Awesome stuff from the Reunion Wave Classic again today.
What's up with Alex Mussolini's hair?
A wet and windy Irish Wavesailing Association event was successfully run this weekend in County Mayo. (More slideshows from Oisin Van Gelderen here.)
Mistral boss Anders Bringdal - a crew member and clothing sponsor of the record-breaking Hydroptere that recently broke a set of speed records, including the outright 500m record long-held by windsurfing, called in to explain how the ride was for him onboard the world fastest wind-powered vessel.
“We did it on Friday the 4th, the second day of our month-long attempt.
My position on board is with my back to the skipper - I work as a winch grinder to get the Jib back in every time we open the sail a little. This means I’m pretty constantly turning the winch for about 4 minutes for as fast and hard as I can...
Apart from that I also help with some set up like the angles of the foils and the rigging of the main sail.
Conditions was great and to start with wind in the 25 knots range. We set off thinking we should go for the mile record.
The first practice run went well with 2 reefs in the mail and the big Jib. Finding ourselves a bit underpowered we opted to take one reef out to power the boat up a bit. The wind then increased some to about 27 knots.
This time the speed started to show with points in the 49 and a new world record of 44,9 on the nautical mile. Wind still building and so did the speed of the boat. Like Yoda in Star wars said." there is no try... only do or do not! The time had come...winds in the 30-knot range with gusts in the 32 range.
On our second to last run we took off and a gust launched us into a top speed of 54 knots and the nautical mile into the 47,9 range and a 500m run of 50,30 knots! Everybody was super happy but starting to show signs of fatigue as there is so much concentration and power needed as the loads were going through the roof on the winches.
On the way back Alain [Thebault] was still not so happy as when we where at 54 knots there was a small ventilation on the foil and we had slowed down in an abrupt way and he felt we could do better...
With a 45 minute rest in us we took off on our last run, this time with the sails set better and were able to have a better trim in the very start of the run. We got hit by a big gust and taken more offshore.
The boat stayed stable and the speed kept climbing... 46, 48,49,50,52 small slowdown to 49 then full on again - last I saw was 54 with speed still climbing...everybody was doing what they could to get 100% out of the boat, we top ended up on 55,7 knots then as we came out of the gust we ended up with a little bit to big of a rolling wave and the nose touched down in the water with a deceleration that slowed us to 20 knots, all sheets being eased at the speed which had caused the winches to start smoking!
I remember turning back as the nose came back out of the water to see a cloud of water 20m in the air behind the boat and the smell of burnt rope and the realization that we must have achieved a pretty unbelievable 500m time as well as the nautical mile.
Well the rest is now in the books. 2 new world records. 500m 51,36 knots, 1 Nautical Mile 48,72 knots.
For the Hydropter and its team it’s a fantastic achievement, thinking back to when we flipped the boat back in Late December destroying the mast, main sail, The electronics and all seemed to be lost.... to come back fighting and achieve what we have just done is a dream come true.
Lets see where this will all end; we have until October 7 still. Wind and weather permitting I think we can add a few more knots to both records.”
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