Landsailing combines all the cornering skills of car racing with the quick-tacking of racing sailboats, plus some of the balance coordination of windsurfing. It's a complete wring-out as a sports experience and once you've tried it, a lot of other activities will seem pretty tame. The Vector is ultra light and cheap to build, and is arguably the world's fastest accelerating landsailer.

In the photo to the left, the Vector is chasing our old Manta sailcar, an earlier sailcar plan we did in the '70's! This shows the idea of hiking out, as the Manta had no cockpit to slip into to reduce wind drag.

Having either option is a lot of fun and opens up smaller areas for sailing (because you can use a larger sail area and take advantage of lighter winds, hiking out to offset gusts.) Pretty much all other landsailers only have a cockpit and stick to larger areas like dry lakes and large beaches and need fairly high wind speeds to be effective.

It's hard to get across just how exciting sailcars can be. If you have access to a beach with flat, hard sand at low tide, there's very little which is as much fun; iceboats are probably more exciting, but oh-so-cold! The fun of combining a day at the beach with some excting sailing is hard to beat. I remember good days with steady wind and sailing along the beach and flying a wheel (like heeling in a sailboat) at will, skimming it over clumps of seaweed as I raced along—fun times!

The Vector differs from other landsailers in that it uses a relatively large sail on a compact, moncocque chassis. This gives exciting performance in normal 10 to 20 knot breezes we're likely to find at sailing sites, other than desert dry lakes. Perfect for parking lot, airfield, beach, or dirt field running, the Vector has proved itself well in short track racing, beating a large field of cars costing ten times as much, finishing second behind the then world champion.

It's easy to hike out and fly a wheel using the sail control as balance. Steering is precise and dynamically stable, and can be controlled either while sitting down in the cockpit, or hiking out on the wing-decks (easy to see in these photos, the dark decks to either side of the cockpit.)

Landsailers are without question one of our favorite action sports. The lateen sail rig used on the Vector is also used on the Ply-Flier and 3-In-1 sailboats so you can combine projects if you choose!

In this photo a helmet is being used, but we found they really reduced one's ability to sail properly. Modern lightweight helmets might be less limiting, as so many new sports are develpoing more open gear. Even without helmets, we always felt safe in the Vector. Capsizing a sailcar is different from a boat, obviously, but having the cockpit to slip down into when things happen works great (as we know from personal experience!)

The Vector is an amazingly fun project and I wish we had more builder pics to share. As it is, we only have one builder's photos so far. Send us more!

Click Here to take a look at the photos!