IT’S OFFICIAL! The new world record has been ratified by NALSA (North American Land Sailing Association). After detailed analysis of the data, the final figure turns out to be 126.2 mph.

Many Many thanks to Bob Dill, the Nalsa secretary and GPS guru who has painstakingly analysed the accuracy of various GPS units and overseen the speed measurement of all my efforts over the years. Bob designed and built the Iron duck (previous record holder), but has been tremendously helpful to me throughout the project. He has hung out with me for weeks at a time at the various locations around the world including Australia (exactly the opposite side of the world from his home in Vermont), at his own expense, to oversee the attempts as an official observer. As it turns out, we managed to do it in front of the whole Nalsa Committee, but if the weather had played it’s hand in one of the remote locations, Bob was there on standby to be the official witness. Thanks for all your support and company over the years, Bob.

Here is the official Statement of ratification as well as the supporting documents submitted to the Nalsa Committee; The measurement report (PDF, 784kb) and the GPS data (Excel, 81kb) from the fastest run.

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Dear NALSA,

The NALSA Board of Directors has ratified a new world record for speed in a landyacht of 126.2 mph by Richard Jenkins in Greenbird on March 26, 2009 at 11:04 PDT on Ivanpah Dry Lake California.
The wind at the time ranged between 30 and 40 mph with occasional higher gusts. As required by the NALSA Regulations for Speed Record Attempts, the top speed was measured over three seconds during which the yacht traversed about 560 feet. Speed measurement was made by a total of five logging GPSs which agreed within 0.1 mph and which all have a demonstrated accuracy (U at 95%) of 0.2 mph (well under the NALSA requirement of 0.5 mph). Additional information can be found at NALSA.org.

Bob Dill
NALSA Secretary

Well I arrived back in England yesterday after an excellent trip back. A great mate from University who is a pilot and now flies for BA apparently managed to find out what plane I was on and get a message to the flight crew. They not only found an empty business class seat for me, but announced to the whole plane the new British held world record. A great honour and hugely appreciated so many many thanks to BA and the whole crew who treated me like royalty and looked after me superbly.

The Greenbird is now in San Francisco awaiting transport back to the UK. Really sorry I could not stay another week at Ivanpah for the Kite buggy Expo. The kiters are a great bunch who have been incredibly helpful in the past and I have made some great friends there, so sorry to miss you this trip.

I have now had some time to digest the record day and the craft performance. I cannot tell you how satisfying it is, from a technical perspective, that it worked exactly as planned. No wear, no breakages and total control at all times. Once I had got to grips with the sensitivity of the sail control, I was able to ‘fly’ the outrigger pod consistently above the ground, which is the perfect situation for least drag, with only two wheels touching the ground. The gusty wind made it slightly more tricky, but even when it looks like the wheel is touching, it really is only just touching, so very little rolling drag.

The biggest problem on the day was the blowing dust, which made visibility very poor. After setting off for the first time, I was completely blind and had to stop for about 30 minutes until visibility improved. The dust also likes to stick to the windscreen, which makes the situation worse, I think you can get a good idea of this from the onboard camera. At times visibility was down to 40 feet, so I waited and once I could see the silhouette of the hills once more, I set off. The first run was a test to see how much room I had with this unusual wind direction. All went well so I turned around and made my way back to the top of the course. This time I gave it full throttle and ‘went with it’. As the craft became overpowered, rather than de-power, I bore away, sailing more downwind. Looking down at the Driftbox GPS, it was reading 126, seemingly for some time. Bailing out of the run and trying to avoid the various obstacles on the lake, I stopped by the camera crew for verification. It all happened too easily and quickly in the end.

Parallel to the road is a pipeline to Vegas, which has various (solid) obstacles along it. These would be fatal if hit at speed so I was pretty careful to try and bail out of the runs into a clear area, but being so low to the ground and in so much dust it was hard to see where the edge of the lake and these obstacles were. Looking at the GPS track now, I am amazed to see how much space we did have left and just how short the record run was. The whole run was completed in about 1.5 miles. Which is pretty amazing acceleration. If I had an in-cockpit position display I probably could have used another 0.5 miles. Here is the GPS track and the acceleration curve:

GPS Track

Acceleration Curve

It clearly shows that there is a little more potential left in the yacht and a figure of 130 mph is probably achievable with a little more time and room.

So should I have pushed harder on the day? Possibly, but the design speed of this vehicle was 125 mph. This is not to say it won’t go faster, but the structure was not yet load tested for speeds above this and the safety factors were definitely small, so to push it much harder, I would like to do more static tests first. Also, now that we know our predictions were spot on for 125, we can certainly make modifications to tune the aerodynamics for 135 mph and have another crack at it.

