Fuerteventura OFF!

Fuerteventura has been cancelled.

I don't know where this leaves the Speed Tour. The European Championships are due to be held in France October November time, this should go ahead the French have a huge following. Weymouth will take place, Sweden and Germany are saying they are good to go at the moment.

The economic melt down has reached speed sailing. Doom and Gloom doesn't stop there, we haven't had strong winds in Guernsey all year.

Time to turn it around a bit.

Guernsey has had sailing conditions, mostly 8m and 8.8m on large slalom boards. It's still windsurfing and great to be out.

I had a photo session this morning with Pierre to get some shots of my sails logo'd up with Flying Object stickers. Great conditions, sun out and 15 knots of wind.

I'll keep you posted on the competition news. If contest comes up I'll have to take a trip to Tarifa to get some GPS speeds nailed.

Fuerteventura World Championships

Fuerteventura world championships are coming up.

The Speed World Cup has changed its ranking system for 2010 to your best three events to count for the overall title. Something I agree with 100% however in doing this it means that my 2009 ranking would of given me automatic entry into the World Champs easily but now my ranking is based on Karpathos last year and Weymouth where although I placed fourth was judged as a non counting event due to the small number of sailors who sailed fast enough in those conditions.

Other sailors have jumped over me with entering non events in Holland and Belgium and sailing in what must be the smallest event of the year in Ireland.

I'm still inside the the 40 places allocated however that will change if more people enter.

I hope I get in, I've put too much into it to miss out.

Pembroke Bay speed session

Good wind angle at Pembroke on Saturday but by the time the wind picked up the tide was way too high. Pembroke has a 25' drop from the car park to the beach level, at low tide you are 350m away fro the wall but at high it could be as close as 10m. When I sailed it was about 25m away and hence a great big wind shadow as you came in close. Pleased with the speeds though, they keep creeping up. This sail will easily do 34knots max and average well over 30 in its correct wind range.

Sail size and predicted speed for each sail listed below

Hotsails GPS 8.8 34 knots
Hotsails GPS 8.0 37 knots
Hotsails GPS 7.3 40 knots
Hotsails GPS 6.6 43 knots
Hotsails GPS 6.0 46 knots
Hotsails GPS 5.5 BALLISTIC KNOTS

These are what I predict for each sail.

Guernsey is a fantastic place to sail and train but for flat out speed we are limited. Pembroke bay is our best spot, a sandy bay measuring 650m from one side to the other. It's only good at low tide in a SE to SW wind direction. You could count the number of SW winds we have had in 2010 on one hand yet it is our prominent wind direction.