http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfJK5ycx_hg

So-
the foil held her straight at over 50 knots. Amazing stuff.

Doubling the apparent wind- now that is an efficient machine!

Christ. Have those guys never heard of a wind-sock for the microphone?

(that was spectacular!)

well

w/ windspeed hitting 60mph, just how big would that sock have to be??

Inspiring team and effort , there is more here on their website for any interested .

http://www.sailrocket.com/live/?q=blog/3

Happy Holidays

That dude hit the water upside down still inside of that thing at who knows what speed. He's lucky he didnt snap his neck or something. Does'nt one of those machines have a capsule for the driver like the speedboats?
My A Cat is going so fast these days I think I will build me a capsule for it too.....

Dave,
Helmet and a HANS device should do it.

What an accomplishment, they deserve it. Alot of time and effort there.
They said in the vid they had a no seat belt rule so they could get out quick. I 'd think a HANS device would fall in the seat belt category.

Why? It is not connected to the boat. NASCAR and Indy drivers can bail out of a burning car with it on.

Right Todd. The HANS works in conjuction with your shoulder harness.

That doesn't mean that some sort of head and neck system couldn't be made without a seat belt I suppose.

I think being thrown free is better than being trapped, but you could certainly break your neck either way.

Still...this sort of thing has always been about accepting some risk...hasn't it?

The shoulder straps go over the front of the HANS but are not attached to it. You can achieve the same thing w/ straps on the race suit. Some cart guys have done this.

His head is exposed from the neck up, perfect oppurtunity to snap it off.

I think that crash requires a new term.

Kind of a reverse pitch pole thingy, what shall we call it? A Pole Pitch?

Paul is a old friend of mine a had a long talk with him on skype after this run, when it went air borne he did try to jump ship but the g force’s glue him in for the ride!!! Paul started sailing with me at 13, I always knew is was going to achieve. This achievement is much more than the records broken, there is no Macquarie bank (Macquarie Innovation) budget, Paul he’s girl friend and a couple of helpers have been in Africa living out of containers testing, modifying, patching the boat on a shoe sting budget, Paul has been involved in sail rocket for many years throw finical hard ships criticism of the concept, design and he’s ability but has never stop dreaming he’s goal! Have you ever seen the movie "The fastest Indian"

The term is "blow over".

Hyroplanes do it and race cars use to pretty often before areo forces were fully understood.

It looks like he needs canards or winglets near the bow, but I'm sure he is on top of that now. If he could design and build it, he surely can fix it and solve the issues as speeds increase.

Bingo.





From Paul's blog-

"Malcolm is working hard on this with input from all the team. We want to dampen the whole boat down a little and approach these speeds again from a point of safety. We will angle the foil a few degrees more so it is pulling the front planing surface down harder and stand the rig up so it is pulling up less. We had already begun moving in this direction and you can see that the leeward pod isn't flying quite as high as it had in some of the previous runs. We think that the main foil may be flexing a little more than we anticipated and that we should speculatively account for this with safety in mind. We will also look at adding 'lift-spoiling' devices on the inboard end of the beam.

From my perspective I will be a little more cautious of how aggressively I sheet in. The main flap wasn't even pulled in on the flying run. When it is it helps keep the nose down."

I suppose you need to worry about that sort of thing with the equivalent of storm force apparent wind (60-70 knots) hitting you from the bow.

The most famous recent blowover:

[img] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow3rxq7U1mA [/img]

This one is more recent and totally unexpected since much attention has been given to aero effects during the past decade. Road Atlanta has had more than a few of these incidents over the years.

[img] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b31O4FmljGY [/img]

All it takes is a slight increase in angle of attack to catch air...even at 50 knots.

Down force generators can solve the problem but they create drag. With Sail Rocket, there is precious little energy to waste on creating down force.

I love his comment, "worlds fastest boat, worlds most broken boat"!

Wooah what a rush! I saw a picture of something like that boat in the Ronstan catalog really pushing the design theory aside isn't it? I need a helmet like that to go faster. Is it considered a sailboard, cat or an outrigger? Too bad the trifoiler didn't produce in larger numbers it had the right idea and could sail both directions with 2 sails.