Sailrocket 2 set to launch

The rest of the info includes a discussion of WSSRC with:

"it looks like we will start our attempt on the 17th of next month... maybe sooner..."​

and

"This will be immediately after the kite surfers record attempt down in Luderitz. "​

I went to http://www.luderitz-speed.com/luderitz/ and did not see the usual open invitation to sign up for competing or any discussions of who will participate, but did see discussion of a new trench and:

"The answer will be revealed between 20th October and 17th November 2011, which are the dates of the event during which windsurfing and kitesurfing performances will be done"​

I found some good photos of the new strip at
http://forums.ikiteboarding.com/forums/thread/37291.aspx

I am not sure what is going on with the Kiteboarding side of the quest for more speed. From the above, the WSSRC period started today. Does anybody know more?

 

After more searching I found http://nasailor.com/2011/09/28/world-speed-sailing-record-holder-barred-from-trying-again/ with:

American Rob Douglas is the fastest sailor on the planet. On October 28, 2010, with the wind gusting to 45 knots, Douglas raised the bar further than anyone had gone before, hitting a new record speed of 55.65 knots in the manmade trench at Luderitz, Namibia.

Speed comes from strong, steady wind and flat water, and the virtues of the Luderitz trench in southern Africa first helped Douglas set the outright record in 2008 at a speed of 49.84 knots. Ever since, the Luderitz Speed Challenge in October has been the de facto event for windsurfers and kiteboarders to test the limits of speed.
Having an organized event helps to defray the related costs. Electronic timing equipment and personnel are needed, along with maintaining the shallow trench so it’s groomed for speed. With the speed averaged over a 500 meter distance, organizers in 2010 dug a trench 750 meter long by 3 to 5 meters wide by 1 to 3 feet deep.

After a year of tuning his kites and boards for another record run next month at Luderitz, Douglas finds himself on the outside looking in. “I have heard that the Luderitz Speed Challenge is going to happen this year,” replied Douglas, “but it will be a private event and I am not invited to attend.” The event organizer is also excluding France’s Alexandre Caizergues, who had raised the speed record to 54.10 knots just before Douglas pushed if further to 55.65 knots.

Douglas has no idea why he is barred from the event. “I can only guess,” said Douglas. “Sebastian Cattelan has never won the Luderitz Speed Challenge and maybe with Alex and me not around he will have better luck. Not real good for the sport but that’s the way it goes.” Attempts to contact organizers of the Luderitz Speed Challenge have been unsuccessful.

Turning lemons into lemonade, Douglas is hosting a GPS speed event on at Martha’s Vineyard on October 16-31. The 12 fastest kitesurfers in world history will race, including multiple world record holder Alex Caizergues and the fastest women sailor, Charlotte Consorti. The North American Speed Sailing Invitational (NASSI) will have $30,000 in prize money, courtesy of Lynch Associates and The Black Dog.

The event is organized by The North American Speed Sailing Project (NASSP) and under specified conditions laid down by the International Kiteboarding Class Association (IKA). Visit the site: http://www.nassp.net/.

 

Lets keep this thread on Sailrocket-there is a speed sailing thread that used to be the Hydroptere thread here: http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/multihulls/fastest-sailboat-planet-15612-54.html

 

The Hydroptere thread is probably not the right place either. I did find a couple of SA threads more on topic for the Kiteboards

NASSI at http://forums.sailinganarchy.com/index.php?showtopic=127391&st=0&gopid=3444395&#entry3444395

Luderitz at http://forums.sailinganarchy.com/in...011701&hl=luderitz&fromsearch=1&#entry3011701

 

=======================
The thread "Fastest Sailboat..." is not the Hydroptere thread. It was taken over completely by a lengthy and acrimonious speed sailing "discussion" so Jeff changed the name at my suggestion and there is a new Hydroptere thread -and a Hydroptere.ch thread.
I just don't want to see this thread go that far off topic. There are a lot of things to be learned about Sailrocket and I hope we can get more into the technical stuff as time goes by.

 

I understand.

However, with the "Fastest Sailboat" thread, the posts about NASSI and Luderitz seemed like it would be asking to get back into the kite vs. boat fussing.

Also, regardless of what a person thinks about the various contenders, VSR2 has a lot of interesting "boat design" attributes worth discussing where as the boards are not much of a "boat design" topic.