So the vehicle and me are still in one piece and ready to fight the next fight. It could have easily been very different had I ventured into unknown territory and pushed it beyond the limit, but i guess we will never know! Such is the fine line of record setting and I am very pleased to be on the right side of that line for now. I may have taken a different view 6 years ago, but after many crashes, I guess that is what experience does for you!

Regarding the wind record, I have to say I screwed up here. In all the commotion after the record I did not download the wind data until a few days later. I had not fully realised the memory capacity of the unit when set to maximum data detail, which is only a couple of days. This meant the data from record day morning had already been over-written. All I can say is that it was windy! Averaging 30-35 mph with higher gusts. I guess we will never know exactly what it was during the record run, other than to say it was enough! The speed multiples are normally pretty reliable, and we can consistently do 3.8-4.1 times the wind speed on dirt, so an average windspeed somewhere between 30 and 35 mph is probably a pretty reasonable guess.

Here is the course for the entire days sailing:

All day course GPS track

I am truly overwhelmed by the messages I have received in the last few days. I had no idea that so many people were following my efforts, so thanks so much for all the support. There is also a huge list of people I need to thank who have made this whole thing possible. Some enormous generosity over the years, from people all over the world, whether it is just letting me camp in their garden, use their workshop, donate materials or help out financially. It could not have been done without you and I hope you share the achievement.

I also need to thank Dale and Ecotricity, who were the only sponsor, of the thousands I must have spoken to over the years, who believed in the project and the dream. They provided the final cash injection which enabled me to make this last big push that has culminated in success. Before signing the deal, I was at rock bottom in terms of resources and was going to have to shelve the project and earn some money to continue, but you saved the day. It was only a fraction of the whole project cost, but at the right time and was spent on the right things. I could not have done it without you guys. Thanks.

So on to technical stuff, first the speed. It has been pointed out to me a few times now that the speed mentioned on the video is different from the 126.1mph quoted. This is due to the record rules requiring the average speed over three seconds (which is a fair distance at 126mph) so our peak speed was 126.4 and the three second average was 126.1. Bob Dill and the ratification crew are pouring over the data from the five onboard GPS devices and will reach the final number sometime soon, but my guess will be that it is around 126.1mph.

This really has been a phenomenal wind month, the windiest anyone can remember, in well, ten years I guess! There is another wind event forecast on Sunday / Monday, but I don’t think anything can compare to Thursday, so I am not going to try to increase the speed. The craft is in one piece and it would be cool if it stayed that way, so I am going to be prudent and pack it up today, before I get tempted by Sunday’s wind!

I hope you like the video. Simon Fitzgerald from BHP Sport has followed the project for the last ten years and it was amazingly cool that he was able to be here to shoot the actual record day. He did a fantastic job considering how difficult it was to even stand up in that wind, let alone hold a camera on maximum zoom. From the drivers perspective, it really is a good take on how it felt from the cockpit.

Wind and GPS track data to follow shortly.

I have now spent a day going going over Greenbird and checking all the mechanics, serviced the bearings and making sure everything is ready for the next wind opportunity. Apart from stone chips to the wing leading edges and some general abrasion from the dust at speed, there really is no sign of damage from the testing on Sunday, which is great news.

I have also had some time to digest the performance further, and am very pleased with all the data, matching our predictions very closely.

Speed graph

Here a graph or the speed increase with time, which shows we were well on the way to record speeds, if only we had a little more distance.

There is some more wind forecast for Thursday and then again on Monday, so fingers crossed, but the predicted direction is not looking that great right now, we will have to wait and see…

Well I have now had a chance to digest yesterday’s mammoth day. Here are the results.

It was indeed a great wind day. Almost the best that this location can possibly offer. These days are few and far between and although there have probably been many over the years, there has not been one during the Americas cup regatta (last week of March) since the current record was set in 1999. So with over 100 expectant land sailors watching the pressure was on to perform. The wind was coming out of the SSW and averaging between 25 – 32, but gusting to 40.

Ivanpah Wind 22-03-2009

Here is the days wind graph, dark blue is the average and purple is the peak gust.

This was the first time that the Greenbird, in its new configuration had run at speed, so it was going to be interesting. I started sailing at 09:12 and finished for the day at 5:30pm, after covering 172 miles (277km). During the day we did many pit stops, changing wheels, compounds, tyre pressures and ballast distribution to eke out more speed and tune the vehicle for the conditions of the day.

