Paul speaks from Walvis Bay, Namibia on his record attempt this week that resulted in the boat crashing and Paul being taken to a hospital for treatment.
” Hi all… one slightly beaten up Sailrocket jockey here.
Firstly, thanks to all those near and far who have sent their regards. It’s always appreciated.
Obviously the last couple of days have been pretty strange from my perspective. One moment I’m going 47+ knots with the glorious Walvis Bay ‘speed-spot’ stretched out before me and ready for the taking… the next I’m on a hospital Gurney sort of aware that I’m asking the same question over and over… “what happened”?
I won’t go into too much detail here until we are certain of all the factors. I went straight back to the container once out of hospital and had a look at all the onboard and shore footage of the incident. It appears that a lashing on the stay that holds the main beam forward failed and the beam swung aft. The huge side loads on the main foil then levered the hull to beam frame out of the heavy carbon forks which they attach to on the beam and allowed the main hull to rotate as if it was attached to an industrial lathe. The free inboard end of the beam then shot back towards the cockpit. It was all over in milliseconds…
I do recall jamming the control full aft as she began to roundup… but that was it and now I know why.
Poor VESTAS SAILROCKET has been extensively damaged in altogether new and creative ways. Never mind… we’ve been here before. We probably have the best boat building team we have had on site and now it’s their time to shine.
I have just spoken to Malcolm for the first time and he was noticably shaken. It’s normal for the designer to feel a heavy burden when they know someone has been dealt a hard blow by one of their creations. I assured him that as far as I know it was a small component failure (always is) and that we should push on until we have all the information needed to make an honest and sound decision.
The team have been great as have the locals. It’s such a pleasure to have good people around you when stuff like this goes down.
So there we are. Down but not out. We were just entering the mile course and were already hitting 47.4 knots without the main wing flap in. I wanted to bag two records in one. From the PI RESEARCH data we accelerated from 30-40 knots in 2 seconds even. But this isn’t a game of ‘nearlies’… we were obviously flatly denied and hence will have to try a bit harder.
It’s all very annoying but then I guess I have to be thankful too. It could always be worse. We are entering a punishing stage of the game as can be seen by the outcomes of two of our top-end attempts. You have to expect some rough play in an endeavour like this but you can’t just charge forward on bravado and witty remarks. It will be understanding and team work that push us forward. As long as the pieces add up then I will go on as determined as ever… this time with a bigger helmet!
I will, as always, let you all know exactly what we discover in the coming days… and how we plan to deal with it.