VSR2:

• 
  Main hull is actually more of a fuselage and is designed for minimum windage (including the fact that it angled to be nearly in line with apparent wind instead of the direction of travel)

• 
  Three planing "pods" with only the front pod intended to stay in contact with water during record attempts

• 
  A supercavitating (cross section is like a very thin pie wedge) main foil that protrudes far windward of the main hull and then curves down to the water. The curvature is designed to pull down if it rides too high and to push up if it is riding too low (this is what is supposed to keep the aft pod just off of the water surface). This curvature is needed for craft stability, but I have to wonder how well they studied the hydraulics. This could be a source of uneeded drag that may limit performance.

• The cross beam and wing were moved back (compared to VSR1) and the pilot was moved up to the front. This was to avoid the ballistic instability that allowed Paul to "Fly" like no other sailor has (or would want to).

• A lower wing tip extending horizontal intended to operate in the WIG mode to keep the wing pod stable just above the water

Boards:

• They just plain plane. I am sure there are fine details that make some faster than others, but I do not expect to see much of that discussed here.

 

Sailrocket

Sailrocket humor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qoGDTM6d4w&feature=youtu.be

http://www.sailrocket.com/

Excerpt from Pauls blog:

"Helena has also made a beauty which Adam took on the last run. Hopefully we can post it soon.

We have started fitting some of the fairings on the boat and am looking forward to our next runs, especially now that we can take passengers. I can also start getting Helena in the drivers seat.

We will stay on full-standby every day this week. Tuesdays forecast looks like the big one. Let's hope it delivers.

Cheers, Paul."

 

Sailrocket-beam failure

Excerpt from Pauls Blog:

Now to sort out the order of things before any other damage takes place. Quite often, especially with wings, you can do more damage after the accident than by the original mishandling. I jumped out of the cockpit and grabbed the forestay to stop the wing from flying up. Alex slowly motored into the shore. I swore a bit... but not that much. Sort of one long, loud one rather than an extended volley.

Once we got into the shallows we began picking it all apart. I was happy to see that the damage was quite localised and that virtually no other pieces had been damaged. The wing was miraculously undamaged. The strut, the HARKEN track and car, the leeward pod brackets were also all without damage. It was only a section of beam which, in the big picture, is relatively easy to repair.

So the new wing will spend its first night in the shed over on speed-spot. Hopefully its last. We managed to get the rest of the platform back safely and have already begun on the repair.

Overall I feel kind of lucky. It could have been much worse. These things happen. It was a handling mistake that we shouldn't, in hindsight, have exposed ourselves to. I didn't think it would play out like that... rather I thought that the boat would have slipped sideways. Well it didn't and here we are. You simply don't get it right all the time. Personally I'm pretty happy to have made it this far with such a radical boat. The carnage we had with the first boat taught me to incorporate some flexibility into the joints for just such a situation and these prevented a lot more damage today.

I reckon it will take us a week or less to be back in action.

So that's it. I can't say I'm happy about it... but I'm not going to overdramatise it either. These incidents are part of the scenery and we always get over it and comeback smarter and faster.

We just mounted a wing-top camera too... Caught it all beautifully... but I'll leave you with the fast run for now.

Cheers, Paul

 

Oops!

I will bet that they fix the rigging issue and restore full feathering of most of the wing.

This craft is very fast and appears to have good control when zipping down the course. On the other hand, I am sure it has really unpredictable handling in the odd angle and no/low speed situations.

Combine that with winds above 15 knots (or they do not even bother putting it in the water) and things can get nasty fast.

This time the cause was some birds. Next time it could be anything.

They planned for letting the wing feather as needed, but made some change that messed up this protective feature. Compromising protective features is a dice roll that often as not is something you regret sooner or later.

Paul Larson knows this and it sounds like his team has been trying to avoid getting in a rush, but they let something slip by.

Maybe this was just a warning shot to keep them honest and careful when the WSSRC is watching. A goof at this stage is no big deal. A goof in the morning of the last day of good wind just before time runs out is something else.

 

Sailrocket

Two up -50knt video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjCRxKs2QgY&feature=youtu.be

L to R: 1) two up, 2) Birds just prior to main beam failure

click on image:

 

Sailrocket repairs

News from Paul Larsen-excerpt:

The beam is not a big issue. The cracks in the main foil are a much bigger issue. If we can’t use this new, high speed, ventilated foil then we can kiss 60 knots goodbye until we get a new one. Those little hairline cracks indicated that something was going on inside the laminate which needed to be understood. We put load on the foil at the tip... up to 360 kg and it didn’t fail.

