Spirit of Australia currently holds the world record for being the fastest yacht with 317.6mph (551.1 kilometers/h). Photo: facebook.com/warbymotorsport
To attempt to break the world record for water-speed takes years of planning and enormous amounts of horsepower budgets that are huge, amazing engineering, and the aerodynamics of the fighter jet, and cojones as big as Milford Haven. In spite of all that, there are four current candidates to be the speediest boat on the planet…
What is the fastest boat?
The title for the world’s fastest vessel belongs to Spirit of Australia that had a two-way average maximum velocity in the range of 317.6mph (551.1 kilometers/h) at Blowering Dam in NSW in the year 1978.
The legendary Ken Warby, this homebuilt wooden speed boat became the first speedboat to surpass through the 300mph and 500km/h speed limits.
Warby who died in the beginning of 2023 He became the first Australian to keep a world speed record and was the first person to develop, build and operate the water speed record-setting boat.
Who wants to break the record for fastest boat speed?
Nigel Macknight is both the driving force and the driver of Quicksilver, Britain’s long-standing-challenger for the title of world’s fastest boat.
But despite working on the project for the better 30 years, and having a team of experts from past water-speed and land speed record attempts however, the team is far from launching an attempt to break the record.
In collaboration alongside Ken Norris (chief designer of Donald Campbell’sBluebird K7 which set the record for water speed in 1964) the construction of the spaceframe structure was complete in 2002, and the team set up and started the Spey Jet engine.
However, neither the bodywork nor the complex control systems were finalised and the first iteration of the design was shelved following wind tunnel testing that suggested major stability issues.
Since then, the team been through two more designs before coming to the twin-cockpit model currently in development (pictured below). Concept 4, as it is known at present, has the engine mounted toward in the direction of hull’s central part.
A 25,000hp Rolls-Royce Spey jet engine has been replaced with an 10,000hp Mk 101 version from a Hawker Siddeley Buccaneer bomber.
It will be incorporated into the hull of a brand new design that is constructed from kevlar and Baltek, a high-tech balsawood-based material manufactured by 3A Composites SA of Switzerland.
Once completed, this will be coated with an extremely tiny layer of fibreglass prior to being attached to the existing steel spaceframe.
Ken Norris is no longer the chief designer, but his designs are being carried into the future with the help of Ron Ayers, Lorne Campbell, Mike Green and Roland Snell.
The Quicksilver team claims that they intend to reuse most of the equipment used for previous versions of their design making the process faster However, no launch date has been determined yet.
