Run 67... a 41 knot cruise flying blind.

 New videos posted by the way, this next link is for a largish medium res file of around 18 mb. if you hit the link, you have to retype in the letter code at the top of the page and then follow the cues for the free download. We hope to improve on this. http://www.megaupload.com/?d=UKC8CTIN

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSOJH8Gi_Y8 is the 'youtube' link

Righto... back to the update...

We hit the speed course again yesterday hungry to top our recent success on Run 66. We were only 0.2 knots behind Hydroptere's previous best 500 meter run and when I checked out their website to confirm this... it appears that they have gone and posted a faster run again!!! They are now around 1.8 knots faster at 46.1 knots! The king of the boats is still Good ol' Yellow Pages Endeavour with their amazing 46.52 knots posted way back in 1993.

HAPPY DAYS POST RUN 66.

45+ KNOTS PAST THE TIMING HUT ON RUN 66.

So with this in mind we crossed the lagoon on a day that was shaping up nicely. The buoys were placed out to give me a course to focus on and show me how close in I could potentially come in to the shore. After this we pull in to the timing hut where we have built a small roof top terrace to film the runs from. Out the back we mount the TACKTICK gear on a pole as an independent weather station to log the wind throughout the session. The remote display is up with the cameraman who has a VHF and can give me a quick wind update before I take over the channel for the run. I have no wind data display on the boat as the two PI RESEARCH displays are showing wing and rudder angles. Once this is set up we head to the top of the course where it takes five people to raise the rig... and about five to ten minutes.

A large anchor is dropped and a tether attached from this to the transom Of VESTAS SAILROCKET. It is left slack during the rigging process but acts as a safety in case the boat gets away on us... as it has once before. On a windy day, the boat would have the potential of locking onto a course at 40 + knots without me in it... and just sailing... until god knows what would happen (It would probably head to sea and a month later... take out HUGO BOSS in the middle of the night)! One person holds the wing angle whilst it is raised, one person eases the rigging, one person holds the bow, one person stands on the boat to help the rig get started in the raising process and one person hauls on the 6:1 HARKEN purchase to pull the strut in and hence raise the rig. The guy holding the bow stays with me whilst the other three head down the course. One of them takes up station on the video camera whilst the other two man the RIB (one of whom catches VESTAS SAILROCKET at the other end as she comes into the beach).

We have shown we can do back to back runs in around 20-25 minutes if we hop to it.

We had already raised the rig and done an electronics test in the still air of the morning... but as is always the case... problems began to arise the minute we got across to the windsweapt remoteness of Speed-spot. The displays for wing and rudder angle began to play up. At the top of the course we tried everything at our disposal all to no avail. Here we were plugging 9V batteries into a 30' speed sailing boat to try and make it work. It reminded me of Xmas day as a kid with a new remote control toy. There was a fault somewhere... obviously... and it was affecting both the PI RESEARCH logger and the displays. I considered aborting the day but decided to do a run flying blind anyway. You always learn something. The trouble is that from where I'm sitting, the wing angle is not that easy to judge, especially as we are constantly moving the beam and rake angles. The rudder angle is also pretty important as it shows me how well VESTAS SAILROCKET is balanced at speed and hence if I am in the 'safe' fine tune zone of the steering system as against the 'coarse' part. If the boat is not balanced and I'm doing over 40 knots in the coarse zone then small inputs by me have a large effect on the rudder. We are still talking fractions of a degree here but this can lead to the dreaded 'round-up' as we have seen recently... and many times before.

So I did a tentative run with a very nice and flat start up sequence. I didn't oversheet the wing but had it out at what I guessed was around 15-20 degrees. This limits the speed of the boat and I could feel it doing this like a rev limiter. VESTAS SAILROCKET would surge ahead... and the abruptly lose power as she would almost oversail the rig. We peaked at 41. something knots in not a moderate wind of around 19 knots. the water was flat and I had pulled the main flap on.

At the end of the course I decided to head back to the base to sort this problem out. If we are not logging the data then we are wasting our time. If we hit a high speed, have a crash or anything else in between... it's all a bit meaningless in the big picture if we don't understand why or how.

It was shaping up to be a brilliant day so it was pretty frustrating to walk away from it.

We have found the faulty connection and hopefully resolved the problem. The forecast looks great for today also so let's hope we can get out there and jump up another couple of rungs.

Well done to Hydroptere. I admire those guys immensely. It makes the whole endeavour much more interesting to have two teams going for it on the water at once. I'm pretty sure we can trade blows with them toe to toe. We each have our strengths and weaknesses and we are both at a stage in our projects lives where we are in good shape for the challenges to come. It's great stuff.

Cheers, Paul.