Luderitz; Faster and more Furious.

Just a quick update today, here are the results. Congratulations to all, from the new 50knot club to everyone who sailed there today, there are more than are posted here as some are just doing it for fun.

Antoine Albeau: 51.69 knots World Other 

Bringdal: 51.34 knots SWE record and production board? 

Patrick Diethelm: 50.49 knots SUI / ITA record 

Jurjen van der Noord: 50.41 knots NL record 

Cedric Bordes: 50.17 knots 

Nick Vardalachos: 48.84 knots (result today NNB) 

Mark Grinnel: 48.67 knots SA record 

Farrell O Shea: 48.82 knots record GBR 

Matthias Rottcher: 47.34 knots NAM record 

Martin van Meurs: 47 knots (result today NNB) 

Christian Bornemann: 46.18 knots GER record 

Zara Davis: 45.83 knots World record women 

Lena Erdil: 45.74 knots 

Christian Benzing: 45.57 knots (result today NNB) 

Jurjen Van De Noord - Dutch World Speed Champion
Photo courtesy of Eric Bellande

All eyes were on the Dutch today,  Jurjen who posted a Dutch record on Tuesday without wearing any weight had a very fast first run setting the standards high for the day. Martin van Meurs, whom many of us credit as one of the founding fathers of the current speed surfing scene, arrived late in the week and today would be his first true speed day on the course after an amazing warm up session in relatively light winds yesteday. He had this to say about yesterdays session.

"A fantastic first sailing day for me. I decided l would trim for the big winds to come and stuck to it. I want to finetune my set if “it” happens. The canal feels like it tailormade for me, but I guess most riders will feel that way. It’s so nice to sail here and I am happy I took the last minute decision. I was stoked seeing 47 knots 500 on the dial in my first run. After that the wind got too little for my 40 wide but I kept sailing it and learned a lot. I feel convincd time will tell. It was great to hear about Jurjens Dutch record. He was the first on the water, was sharp and walked away with the day price. Congratualtions to you, it was a well deserved victory!"

He documented his journey to Luderitz, saying that there was a 'Zen like feeling' about the place, with a great atmosphere and all the competitors being relaxed and really open to sharing advice and stories. This is a real credit to windsurfing in general, the fact that everyone would like to become the Speed record holder yet willing to help others achieve it as well. Unfortunately his session today did not fair as well.

"The Zen feeling is definitely gone. I had a nightmare day which I partially created myself as I didn’t want to give up and kept going. I made a stupid crash after the finish on my first run. I basically forgot to stop. My 5.5 was torn and I had to take the 5.1 which was way too small to waterstart in a normal way. I couldn’t get the corner right and I came to a halt twice on the leeward bank, once doing nearly 44 knots. I think I broke the land sliding record by a human person which is not the record I was hoping for…… Pictures showed me just how tense I was from the crash and I completely forgot about my style. I pushed the nose down with my body nearly tilting over to the nose of the board and in two gusts I was simply pulled over the handlebars. Crouching into the boom does feels safer when you are scared, but it’s for sure not the way to move forward if you want to go for speed. I hope the fear factor won’t be hitting in tomorrow, but for now I am definitely not feeling too well. Hopefully I end up in the middle between the feeling I had when staring and the feeling I’ve got now. Congratulations to Antoine and Zara, who had her share again as well and in particular to Jurjen van der Noord who was keeping up with the big boys in great style."

The records are falling again, and I am sure when Martin wakes up tomorrow he will start over with a more relaxed feeling, after all he did show us all 50knots was possible a few years ago at The Ray, Southend, England.

Zara Davis has shown her strength, after having stitches in her forehead after her crash on Tuesday she has taken the Womens Speed record even closer to the outright GB record which Farrel O'Shea increased today. Zara has to watch out for Lena Erdil though, who is catching her.

Tomorrow I expect this will all change again, I said on a forum before all this started that I think it will end with a 54knot win, it is looking more and more possible. You can see Antoine Albeau's record run here with an amazing 5x10second average of 52.05knots!

Good speeds and winds
The Bus

Luderitz; A day to go down in history

Anders Bringal, photo courtesy of Eric Bellande

Today was spectacular, with two of the worlds best windsurfers breaking the 50knot barrier. The first to break it was Anders Bringal with 50.41knots, and then 50.46knots. There was a lot of speculation online at official Luderitz Speed Challenge facebook page. After a couple of hours of national records falling all went quiet for an hour. This was after Jurjen van de Noord posted that the 50knot barrier had been broken. This was followed by an official post saying Anders had 49.31 so no one knew who had broken the 50knot barrier. 

