not going to say much else about it... the last video of Run 50 pretty well sums up what followed. This morning we will perform the 'walk of shame' over on speed-spot to bring the wing back.

Yesterday I was not a nice person to be around. When the RIB came alongside I got in it and drove away from the floating wreckage. I didn't want to look at it 'again' ...I felt like getting on a plane and leaving it all behind. That was yesterday, today is all about repairing and improving. We know what caused it although we are surprised it happened. It is related to the new aft planing surface which as mentioned in an earlier blog, was stronger than the old one.... SO WHY DID IT TEAR OFF???

Oh well, all the breakages are annoyingly familiar. We could draw white dotted lines on this boat with 'In case of wing backwinding... break here' signs.

No photo's or videos... we've seen it before. I am determined to get it fixed within a week although am considering a thorough overhaul of the back of the boat. Malc will be here on Tuesday and we'll discuss it in detail then. We have already begun on the repairs.

I told you we weren't out of the woods yet!!!

Cheers, Paul.

The breeze is just starting to kick in as the tide fills the lagoon. A swell is folding around the distant point and the last remnants are coming all the way across the bay and lapping up against the Yacht Club. Every now and then we get a breaking one.

We have fitted a new aft planing surface to VESTAS SAILROCKET and today may be its baptism. Let's see... its currently 11:31 and hight tide is at 1330 hrs... we are generally good for up to 3 hours afterwards.

I reckon we will be sailing today. So let's get the ball rolling.

The plan will be to get the large rudder up much sooner in the run so as to get a proper feel for the current fixed skeg setting... and to see how the new aft planing surface works. The OBC (onboard camera) has been repositioned so as to have a clear view of the back end proceedings.

Cheers, Paul.

Hiya all,

It's blowing like stink here today. the soft hangar is rattling against the container. VESTAS SAILROCKET sits snuggly inside slowly getting a fine film of silica dust over the wing and its protective cover. No sailing today... or probably tomorrow!

We are starting to get sorted out here in a manner that should improve your viewing of the project. We think we can get e-mails sent direct from the blog spot to those who wish for it... as well as High quality video which can be downloaded if you wish (we will try and make the files around 20mb). When we really get the time... we might even be able to send you the Pi Research boat data so you can read all the data off the boat alongside the video in real time. For those of you who are right into what we are doing... this is about as much as you could hope for... you would be seeing everything that the team is seeing. We like to share the love:)

Right... so here are a few pictures of the transition from having the large rudder down... to kicked up. The size of the rooster tail is impressive, over 60' long!!! You can see how clean the spray goes when the rudder kicks up. VESTAS SAILROCKET accelerated from 35.3 knots to 41.8 in four seconds when the rudder came up.

Some other interesting things were noted on this run such as...

--- there was very little load on the foot steering lines despite the large rudder generating a massive rooster tail! It was as if the large rudder was being sucked into the skeg. I was using the hand steering for all these pics and no foot steering. The large rudder naturally wanted to sit at an angle which was generating a large rooster tail. When I pulled the trip line for the main rudder... despite the mechanism working as it should, the rudder did not kick up for about five seconds! It must have somehow been locked into the case. The Onboard camera shows the release systems all working perfectly. Very starnge.

It makes us think back to Run 50 where the same massive rooster tail was being generated. When I tried to bear away with the foot steering the load obviously got so high that it tore the whole rudder off. I couldn't really see any reason why the laminate had failed as the bonding surfaces all looked good. It must have taken some very serious force to tear that rudder off. No wonder the boat leaps forward when it is kicked up! Anyway, I could go on about it in finer detail... but the point is... it shouldn't be down in the water above 25 knots anyway. On the next run I will get it up as soon as the wing is sheeted in to 10 degrees.

Cheers, Paul

Good to be back in buisness. It was a fantastic day on speed spot today with winds around 18-21 knots. It was great just to get re-acquainted with the course and the boat. The steering wasn't generating the desired lee helm... but we'll get to that. We now have the data to download and check out. I did a conservative run on the first pass only peaking at 38.6... big rudder still down and no flap on. The wind was a little soft at the end.

On the second pass the foot steering went dead just like it did on Run 50 where we wiped out. The pedal went to the floor and I could picture the rooster tail out the back. I had some space so I tried the hand steering. We were well positioned on the course. The hand steering was nice and positive so I kicked up the big rudder and committed to tthe course.

VESTAS SAILROCKET felt lovely... for a while... but then she started to gently head for the shore. I ran out of steerage on the skeg flap and quickly went into the wing dumping procedure, grateful for the new systems. Vestas Sailrocket slowed gradually... but not gradually enough. I was inside the end-of-course shallow water mark and heading at an acute angle for the beach. The stop came nice and smooth with no crunch. Thankfully the sandy bottom has a gradual incline... especially when coming into it at an angle. The car was very definitely parked. Hiskia and Helena were on it in an instant and together we got the situation under control.

It wasn't the ideal ending... but it could be a lot worse. No damage was done. We headed back to the Walvis bay Yacht Club in the dark. So now much of the work begins as Helena and I begin to process and catalogue all the data. We have two video cameras, one stills camera, the Pi RESEARCH data logger from the boat, The TACKTICK wind logger from the shore and the gps info off the handheld to sort out... and then everything needs drying, cleaning and re-charging. It's quite a lot of work.

So let's get into it. I'll let you know what we come up with.

Cheers, Paul.