100km/h Sailboat Sets Speed Record 103
fustakrakich writes with news that a boat powered only by its sails has reached speeds of 100km/h for the first time. The team also claims to have reached 109km/h over a 500m course. The craft took the speed record back from kite surfers, who have somewhat smaller sails but a massive weight advantage over boats.
"Sailrocket 2 set the record last week, and the speed 54.08 knots (100.1 km/h) the craft achieved has been recognized by the World Sailing Speed Record Council as the new mark in Class B for vessels traversing a 500 meter course. The speed is higher than any other vessel recorded in the Council’s lists and is the only recorded speed over 100 km/h."
Gizmag has a more detailed article about Sailrocket 2's exploits, and says in an update that the craft achieved speeds of 121km/h today (65.37 knots).
Re:Great, but... (Score:5, Informative)
no, but the laws of physics do allow the possibility of tacking in certain other directions faster than wind speed
Re:The actual boat (Score:2, Informative)
The boat has practically no resemblance to any other sailing vessel. I'm mean yay!, you got the record and you took it back from kite surfers but your actual craft resembles a sail boat about as much as a kite surfers craft resembles a sail boat.
Well, it floats on water and has a hull (is a boat) and uses a raised structure to catch the wind (has a sail), so... it's a sailboat. A very light, one person sailboat.
Re:The actual boat (Score:4, Informative)
>The boat has practically no resemblance to any other sailing vessel.
No, it looks like a catamaran with different geometry and hydrofoils.
The base machine is a cat - two hulls and a sail.
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BMO
Re:Great, but... (Score:2, Informative)
Then there's race kiters who routinely achieve a VMG better than wind speed going downwind, though not by as large a factor.
Re:Great, but... (Score:3, Informative)
Nautical speed is measured in knots, worldwide.
1 knot = 1.1507794 mph = 1.852 km/h = 0.51444444 m/s
Re:The actual boat (Score:5, Informative)
I think the term you are looking for is "proa". [wikipedia.org]
Re:The speed in units most english speakers know (Score:4, Informative)
>I know you think using only knot
There's a reason why nautical miles are used. They are roughly one minute of arc along a meridian. They are what you use when you are out on the ocean, because that's the only thing that truly makes sense when you've got a sphere divided up into degrees, minutes, and seconds.
Also
American here, I know the english system (both imperial and not) and metric system of measurments and navigational measurements (which are neither "english" nor "metric" but are SI anyway). Instead of being mad at people using terms you're not familiar with, how about you go look them up and educate yourself?
By the way, they broke 65 knots average speed. You do the math to figure out how fast that is.
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BMO
Re:Great, but... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm gonna get all pedantic on your ass. So apologies ahead of time.
>implying that chains are obscure
No, no they're not. They have been used in all English speaking countries ever since that guy Gunther came up with the system in 1620 ... all the way up to the middle of the 20'th century. If you ever found yourself in a land evidence vault in any city/town hall in any English speaking country, you'd find chains and links in all sorts of deeds predating the invention of steel tape.
With a little bit of adjustment, making a chain a decimal fraction of a nautical mile instead of 80 chains being a statute mile, the meter would have never stood a chance. A nautical mile is 92 chains and 6+1/4 links. If Gunther had made his chain 1/100'th of a nautical mile, we'd still be using it today instead of abandoning it in the 1940s for decimal feet and meters on steel tape.
And btw, 1 acre is 10 square chains. 1 statute square mile is 640 acres, since a mile is 80 chains.
1 mile = 80 chains
1 chain = 100 links
1 acre = 10 square chains
It's a nice self-consistent system that only needed a little bit of a tweak for it to be used on steel tape and other measurement technology. It was revolutionary when Gunther came up with it, since it suddenly made land surveying math standardized and *easier.*
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BMO