Today's forecast is looking robust... even up slightly from yesterday. The morning is a little overcast but right now at 12 past 9... the sun is already breaking through. Alex is in front of me tinkering with the COSWORTH loggers and a hair dryer is buzzing next door doing the final cure on the new strain guages installed on the rudder stock. Once it is well cured we will install the rudder and calibrate the strain guage against a calibrated load cell. We will put an incrementally increasing load on the rudder up to 200kg from both directions. From the last fast run we believe we only saw rudder loads around +30 kg i.e. '+' meaning loaded from the same direction as the main foil thus sharing the side load generated by the wing. This is perfect... but we have a lot more speed and side load to come.

The forecast predicts winds around 24-5 knots which is perfect. We need to do a good run over 50 now. The pressure is growing to commit to a WSSRC ratified record attempt as you need to give them a decent lead time to get their act together and send someone down here. This involves over £3K up front payment so you do want to be sure that you are ready. The good part is that it gives you some more time to prepare between booking and the actual attempt, the bad part is that it also gives your gremlins the opportunity to play and wipe you out just before the 28 day record window begins. I don't think we are ready to commit just yet. It's too much of a gamble having only done 42 + knots. We'll see what the next two days bring.

The new front planing surface is fitted so it will be interesting to see how that behaves. The cockpit has been cleaned up and the Terminator is alive as the COSWORTH instruments are once again flashing their bright red data providing eyes at me.

There is a new video on this website/Youtube of our fastest run yet using the ventilated main foil. You can see it here...youtu.be/GYAzMIwKsJE 

You can see how the wing is sheeted by the way that the lower wing section lines up with the fixed 'Wing Fillet' right at the bottom (see Wing-Sail explanation in boat section if unsure about parts). The wing is 'full-on' when these two parts come together. On this run, VESTAS Sailrocket 2 accelerated quite quickly initially so I left the wing out as I came into the flat water by the shore and beared away onto the course. I love the silvery lighting as VSR2 is coming towards the camera. I also like the fact that it's all happening on a regular windy day in an open harbour.

To say that I'm looking forward to today is a pretty big understatement. I feel good about this.

Cheers, Paul.