Speed at Lower Kanaha

By Tom

After my humbling experience earlier this week I decided to stick with what I seem to do best these days which is go fast in a kind of straight line.

The swell had dropped but the wind was still blowing quite strongly. I went for a sail at Sprecks on Wednesday and was having quite good fun right up until the point a close-out wave popped up in front of me and I bailed in an effort to avoid total destruction. When I came up I saw my gear disappearing in a surge of white water. I was sure everything was destroyed. Luckily only one batten was broken but it had also torn the cam tower off ending the session.

Last time I broke my 6.6 it took me several months to get around to fixing it. Thursday morning things looked promising for good sailing so I slipped my sail into the sail repair que and had it fixed by 1pm!

I popped down to the Hot Test Beach AKA the "Poo Plant". The first run was aborted when I could not find a lane but the second run showed promise with a peak over 35 knots. It was going to be a good day!

On the third run everything came together and I put down my best run ever at this spot. It felt good, but I was surprised to see a 37.4 on my GPS after the run! It turned out to be a 37.18 knot 100m speed. It never quite came together like that again but I chased it hard until I was too tired to sail any more.

Here are the results:

http://www.gps-speedsurfing.com/default.aspx?mnu=user&val=57039&uid=2626

I also have the first posting for the 2010 HAM Challenge:


http://www.gps-speedsailing.com/


It was a very productive session and I had put in 12 100m runs over 35 knots!

I achieved two Personal Best speeds, 5 x 10 second average of 35.64 knots and 500m speed of 34.19!

Here is some helmet cam footage of the fastest run:

Speed Sailing at Kanaha from Tom Hammerton on Vimeo.