The rocket that is Sailrocket

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Sailrocket shredding the course

Slingshot

Crossbow

On a chilly, blustery day in Fall 2002 I made my way to Weymouth on the south coast of England. It was a pilgrimage of sorts. I have always been a huge fan of fast boats and back then Weymouth Speed Week was a Mecca for speed enthusiasts from around the world who came to do a timed run over a 500 meter course. Before I started sailing professionally boat names like Crossbow and Slingshot were burned indelibly into my mind. They were the revolutionary speedsters of the day, radical boats capable of unheard of speeds (which back then was around 30 knots.)

By the time I got to Weymouth kite boarders and wind surfers had taken over as the fastest sailing vessels and they were ripping it up close inshore where the wind was steady and the water flat. The main reason for my trip was to write an article about a brand new boat that a good mate, Paul Larsen, had built. He called his project Sailrocket and along with his partner Helena Darvelid they had come up with the first generation of what Paul called the 60-knot sailboat. It certainly was unlike any other boat I had ever seen. The origins of the design were in a book by the renown rocket scientist Bernard Smith entitled The 40 Knot Sailboat. Without complicating this story by trying to describe Smith’s concept, suffice is to say that it was a radically new way of thinking and the boat that Paul and Helena had built was futuristic in the extreme.

I chased Paul down the short course in a fast RIB but despite the conditions being almost perfect Sailrocket was barely able to hit 30 knots top speed. I know Paul was a bit disappointed; they were aiming for 50 but were also realistic in their expectations as those were early days. “There is a ton of room for development,” Paul told me. “For starters we have a soft sail. At some point we will build a fixed wing and that will greatly improve things.” Paul is nothing if not an eternal optimistic and his engaging enthusiasm leaves no one in doubt that he is on a mission to succeed. I left Weymouth that day optimistic, but secretly feeling that kite boarding was the future and an actual sailboat was never again going to hold the record.

Fast forward a decade and here is where the story starts to get interesting. Sailrocket is as much about dedication, determination and sheer guts as it is about fast sailing. It’s not easy to find funding for relatively obscure sailing projects and money for developing Sailrocket was always hard to come by. Weymouth fell out of favor with the record setting community and they took their boats and boards to a little known place on the west coast of Africa; the German settlement of Luderitz in Namibia. There they dug a trench that was perfectly aligned with the prevailing winds and in the flat water kite boarders simply dominated the top speeds. By the end of 2010 American Rob Douglas had shredded the course at an amazing average speed of 55.65 knots. Paul and Helena also set up camp in Namibia and continued their quest for speed. They had since landed the huge wind turbine company Vestus as a sponsor, and built a bigger, more refined Sailrocket. Over the previous decade progress had been consistent and they were able to reach peak speeds over 50-knots, but it was the average over the 500 meter course that counted.

As I mentioned, Sailrocket is as much about determination as anything technical. In 2008 while on a rip off the coast of Namibia in search of a record, Sailrocket quite literally took off. Half way down the course, having just cracked 50 knots of speed, the boat became airborne flipping completely and crash landing in a dozen splintered pieces. That could have been the end of the project; broken boat, broken dreams and worse yet, potentially a skipper with a broken nerve. Setting speed records are most definitely about nerve and keeping focused on the mission at hand and it was a smiling Larsen that proclaimed, “We’ll be back.” True to his word last April Vestus Sailrocket 2 (VSR2) was launched and with it came the hope of 50-plus, possibly even 60 knots of speed.

This past week has been thrilling for anyone interested in speed records as well as those who believe in the quaint notion that dreams really can come true. After months of refining VSR2 and waiting for the perfect conditions Paul and his team were poised to try and better their best time. A small computer with a GPS is installed in the boat and it would record the peak speeds for the boat as well as the average over the 500 meter course. The record they were after was still the one set by kiteboarder Rob Douglas.

If you watch the video of the day you can see that the bay is quite calm, the only obstacle being a flock of flamingos. Further offshore where Paul and Sailrocket start their run it’s a bit choppier but they need room to get up to speed before entering the 500 meter zone and even from way off Sailrocket looked to be moving fast. Onboard Paul is mic’ed up and you can hear the excitement on his voice. “That’s fast,” he keeps repeating as Sailrocket starts to fill the frame. “That’s fast. This will do it, this will do it,” Paul states almost matter-of-factly and then its clear that it has been a record breaking run. The peak speed for the day was 62.53 knots with the average over the course a new world record of 59.23 knot average. Simply amazing. Two days later, after the hangover had subsided, Sailrocket broke it’s own record peaking at 64 knots and averaging 59.38 knots.

Paul Larsen celebrates

So while Bernard Smith almost outrageously predicted a 40-knot sailboat, he probably never in his wildest dreams imagined a 60-knot sailboat, but today it’s a reality. The persistent Sailrocket team have made history and written another chapter about the power of perseverance. It’s a great story with a storybook ending, but somehow I have the feeling that the final chapter of this book is yet to be written.