The final top speed was 107.12 Mph. A frustrating 9 mph short of the record speed.

Ivanpah Track Dist 22-03-20009

Here is the track from the days sailing. You can see I tried to use every available space and try every angle to aid acceleration. In fact I really gave it everything I had to try and get it past the illusive record speed. You can see here by the measurement tool, that the venue only really provides 1.8 miles, for the entire run, including stopping.

It was initially disappointing that the craft was not going much faster in these sort of winds, but after much testing and understanding, the results are very encouraging. The problem here is simply the length of run we are able to use. All the top speeds were in the last seconds of the run, with the craft still accelerating hard, but I had to de-power hard to stop before the end of the lake. I will graph the acceleration curves for you later, but the yacht was accelerating at 0.6 mph/sec at 107 mph, meaning about another 20 – 30 seconds required to hit 120, meaning we needed another 1000m to reach top speed. (Top speed is when acceleration has reached zero, demonstrating we are some way off the vehicles top speed).

But, the current record was set here, was it a faster craft? Not necessarily. It had more wing area and a wing shape that performed better at slower speeds, so was able to accelerate faster. But, it is a trade off, fast acceleration at slow speeds (also like Windjet Mk 2) means sacrificing top speed performance, due to being overpowered and a poor induced drag characteristics at top speed. We spent a lot of time optimising the Greenbird wing for the precise record speed, no slower. this should yield the ultimate top speed, which is what we are searching for after all. However, this means acceleration is slower, and we need possibly twice the acceleration distance as the Iron Duck, but the ultimate speed should be higher, and this was exactly what we experienced, short of finding the top speed! There are high lift devices you can add (flaps, etc) to speed up acceleration, but not without some complexity and as we designed this craft for Australia, where we had up to 10 straight miles, I did not bother to add additional weight or expense to the wing.

So where now? Well we will look at the numbers again to see if we can improve the bottom end speed with the same or a different wing, without compromising top speed. Otherwise, we will need a different venue. There is obviously always Australia, but there are also other alternatives here in North America, which we are researching. Realistically however, we are unlikely to break the record here at Ivanpah unless we get a stronger, or more steady wind, from a slightly kinder direction, which is a big ask and may take another 10 years of waiting!

The very good outcome is that the vehicle behaved perfectly, despite taking a pounding, no failures, no problems, and excellent handling. This is immensely satisfying when it is a craft you have engineered and built yourself. Performance is also now proven (matches performance predictions to this point) so I am more confident than ever that we will get the record, but it is no mean feat. The closer I get to the speed, the more respect I have for the current record holders. They really did set the bar very high and it is certainly no walk in the park.

The really unfortunate side of the day is that we did not get it on proper film. Simon from BHP and our film crew were suppose to have been here, but when their plane was 1 hour out of Gatwick, it had a critical engine failure, meaning it had to return to Gatwick. ( hours of waiting for a new plane means they will arrive in Vegas this morning as the wind is just calming down). Very frustrating for everyone, but hopefully we will get a chance for more action later in the week. We did get some amateur footage from bystanders, which I will post shortly when I have had a chance to view and edit it, but it won’t be a patch on Simon’s quality I am afraid.

So there we have it, close but no cigar. We will hang out here for another week or so, just in-case the wind does get even better, which it may. The jet stream is being kind to us for once and pushing storm after storm down from Alaska into the right area. There is currently wind forecast for Thursday and possibly next Monday.

Greenbird glinting

Greenbird in motion

Greenbird at speed

Sorry for the radio silence! But we’ve been using the time to move our focus from the ice and back onto the land record.

This is because the ice surface never recovered at Canyon Ferry and on March 1st it started to break up in the warming weather.

So it appears that the only possible window for an ice speed record is during the time between when it freezes and when it snows. I sort of knew this before this year’s efforts, but hope springs eternal, right?

Anyway, the ice yacht is packed up in its trailer near the lake awaiting next year’s first freeze. I will be back there in early December, waiting for that first ice.

Thoughts now turn to the land version of Greenbird, waiting for me in storage near San Francisco. The America’s cup landsailing Regatta starts at Ivanpah (near Las Vegas) this weekend – and I plan to be there.

It is the biggest land sailing event of the year, encompassing the Pacrim (Pacific rim) Regatta, so there will be land yacht pilots there from Japan, New Zealand, Australia, etc.

It is not only a great event, but it is the same time of year that the current land record of 116 mph was set – at the same location, 10 years ago.

Believe it or not, I have been trying to beat that record every year, at different locations around the world since then, but opportunities are very few are far between.

Let’s hope it is a 10 year weather cycle!