West Kirby USM by Howard Rowson OPH

Farrel O'Shea at Full Throttle

Event: UK Ultimate Speed Meeting

Date: 6^th October 2011

Venue: West Kirby 

Ultimate Speed … Ultimate League of Gentlemen

Long have the UK Speedsailing crews waited for a high wind forecast from the West to West Northwest, providing epic conditions for one of the worlds fastest speed strips.

Late September showed early signs from the main forecasting models that October would perhaps see a return to a mobile westerly flow, with a resultant storm track of low pressure systems off the Atlantic, tracking west to east just north of Scotland, setting up West Kirby for an “in the line of fire” serious high wind session.

Grevelingen Chop Team does it again.

Just a quick note to mention the amazing hour by both Jacques van der Hout and Hans Kreisel. Thats not forgetting the Nautical Mile and distance on top.

This is amazing stuff. They came to the UK and showed us what they were made of at West Kirby on the 6th of October , and have now returned to their home spot at Grevelingenmeer - Zonnemaire, Netherlands. 

I expect most people who read this will understand why I am writing about this achievement, but for those who do not know I will explain. Most windsurfers cruise across the wind at 20-25knots, anything upwind to get back to where you started from  means the speed drops to 18-22knots (all figures are approximate and really depend on a variety of factors) Then when you turn obviously you reduce speed a lot (not if you are one of these two guys though!).

A different perspective on the famous West Kirby day.

Norman Petty (aka Normski), a windsurfer that many people in the UK will have been on the water with and may have the fortune to know or chat with at the beach, sent me his perspective of West Kirby , 6th October 2011. Normski invited me onto the GPS Team Challenge and I feel forever in his debt as without that none of this website would exist. 

He is a 'Legend' class windsurfer who is just as comfortable in logo high waves as he is on the speed course. He certainly showed me how it was done in my first month on the GPS Team Challenge when it was our job to go for distance, I managed 79nmi while he carried on to over 100! Here is his bit, I did not want it to get lost in the other article that a lot of people have already read. - 'The Bus'

Epic Saturday, 84nmi sailed, 934nmi total.....nearly there

Woke up in the van at 5.30am, got up, went outside the van and decided it was cold so got back in bed. About 10minutes later Swagger (Portland Pirates Team Cap'n) rolled up alongside so I felt obliged to get up then. I was glad he did.

I rigged my 7m Tushingham X15 and my Mistral Slalom 95l. The wind was around 20knots and low tide so I didn't want a big fin. We played around on the Harbour with no one else out, it was brilliant fun. Then Camel (B-team Cap'n ;-) ) turned up with his Gopro camera and proceeded to do some of the best gybes, slam gybes, and tricks there are no name for. 

Swags and Camel rode half the length of the harbour with Camel sat on the front of Swags board, they even overtook another sailor while doing it. It was great fun for a few hours. But they deserted me at about 9-10am. I stayed on the water  until 11ish and went in for a break. 

I want to write some congratulations to Marcus for joining the 30club finally, he did it good and proper today with some excellent runs about 100-110 degrees off the wind so that is good strong consistent sailing, on old kit as well! He beat my top speed by 0.2knots which is a first when we have both been going for top speeds and means I must up my game, I did beat him with the 5x10 sec average by 0.24knots though and I did that at low tide compared to his flat water high tide speeds ;-) I knew I shouldn't have sat watching while the best wind went through at high tide, but I had already sailed for a good 4.5hours and covered 68nmi.

I went back out at about 2pm, after using some of Kats handcream to try to stop the stinging from the hardskin. My hands are nearly like leather now but after a session the callouses are quite painful, like pins sticking in my hands. I couldnt hold the boom, my hands were too greasy and I didnt have much grip left as my forearms were a bit tired. Once they warmed up they were fine though. I did about another hour and was dropping gybes all the time so decided to call it a day. There were no other team members out to get distance today as the forecast was for wind in the morning and that was all. 84nmi sailed in total for the day, giving me a grand total of 934nmi.

Great Day, hundreds of Windsurfers out. 55nmi Sailed, 795nmi total

The sunrise woke me at about 5am, so I rolled down the blind in the van and went back to sleep. I woke up with a jolt just over an hour later realising I wanted an early session and the van was rocking in the wind. First thing was to get the kettle on and the kit out. I rigged up 2 sails and 3 boards, ready for anything. Then realised the kettle was still boiling so made a coffee and got into my wetsuit.

I got onto the water and had a good hour blasting and clocking some miles up. Then I got my smaller board (Mistral SL95) and went faster than ever before, getting a top speed of 33.04 knots. Also my gybes were brilliant on the smaller board and I made my fastest alpha (500m with a gybe returning to within 50m of the start) at just under 20knots.

I thought I had made a 30knot 500m run but was not quite there with 29.99! At midday I decided to have a break as it was very busy with freestylers that do not understand the concept of right of way. The night before they were all telling me how they sailed at Portland all the time, I had never seen them before. By the end of the afternoon the water was all mine again so I went back out with the intention of having a 50nmi non stop session, and I was doing dry gybe and dry gybe. The runs were short though due to the and bar and trying to stay close to shore in the flatter water. The wind then swung about 20degrees to the north and died off for 20minutes. In that time I slogged to shore and got changed...........only for it to come back at about 22knots.

I called it a day, happy with a few personal bests and another 55nmi.

The Portland Pirates, a thank you to the team

If it wasn't for the support from the team, especially Mr Motivator - Pete, I would not have made it to an official distance of 201.44km or 108.76nautical miles on Saturday 28th May 2011.

I sent an email the night before saying I wanted to get to 100nm, for a result to score on the GPS Team Challenge it must be the average of 2 sailors results, so I needed someone else out doing distance to back me up. Swagger (Mark) was up for the job even though he had a hole in his arm from a knife wound a few days earlier. Swags is our chief and captain, if we don't follow instructions he can have us on deck scrubbing duties, or some say offered insertion of a mast extension, and his is the longer SDM chinook version. 

On the day The Matrix (Pete) was going for an average Nautical Mile of 30knots, to put this in perspective my top 2 second speed is only 0.4 knots faster than his average over a whole 1852metres. He was being supported by Camel (Steve) who does like to show off amazing gybes in front of the car park rather than go for the distance. They both delivered the goods which opened up a gap between us and the Pit Crew - an Australian Team who used to be top dogs on the challenge. They were only one point behind at the start of the day. Swags and I made the gap even wider giving us a whole 12 points lead over them. 

There are 54 teams in total from all over the world and it adds so much more to a windsurfing session. Windsurfing is quite a selfish sport, you are only reliant on yourself unless you suffer kit breakage and often just blast around or try different tricks and moves. With the  challenge you have an objective or a reason to be out on the water, especially on days like Saturday with it being the end of the month and the need to secure more points. 

The Portland Pirates are currently 5th overall for the year, with a few good months in the bag if we suffer a real wind drought. Many of the southern hemisphere teams are now entering their winter and will not score as well as the start of the year so this stands us in good stead for the rest of the year. The teams we will struggle to beat are the Dutch ones, who are full of professional sailors that often can get out when the rest of us are working. They also have more flat water options than most other accessible places in the world. Portland Harbour was the home of speed sailing in the 80's but now there are many other places that have been found to have better conditions. Portland though is good for the range of disciplines we need, and with skill and good winds we can stay in the top rankings in the world.

I was a competitive swimmer in my youth so never really participated in team sports at school, only basketball which from memory was just a bunch of ego's all trying for a glory shot and not really a team. As I was approaching 80odd nautical miles it was the team that kept me out there sailing even though holding the boom was painful and carving upwind with my toes was agony in my shins. Thanks again to the rest of the team and well done to all, they were tricky conditions and often a game of dodge the tourist for most of the day.

100+Nautical Miles in a Day!!! New total of 619NM

Awoke to drizzle but did not even notice it.....the goal for today was to get some serious mileage, both for my challenge and the team effort on GPS Team Challenge. This has secured our place as 4th in the world, ahead of all countries apart from the Netherlands who just seem to have too many locations with perfectly flat water and a lot more wind than us!

Mid morning and I was barely holding on to such a big sail.

After about 70nautical miles I had a break and changed kit after warming up for an hour.

All the time now I was really forcing myself not to break out the smaller slalom board, I was tired approaching 100nm but the conditions were perfect for some speed runs, I knew I would not get quite as many miles on the smaller board though so kept at it with the bigger one.

The wind was perfect for me to cruise close in to shore at high tide, meaning no hard work getting upwind in the chop further out.

I learnt a lot today, was planing out of some gybes and now understand more what I need to do to get this consistent. I also proved a few things to myself that I had the determination to go on, even after a bit of chest pain. I knew the pain was more in my head than physical though and would not let it beat me. I will expand on this post further in the week. 

GPSTC reads 201.44km or 109NM at the end of the session, which is less than the sportstracklive data but more accurate. This makes my total now 619NM.