It did deflect more than it should have and the thickness of the foil changed by 1 mm. Something was opening up inside. The only option was to cut it open in the least destructive manner and have a look.
The biggest weak area of foils of this nature is the bursting loads in the curved elbow... especially as they are loaded to open up the curve rather than fold it as on more traditional curved foil (on say an ORMA trimaran or some modern beach cats). Once I ground away the carbon tapes that hold the two foil halves together along the trailing edge of the curve, small cracks could be seen. With a tiny amount of load these cracks just opened up and spread as in glass. Not a nice noise in composites.

I ground away and chased the cracks through the thick ‘Spa-bond’ glue that was used to join the two foil halves. About 50 mm in I got to the first carbon fibre ‘shear –web’. These are used to put carbon fibres across the join line rather than just to rely on the strength of the glue. The carbon is much stronger and better at transferring the immense loads for one side to the other. It seemed the crack had also extended to this web and once again, under a little bit of load it had opened up. It was now time to chase the whole crack to its full extent. I dug out a big groove all the way around the transition foil (the curve) all the way to the shear web. I laid the foil nose down and filled the whole groove with some ultra slow epoxy resin and then pulled on both ends of the foil with a 6:1 purchase to load and unload it. This forced the crack to open and close.
I had big G-clamps at either end of the crack to stop it running further than it had to. When the foil was loaded up it ‘drank’ the resin and then spat it out as it was unloaded. I did this repeatedly until all the air had come out and no more resin was going in. Then I left it to cure. Next we jammed in rolls of fibres at +/- 45 degrees and 0/90 degrees to take the shear and bursting loads. These were vacuumed in in two stages to try and get as much air out as possible. The whole grove has now been filled in this manner rather than just having glue in there. Today I will vacuum on the carbon ‘tapes’ around the outside to seal it all up.
It is impossible now to tell exactly how well this has all bonded on the inside. I think it’s about as good a job as we could do without getting too destructive. We are also discussing the option of bolting through the foil around this bend. Of course this option has its good and bad sides. I have seen this option used in such places as Groupama 3’s beams where similar loads are exerted on the curved sections where the beams go down into the floats. We are still looking into this option as it has to offer a clear advantage as drilling holes in a highly loaded area is not something to be done lightly.
So once we have joined it all together and cured it under high temperature... we have to go and do a full load test. For me this will mean taking it up to a load equivalent to 65 knots with a safety margin. We will do this here in Walvis Bay. We also did it before in the UK and it passed. We did hear cracking during this procedure but it still took and held the 1 ton load at its centre of pressure. The foil was not faired and painted then and I wonder if the cracks we were seeing were not just because the fairing/paint had not been subject to this load until our last high speed run. It’s entirely possible that the foil had developed cracks during the initial load test but still managed to take the load without failing. The best way to see this is to measure the deflection during the load test. The cracks may also have propagated whilst being worked. We noted a much larger than expected deflection during the last 360 kg load test which is why we chose to operate on the foil.

Hey... we just joined the beam back together with the new section. A tricky job that took a lot of jigs, clamps, lasers, spirit levels... and spabond. It looks good.

click on image:

 

Sailrocket

They've tested the foil and it passed with flying colors. Now they're ready to go for 60 knots.

 

Sailrocket

Sailing on Wednesday-60 knots?

UPDATE: 11/8/11-10 days until official record time period starts!

 

Sailrocket

Good numbers today:

The numbers just in are as follows...

Max speed (doppler)- 52.13 knots

500 meter average- 49.22 knots

100 meter average- 51.6 knots

But Paul is disapointed and concerned since he had hoped for better...


Pictures, left-rear hatch in place, right-look carefully at the forward pod-you can see the rudder underneath

click on image:

 

Sailrocket

From Scuttlebutt tonight:

Walvis Bay, Namibia (November 18, 2011) - The radical speed sailing craft,VESTAS Sailrocket 2, commenced its first 28 day world record period today aiming to break the outright world speed sailing record which involves setting the best average time over a 500 meter course. The World Sailing Speed Record Council (the sports ratifying body) is on site to watch the attempts. The team has a 28 day period where they will remain on standby waiting for ideal weather conditions. Wind was light over the weekend with Monday looking like the best chance. -- Report at:http://www.vestassailrocket.com/