Luderitz. 50knot 500m toppled by more than one

This is currently part conjecture but I am confident in what I write. About half an hour ago the Luderitz page on Stalkerbook announced "The 50knots are Broken". This was after many posts this morning of national records being broken, almost every couple of minutes. Meanwhile Antoine and Cedric were out on a tandem breaking that record. They got on their normal boards and the last post was made, saying the top 3 had done about 49.5. What followed was a lot of tension, it was better than the Olympics and the best suspense film rolled into one.

I think our posts on their thread made them delay the news even more, they could see more and more people logging in and perhaps decided to keep the suspense. 45 minutes ago they posted about the 50knots, one person has confirmed a text from Anders saying he was over 50, another is now confirming Antoine to be over. I predict the top 3, Antoine, Anders and Cedric will all be over, and also hope to see UK rider Farrell O'Shea tipping the 50knot barrier as well after posting a run this morning over 48.

Well done to whoever has broken it so far. You are all really helping increase the global audience of Windsurfing.

Edit 17.30 GMT - Anders Bringdal broke 1st the 50 knots with 50.41 knots and then 50.46 knots! Antoine beat him after with 50.59 knots
Also some posts are indicating that Antoine has had a crash into the bank, wrecking his gear and possibly injuring his back, I hope this part is not true.

Zara Davis has increased the Womens outright record to 44.69knots, this was done about midday with no further reports this afternoon when it seems a lot of the faster times were recorded. Maybe it will be even more than this by now.

Good luck.

The Bus.

Antoine Albeau sets a new World Record

The big man himself has graced GPS Speedsurfing for the first time!

http://www.gps-speedsurfing.com/default.aspx?mnu=user&val=110747&uid=412

The stats are amazing, 51.54 2 seconds, I expect the peak is pretty consistent with that as well (from the looks of the data shot below it is a peak of 51.92). An average of 49.68 and the new world record (unratified) over 500m of 49.56knots.

GPS Results data analysis of Antoine's World beating speeds.

AND THIS IS THE WARM UP!

Other great news from the day is Zara Davis setting the womens world record to 44.19knots over 500m. This is now taking womens speed results well into the realms of the top guys on GPSSS. Final congratulations must go to Farrel O'Shea with the new British speed record of 46.15knots.

Sorry, more congratulations have to go to Anders Bringal who has the new production board world record of 48.33knots.

I feel like this is wasting my time typing and your time reading as these I am sure will be smashed every day there is wind there. This is only the start, there are still several weeks left and several big players who are not yet there. I only hope that they can catch up, as the current crew are lapping up national and world records every day.

Well done everyone, lets hope this puts Speed Surfing onto the extreme sports map and more coverage starts in the press and on TV.

Good speeds and winds.

The Bus.

Luderitz Speed Canal Day 1

Just a few details thanks to Pete Davis.

"What a fantastic start! Zara Breaks both her British and Production records with a 40.95 knot run. She is one of only three women ever to go over 40 knots and is just 0.3 of a knot of Karin Jaggi's record. Elanor from Turkey on her 1st speed event did very well also with a 39. 73 knots.

Anders Brindal her fellow Mistral rider and head man was also on fantastic form. He took the fastest spot from a very strong field."

Results from day one

Anders Bringdal 46.33K

Cedrick Bordes 45.09K

Antoine Albeau 44.50K

Farrel Oshea 43.95K

Patrick Diethelm 42.50K

Zara Davis 40.95K

That is great form from Zara and Farrel, to get so close to the big guns, some of whom have a lot of experience sailing canals in the past. Well done from us speedies at Portland Harbour.With better winds forecast I am sure these speeds are just a warm up.

Good speeds and winds for day 2!

The Bus

New World Record - Hans Kreisel

Most regular readers will have seen the numerous posts all over the usual sites about this already. News travels almost as fast as the top guys now with such a close knit community across the world, I cannot think of any other sports like this with so many people in close contact regularly.

News from January 2012

GPS Team Challenge Updates

The GPS Team Challenge in the Northern Hemisphere ended with some great peak and 5x10 average  results for the Portland Pirates but alas only mediocre scores in the other categories. The wind either only came in the week when most were working, or blew through far too strong for hour and nautical mile attempts. I cannot speak for the other teams around Western Europe but would expect they suffered a similar fate. One team as usual, dominated the scoreboard with fantastic results all round. The winners of the 2011 series - The Grevelingen Chop Team. Hot on their heels this month in the top speed categories were the West Kirby Warriors, they seem to have a few very big hitters in their team with Steve Thorp and Farrel OShea and are getting more organised to give the Portland Pirates more competition. Steve as you all know scored a secure 50knot+ peak, and was even gracious enough to post his lower scoring GPS result.

