Firstly, congratulations are in order to two other speed sailing projects who have had success over the past couple of days. Firstly to Richard Jenkins for finally breaking the sailing land speed record on 'Greenbird'. Richard din't just sneak by the record but smashed it by 10 mph. You can check it out on www.greenbird.co.uk . Back when Richard launched his 'Windjet' water craft in Weymouth... we were just starting our first trials with Sailrocket. We had our containers side by side and have been friends ever since often offering congratulations or condolences where necessary. We understand each others joys and pains. Richard has done a brilliant job and has been a real jack of all trades in his project. England should be proud of his achievements and what he represents in this day and age.

Secondly... only by order of occurrence... the Macquarie Innovations team in Australia appear (still to be ratified) to have become the first boat to crack the 50 knot mark. Of course we wanted to be there first... but we weren't. These guys have been at it for 16 odd years now so once again, it's good to see the effort rewarded. It appears that they set the record in winds way above what they normally sail in i.e. 24 knots. They hit a peak speed of around 54.3 knots on their way to a 50.08 knot average over the 500 meters. Whilst this up's their previous 'C' class record it still leaves them just shy of the Outright record. One thing it does do is put the boats back ahead of the Windsurfers whilst also giving the new kids on the block, the kitesurfers, a real hurry up. The MI boys musn't have liked being beaten firstly by Hydroptere and then by us and have pulled out all the stops. It must have been a hell of a run. Well done to all of you from us... but be warned... we find this all very motivating!

We have been out on each of the last three days only to find the winds too strong. Today we sat out there on speed-spot all day as the wind gusted up to 30 knots. Only when the sun went down did we return.

We are on constant standby and desperately want to complete our 'check-out' runs to make sure that everything is OK before the big push. We don't want to do this in top-end conditions like we have been experienceing. Our day will come and in fact it looks like it might be sooner rather than later. The weeks forecast is looking pretty special. If things go well then we will push hard for some big runs ASAP. If we have a wipeout now then we will still have enough time to repair and come back for another shot in this record period. Of course the plan is not to have another wipeout but we need to plan for all eventuality.

We have been checking out all aspects of the boat and putting safeties on safeties. A couple of days ago, Nick Bubb spotted that the TRIMBLE timing gear on the boat wasn't recording the run data. We had a slight panic attempt as this is essential for our record attempts. These are expensive and hard to obtain pieces of kit. I'm happy to say that thanks to local support and support from OPTRON who supply our Trimble kit... within two days we now have not one but two systems ready to roll. We are actually better off than we were before!!! Ian Dutoit from OPTRON/TRIMBLE popped in today to help us configure the new units so we are ready once more for a ratified record run. Happy days.

Cheers, Paul