44.19 kn

Hi all... one slightly beaten up Sailrocket jockey here.

Firstly, thanks to all those near and far who have sent their regards. It's always appreciated.

Obviously the last couple of days have been pretty strange from my perspective. One moment I'm going 47+ knots with the glorious Walvis Bay 'speed-spot' stretched out before me and ready for the taking... the next I'm on a hospital Gurney sort of aware that I'm asking the same question over and over... "what happened"?

It appears that something failed structurally early on the record attempt today and the boat collapsed and turned over very quickly. Paul has some nasty cuts and was badly concussed. We will report in more detail tomorrow when we have looked at the boat and any available footage.

 Posted by Malcolm 

A world record attempt on Friday the 13th??? Well we haven't had much luck weather-wise during this record session so we will take it whenever it comes. Unusual amounts of rain inland have affected the normal 'flows' of wind up the coast. It's becoming tiring as we are all sitting around making work and itching to get wet. Forecast winds keep moving away from us like a mirage and when we finally catch them they have usually weakened to the point where we don't even go out.

Yesterday we did manage to get a run in... our third for this record attempt.

VESTAS SAILROCKET performed flawlessly and executed a very smooth 42.5 knot 500 meter run with a peak around 44.7 knots. The average wind was 19.5 knots.

The wind has come in a little stronger than expected/predicted so we are all getting geared up and will head across to Speed-spot for the fourth time in this record attempt.

VESTAS SAILROCKET is sitting patiently outside whilst we burden her with data loggers, Trimble GPS units and onboard cameras.

We don't expect to be sailing for the next few days as it seems we are to endure a light wind patch.

We will use the time to remove the wing and service all the parts. Yestereday we checked the calibration of some of the key components of the PI RESEARCH logging system to make sure the information we were getting was spot-on... It was.

Hi all, just got in and the team are tearing through the data, photos, footage... and snacks.

Looks like we did somewhere around a 41.2 knot average (all subject to WSSRC ratification) over the mile which should be enough to move us up to second in the mile ranking overall and take the course record off Dunkerbeck along with a few other smaller titles (Australian mile, 'B' class mile). Hydroptere is still king in this department  for the time being... but we will be back. We did a 44.02 knot 500 meter run and a peak around 46.