THE ORIGINAL LOCATION: WEYMOUTH

The Vestas SailRocket program was originally located in Weymouth on the south coast of England. Weymouth is the traditional home of speed sailing where for decades sailors have used the strong sea breezes and flat sheltered waters of Portland Harbour in order to get the best out of many wild and varied craft. Every year, around October, Portland Harbour still holds Weymouth Speed Week where all manner of sailing craft turn up with outright speed being their sole objective.

Weymouth was home to the outright world speed sailing record until 1980 when the sailboards, looking for much windier locations began going elsewhere. Vestas SailRocket only needs a little over 20 knots of wind so Weymouth is still very suitable for our needs. Vestas SailRocket is sailed very close to the shore along the causeway which joins Weymouth to Portland as this provides great speed sailing conditions. Most speed sailing craft are looking for glassy flat water with strong steady winds. These conditions are notoriously hard to find. Inland sites tend to have very gusty, unstable winds so typically we look for a site that gets steady winds off open water with something, whether it is a break wall or a low peninsula to get rid of the waves. The lower and smoother the break wall the better as we don’t want it to disturb the wind too much. It is amazing how quickly ‘chop’ builds on the water in 20 knots of wind and ultimately ‘chop’ is slow especially when approaching record speeds. One of the reasons it is slow is because it allows air to get under the planing surfaces which will then get sucked down the fins and cause the boat to lose traction in the water. This means that we have to sail as close to the shore as possible, sometimes only a few meters away. This makes it great for spectators. Weymouth was the best place in the world for our project in the initial stages of development.

Once fully developed, Vestas SailRocket will only need a little over 20 knots in order to achieve speeds of around 50 knots. The orientation of the speed course at Weymouth means that we can take advantage of the SW winds that frequent these shores. The boat has been configured in Port-tack mode and is sailed off the slip-way in front of the new Weymouth and Portland Sailing Academy. The facilities for launching and storing the boat are second to none and Weymouth is very close to many of the industries that are supporting the project.

The Vestas SailRocket project has been relocated to an even better location… the incredible Walvis Bay, Namibia.