The Fast and the Furious

It seems that the sailing world has rejuvenated the battle to be the biggest, fastest and the best over the last few months. After watching the amazing multihulls racing for the America's Cup Last week there have been several press releases announcing new record attempts and racing ventures.

Bruno Peyron has announced that he intends to re-launch "The Race" Three times holder of the Jules Verne Trophy and creator of The Race, the non-stop crewed race around the world without outside assistance and without limits. After several months of studies and some careful thinking and after consulting the main potential competitors, a second edition of the race around the world for the giant G-class boats is therefore planned for 2013-2014, starting from a port in Southern Europe.

"The Race" has only been run once so far and was seen at the time by many people to be a step too far and unsafe, however much of the technology developed by the boats that entered is now integral in the new breed of round the world racers. The overall winner of the race the first time round was the Maxi Cat Club Med which was skippered by Grant Dalton has already shown interest in taking part.

My most prominent memory from the race was the revolutionary Team Phillips boat skippered by Pete Goss which was as it turned out a step too far on the technology stakes as she lost a large part of one hull (if my memory serves me correctly this was during sea trials and the boat was recovered, but never made the race, but please correct me if I'm wrong).

The team behind the Vestas sail rocket (Pictured) have also announced that they are going to be building a new version of the sail rocket to finish the job of setting the outright world speed sailing record. The new craft will be an evolution of the innovative concept upon which their original craft was based.

The new boat is being built in the VESTAS R&D facilities at East Cowes on the Isle of Wight. It will incorporate many features to make it more versatile and practical to sail at world record speeds in a wider range of winds and sea states. The team will launch the new boat in East Cowes in time for the British summer and hope to carry out testing in the UK over the following months. If initial trials go well, the team will endeavour to bring the world record back to UK waters.

Thanks to Yachts and yachting and Yachting Monthly for the initial news story's and image.