New World Sailing Boat Speed Record

- Kite-boarders comply in all respects with the WSSR rules and in particular with WSSR rule 9 “A yacht shall sail by using only the wind and water to increase, maintain or decrease her speed”. - In common with many other sports, a linear method of speed recording i.e. the time taken to travel between wo points 500 metres apart, has always been adopted. The WSSRC does not try to measure, define, or give credit for instantaneous speed or speeds calculated on a curved course. The recording of time is taken from the same point of the board at both start and finish. - The so-called slingshot effect can produce an increased instantaneous speed, but only over a short distance and in a curved trajectory. Following this slingshot effect, speed decreases considerably and whilst a high speed for a short distance may have been achieved, the average over the full course is unaffected. - There can be no stored energy as all the competing craft consists of is a small board, some strings and sailcloth. - Concerning the belief that kite boards may not maintain contact with the water during an attempt, the fact is that the kiteboard had to remain waterborne in order to maintain speed. There is loss of power and speed immediately the board loses water contact. ENDS

Brit Tim Colman was the first to raise the World Sailing Speed record above 30 kts in 1975 with his yacht Crossbow, with windsurfer Erik Beale (UK) the first over 40 kts in 1988.

With 50 kts now conquered, the next big milestone will be 53.995680346 kts, otherwise known as 100 kilometers per hour, and that record may go when the Macquarie Team heads back to its speed attempt location on Wilson’s Promontory, the southern most tip of mainland Australia, some time in the next few months. The location is the same one used by essentially the same team back in 1993 when their yacht "Yellow Pages Endeavour" set the then outright sailing speed record of 46.52 knots (86.52 km/h) in 19 - 20 knots of wind. That was the last time that a sailing yacht set the outright record and it stood for 11years until broken by Finian Maynard on a sailboard in 2004.

Both the Yellow Pages Endeavour, the last yacht to hold the outright speed record and the latest Macquarie Innovation, were designed by Lindsay Cunningham. Cunningham lives near the Dromana factory of the Macquarie Innovation team in the beach suburbs of Melbourne –about two hours drive from the coastal lagoon it uses for its speed attempts when the wind is right.

Getting the right conditions, the team in place and having given the authorities the statutory month’s notice, is extremely difficult. An indication of just how rare optimum conditions are for such sailing speed records, since 2005, the Macquarie Team has been spending around six months of the year at its Wilson’s Promontory speed attempt location, and in that period has had just 15 minutes of sailing time.

On the final day of its allotted 56 day record attempt period, the team was presented with the first real opportunity to tackle the type of conditions in which their boat was designed to perform. The 17 knot wind was some five knots less than the team had hoped to be able to operate in, but was enough to power the extraordinary craft down the course in record breaking time.

“The ideal wind direction for us is nominally southwest – the course is on the lee side of a sand spit, we can deal with around 20 degrees of variation in the wind direction and the wind must be between 15 and 22 knots, with 20 knots the optimum”, said Macquarie's Tim Daddo of the record.

"Getting the right conditions is a lottery, and I suspect that underwater foils will ultimately be the limiting feature of the current boat. I suspect with the right conditions, we have a 54 kt two way run in the boat – very close to 100 kmh,” said Daddo.

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