50knot Barrier Destroyed by more than 1

The view from Portland Bill across Weymouth Bay

So far this seems to be a great year for windsurfing, with sessions every day so far for many. It was only the brave who dared get wet today though, with violent winds hitting the UK from Cornwall up to Northern Scotland.

For a few days previous it looked like West Kirby would fire up again, and this time it did not look too broad. In fact the forecast was promising an almost perfect direction.

It came! The Dutch also came to give us another lesson in speedsurfing!

2012 The year the records went in the first 3 days!

I will elaborate on this as more news comes in. I have heard reports of a 54knot peak on one GPS, and 10sec runs close to 50. It will take a day before all results come in though. I hope you are all still okay after these winds!

The full report can be found here http://www.redsurfbus.com/2012/01/50knot-barrier-destroyed-by-more-than-1.html

Here is a taster.....

'The Bus'

November News in Brief

We are all still waiting for Anders Bringdal to bring home the speedsurfing title (I know he is Swedish, when I say home I mean back to us windsurfers). He posted a 48.03knot 5x10 second average on the 11th November and apparently did even better in a previous session but had GPS problems. He is showing the Kites that they are not so far ahead, and seems to be beating them at the moment in the wider Luderitz Canal. Videos are here.

The Speed Strip at Luderitz

A Brief History of Speedweek

 Author: Mark  Matthews - Portland Pirates Team Cap'n AKA Swagger

All i have written here is research and open to argument.

You may like this info and you may not, in the early days around 1972 the distance for measuring the outright speedsailing record was decided to be 500m. In the Autumn of 1972 Weymouth Speed Week started with the new official distance, and was held in Portland harbour the only venue in the world to accommodate these idiots. It was an open event that allowed people to use their imagination to try and gain the top podium place.

Who was the first winner? It was 'The Crossbow', a Proa boat which was a single hull with an outrig thingy (a bit like the canoes on Hawaii Five O), skippered by Timothy Colman and achieving the record in 1972 with a speed of 26.30 knots!

Ok hang on a minute, yes 26 knots which is nothing is it? Well you would be surprised this is 39 years ago and some people would be happy with this today in a boat or on a windsurfer. Moving on a year to 73 and it falls again same boat and skipper with an increase of 3 knots to 29.30! Now this bloke is starting to shift (don't you think?).

Progressing to 1975 and yes you got it, the record falls again with a speed of 31.10knots, same bloke same boat but hang on another boat comes onto the water and gets 31.80! You would think that Tim would be gutted by this, but oh no he had been talking to a designer called Roderick Macalpine-Downie. He had the boat built in Kent, this one was called Crossbow II Timothy Colman had done it again but this time with a Catamaran with hulls that measured a staggering 60 feet and were not built square to one another. The leeward hull was slightly forward. The reason behind this was that each hull had a sail on it and didn't create a wind shadow. These people were thinking very much ahead. Using no fancy Cad design and just a good old drawing board with great foresight and imagination. 

Now moving on to 1977, the record goes to Tim again with a speed of 33.80knots and in the same week a 34.4! Now by this time I was 4 years old and I can remember the buzz that this boat and skipper used to bring to Weymouth and our very windy autumn months after our very typical busy british summer holidays(No such thing as Ibiza holidays for the majority of the population then). 

The tides were changing as there was a new kid on the block, are got you! You thought i was going to say windsurfer but no Its a........ I can't say it,........ oh go on then, you will hate me but this may have been the birth of the Kitesurfer, yep some plonker got a load of kites 50 foot up and about 70 foot in front of an Amphicat. This is no joke that it happened but the results are unknown, i imagine its on the bottom of the harbour who knows? 

Now the part you are probably waiting for, The Windsurfer arrived and did not have a very competitive start but then nor did the Kite. (I hate saying things like that)

Onwards to 1980 and the windsurfer was moving up the rankings each year, the kite had gone into a coma and Crossbow II did it again 36.00 Knot 500m in the middle of the harbour the outright record crushed. This record went unbeaten until 1986 when Pascal Maka took the record away from British waters forever(?). Now what you have to understand is that there are a couple of things to point out here. The first is for 14 years Tim Colman held the outright speedsailing record, and the next there have been only 7 people to go faster on windsurfing boards in portland harbour and load there data into gps-speedsurfing.com since it has started. I don't have much info on results for Speedweek in later years except Anders Bringdal has the official record of 38.40 knots and Pete Young has the gps record 39.52 knots (could have been faster but someone was chatting in the middle of the course so i believe).

Anyway just thought i would take the natter of Boards with Sails against Kites and Dinner trays away and back to when The Giant they called Crossbow ruled Portland Harbour and nobody stood in her way.

All the best,

Swagger....