America’s Cup sailor Glenn Ashby has set a new wind-powered land speed record of 222.4kmh (or 120 knots) in the Emirates Team New Zealandbuilt Horonuku.
The record was set on 12 December 2022 and was ratified by the international governing body, Federation Internationale de Sand et Land Yachting (FISLY). It betters the previous record of 202.9kmh, set by British innovator Richard Jenkins in March 2009 with Greenbird.
The America’s Cup holders announced their intention to take on the wind powered land speed record after their victory in the last Cup, taking advantage of the lull in the on-water sailing cycle. ‘Project Landspeed’, as it was known, was a real passion project for Team New Zealand’s 2017 skipper, Glenn Ashby, who is a self-confessed speed freak, not only sailing high speed dinghy and multihulls, but also having previously raced land yachts and is also a keen motorcyclist.
The same could be said of ETNZ CEO Grant Dalton, who supported the project along with Team Principal Matteo de Nora.
The rules for setting up a land speed record are simple: it must be sailed on a natural, flat surface, and can only be started with a human push – no tow-ins or tarmac allowed. The New Zealand team chose the flat salt pans of Lake Gairdner, north-west of Adelaide. The lake is over 160km long, with salt over 1.2m thick in some places. It's usually bone-dry, but abnormal weather conditions meant that when Ashby and team arrived in July 2022 it still had 50mm of standing water over the salt crystals and it wasn’t until October that the land yacht Horonuku could be launched. Unseasonal showers meant the project had to be paused again in November, before Ashby was able to resume speed trials, hitting 200kmh in early December before his record-breaking run.
BORROWED CUES
Horonuku (the name means ‘gliding swiftly across land’) bears many similarities to Jenkins’ Greenbird, something Ashby acknowledged from the outset. “In doing our research and digging deeper and deeper into the intricacies of the design challenges, it became very apparent that Richard really did an incredible job with his world record design,” he said.
The carbon Horonuku has a vertical rigid wing for power, a trailing horizontal wing for stability, and an asymmetric ‘proa’ style crossbeam giving it a wide wheelbase. At just over 46ft long, it has a 36ft-high wingsail, and four wheels under aerodynamic fairings –
