An unemployed sailor is aiming to take on the world’s best in a homemade boat financed with his dole money.

Jonathon Barton is preparing his unusual craft, dubbed SS DSS, to take part in Weymouth Speed Week.

The creation is made out of anything Mr Barton could lay his hands on including metal, fibreglass, plastic and wood.

The legendary competition attracts competitors from across the world.

The world’s longest-running speed Sailing event is taking place in Portland Harbour and features every conceivable type of wind-powered craft.

Hosted by the National Sailing Academy, the event is centred on a measured 500-metre course.

This provides the challenge for the speed sailor to pit their wits against the elements and endeavour to raise the world speed record from the current absolute speed of 55.65 knots set by American kitesurfer Robert Douglas.

The lack of rules provides the opportunity for experts and dreamers to build the type of boats which would otherwise never see the light of day. There are no restrictions as to who may enter.

And that is what prompted Mr Barton, 50, to enter.

He said: “I know the build quality is not perfect, but if I could get some high-tech materials into the construction I am certain this craft can contribute greatly to new ways of sailing control and propulsion.

“I don’t have the money, but I do have the time and my brainpower to devote to it.

“I’ve worked on designs for engines, however my real love is sailing and to get this craft on the water and do some serious testing with it.

“I’ve had offers of help to sail it, but I need to prove it myself first.

He follows many inventors who brought some very strange looking craft to speed week in the past.

And some of those ideas and sailing techniques have gone on to be adapted and used today, like for instance kitesurfing. Mr Barton, who says he spends his time on the road and has no place he calls home, said he loves to invent things and hopes his vessel will prove his latest theories about the increased power that one can expect to get with this type of new flexible sail configuration and float system. He is waiting for ideal conditions before he can take it on the water – steady winds and smooth waves. The last few days have been too windy.

He has hand built a very complicated rope and pulley control mechanisms to alter the sail profile and to steer it using the front neutral buoyancy pontoons.

Most of the entries that take part tend to be windsurfers, but he feels that there is still room for the more eccentric craft.

Entries like Jacobs Ladder sailed by Ian Day in the late 1970s with its multiple flexifoil kites was a revelation at the time.

Vessels are getting faster

The event has been running at Portland Harbour since 1972 and then the top speed was 26.3 knots by ‘Crossbow’.

It later went on to get to 36 knots in 1980, and now speeds around 40 knots are more commonplace.

Frenchman Antoine Albeau achieved 49.09 knots in 2009 in France, the fastest speed recorded by a windsurfer over 500m.

The record is now 55.65 knots set by Robert Douglas a US kitesurfer in Namibia.

The course at Weymouth is suited to all competitors from boats to the kiters, so if the wind blows, and they are due a good year, the harbour record of 38.48 knots set by Anders Bringdal in 2008 could fall.