High speed sailing

There is a very specialized facet of sailing that is obsessed with breaking the speed record for sailboats, which is currently just under 50 knots / hour over a 500 m course (57 mph, or 92 km/h).  So far, the fastest attempts have been using the simplest crafts - a windsurfer holds the official record, and the fastest speed is recorded by (get this) a kitesailor, which people aren't sure if it is a sailboat or not.

At the same time, there have been a progression of exotic craft built for the single purpose of setting records.  Indeed, until sailboards came along, these strange creatures have dominated the record circuit.  I have been recently obsessed with the newest of these, called Vestas Sailrocket.  This is a crazy craft with some really cool engineering and design behind it (reading about the design is very cool)- finally a design that as the wind blows more does not increase in healing moment at all, because the geometry is set up such that the sail lift exactly cancels the other forces.

The team, after several years of learning, designing and tweaking the boat, is now in South Africa trying to break the record.  Recently, after several weeks of waiting for perfect conditions, they finally got a good try, and broke some of the records, but not all of them.  They also knew they had some more speed in reserve... and went back to try for a second time.

Well, it didn't go as planned.  The complete accounting is in the "news" tab on the link above, but here, a picture tells all: