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Bernard Smith works on one of his innovative sailboats in 1977.
Larsen
The 'Vestas Sail Rocket' is shown breaking the world record for speed sailing at 52.2 knots before flipping. |
BY FRANK DELANO
A sailboat based on concepts of a retired Dahlgren scientist has raced to a new speed record off the coast of Africa.
Vestas Sailrocket averaged 47.36 knots (nearly 55 mph) over a 500-meter course Dec. 3 in Namibia, according to the World Sailing Speed Record Council. On its next run, however, the lightweight, solid-wing craft became airborne and back-flipped into the water.
The crash, one of many in the five years of the boat's development, did not injure--or diminish the joy of--Paul Larsen, the 40-year-old Australian leader of the project and pilot of the boat.
"I am now safe in the knowledge that no one can dispute that this is a very viable concept of enormous potential. In fact, I think it is perhaps one of the most significant speed sailing craft of all time. The concept behind this craft is future proof," Larsen wrote on his blog soon after his record run.
Videos of Larsen's spectacular run and flip have been seen on sailrocket.com and YouTube by thousands of people, but Bernard Smith is not among them.
"All my friends have tuned in on his Web site and are overwhelmed with awe, but I haven't seen it yet. I don't have a computer," said Smith, whose 50 years of work on radical sailboat concepts helped blaze a trail to Larsen's Sailrocket.
SEEING NEW POSSIBILITIES
Smith, 98, a former resident of King George County, retired as the technical director of what was then called the Naval Weapons Laboratory at Dahlgren in 1973. He now lives in Florida.
Smith began his sailboat work in 1957 while working as a rocket scientist at the Naval Ordnance Test Station at China Lake, Calif. He continued building experimental craft at Dahlgren and at his retirement homes in King George on Rosier Creek and in Boca Raton, Fla.
In books, patents, papers and articles, he named his various designs Aerohydrofoils, Monomarans, Sailoons and Fliptackers. His most recent work, "The Ultimate Sailboat," was self-published in 2004.
Smith's work led him to boats with inclined sails mounted outboard of the hulls. The arrangement effectively cancels the tendency of conventional sailboats to heel or overturn.
"Bernard is beyond being an engineer. He's a visionary who could see beyond the conventions. He freed his mind to go where no ordinary yacht designer could go," said Malcolm Barnsley, Sailrocket's designer, in a telephone interview from his home in Southampton, England.
"Nobody else has really picked up on Bernard's fundamental concepts the way we have. I'm a firm believer in it. Any further attempt will be based on his work," he said.
Barnsley, 52, also works at a research lab of Vestas Wind Systems A/S, a leading producer of wind turbines. Vestas became a Sailrocket sponsor this year in hopes that the boat would break the outright speed-sailing record.
However, Sailrocket's extraordinary speed, the fastest ever for a sailboat, fell short of the outright record by about 3 knots, or nautical mph. A nautical mile is about 6,000 feet.
For the past 20 years, the fastest sails on the water have largely belonged not to boats, but to wind-surfers and kite-boarders.
A new outright record of 50.57 knots (about 58 mph) was set in October by French kite-boarder Alexandre Caizergues at Luderitz, 260 miles down the Namibian coast from Walvis Bay, where Larsen made his record run in Sailrocket. Both sites offer steady winds from the South Atlantic blowing across lagoons protected from high waves.
Also in October, Hydroptere, a 60-foot French boat that rises out of the water on hyrdofoils, achieved 46.88 knots over a 500-meter course in the Mediterranean.
CHASING ANOTHER RECORD
In a Dec. 21 attempt to beat Sailrocket's new speed record and, perhaps, capture the outright record, Hydroptere capsized after momentarily hitting 61 knots (70 mph). The boat was heavily damaged, but none of its nine-member crew was injured.
Larsen's team repaired Sailrocket after its Dec. 3 crash and waited in vain the rest of the month for the right winds to take it to the outright record.
Larsen left Africa for England this week. Sailrocket, which weighs just 450 pounds, will follow in a shipping container.
In his blog Monday, Larsen said he "was happy that we gave it our absolute best shot. We got some records and leave as the fastest 'boat' in the world but the one we want the most, the outright world speed sailing record, remains in the hands of the kiters."
"We will have to come back for that one. And we will. We will leave Walvis content yet restless in the knowledge that it isn't over," he said.
In England, designer Barnsley said he and Larsen "will celebrate and plan what we're going to do next." He said one goal "will be getting the current boat to go quicker."
Another of Barnsley's ideas is "to build another speed record boat aiming for 60 knots with more focus on it being airborne than sitting in the water." Beyond that, he dreams of designing an oceangoing version of Sailrocket that might set new trans-Atlantic and other records.
Barnsley also said he and Larsen hope to travel to Florida in the coming year to meet Smith for the first time.
"They're giving me more credit than I deserve," said Smith. "They put far more work and money into it than I ever did. Those two guys really reached out to the sky. They've honored me enough by believing I almost knew what I was talking about."
Frank Delano: 804/333-3834
Email: fpdelano@gmail.com
| "To one who has turned lifeless materials into a thing alive and forced it to do his bidding against the resisting forces of nature in silence, without fuel and without defiling air or water, there can never be anything more wonderful than the sailboat.
"The sailboat never offends the senses of fish, fowl or man. To make it move faster is to make it more a thing of freedom and beauty."
--Bernard Smith, "The 40-Knot Sailboat," 1963
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