Richard Jenkins

Richard Jenkins is a year old engineer from Lymington, UK. He is known for engineering and sailing wind-driven vessels on land, ice, and water. In 1999, he founded the Windjet Project while studying mechanical engineering at Imperial College. Since then he has designed, built, and tested four separate speed record craft. Jenkins is currently the founder and CEO of Saildrone, a company that designs, manufacturers, and manages unmanned surface vehicles that sail the world's oceans collecting science data. In 2019, SD 1020 became the first unmanned vehicle to complete a circumnavigation of Antarctica, crossing every longitude line in the Southern Ocean. Early years Jenkins was born in England to Australian parents. He was raised in Lymington, a small village near Southampton and on his grandfather's farm in Western Australia. He became interested in sailing and engineering at a young age: he was dinghy sailing at age 10, working on the last airworthy Short Sunderland flying boat at age 12, building an International Moth dinghy in his early teens, and doing design work for super maxi yachts while attending college. He first crossed the Atlantic when he was 16. He also helped to sail the Matthew, a replica of John Cabot’s 15th century caravel in which the explorer discovered the island of Newfoundland. World land speed record On 26 March 2009, Jenkins broke the world land-speed record for a wind-powered vehicle. He reached 126.1 mph (202.9 km/h) in his land yacht Greenbird on Ivanpah Lake, a dry lake in California's Mojave Desert. The previous record of was set by Americans Bob Dill (engineer/designer) and Bob Schumacher (pilot/builder) on 20 March 1999, driving their wind-powered vehicle the Iron Duck in the same location. "Top speed is actually quite scary. The structure and tyre grip is all at the limit, so keeping it in a straight line under full control takes full concentration," Jenkins told The Guardian. Greenbird is the fifth iteration of the land yacht that was first known as Windjet. Greenbird is powered by a carbon composite wing that produces thrust similarly to how an airplane wing produces lift.