New sailing speed record - 49.09 knots

[Lostboy]

Gone today, the record for 10m2 sail powered craft over 500m (and the overall fastest). Antoine Albeau keeps it with the windsurfers at the Canal in St Maries in the South of France! Superb http://www.windsurfjournal.com/front...live/live.asp?

[BassBoy]

Awesome! .......I remember when Pascal Maka and Fred Turner where fighting it out in the 80's for the 35 knot barrier! Seem to remember Maka getting somewhere around 37knots.

Met Turner at Weymouth speed week......very mellow dude!

20 years on and only another 12 knots!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!

[Lostboy]

Fred Heywood!

Yeah, the windsurfers really pushed it on. Maka got 27k at Weymouth in about 1982, then, as you say, the Pryde camp with Barry Spanier (designer) and Heywood (sailor) pushed it to 30k with the wing-rig and then it went up progressively to 36 and 38 with Maka sailing for Gaastra. Then the specialist locations started to be found like Namibia, The Canal (Ste Maries) and now The Ray at Southend and it rattled up to 48.8 knots a few years ago at The Canal with Finian Maynard. And now it's tantalizingly close to the 50k mark. And what engines do we use to achieve that........................

What's more impressive is that the Maynard record was done on stock sails and a prototype board that then went on sale and the Albeau record is on a Pryde 09 prototype that will be available as a stock sail in June, so you can go and buy this stuff

Even more impressive is that they remain ahead of all the multi million franc and Aus dollar attempts like Hydroptere and Macquarrie Innovations! Go the boards!!!!

[BassBoy]

Heywood.......thats the fellow!

Brain cells are dying off a bit more rapidly than I thought!

[taurus]

61 knots before capsizing on Saturday in winds gusting 45 knots. Images of the capsized craft here:

http://www.seabreeze.com.au/News/Sai...e_2136777.aspx

That's nearly more than the national speed limit! Cuts and bruises only & some big smiles.