Maui Monthly no. 31. November 2007

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no. 31. November 2007

Martin van Meurs hit 50.7knots on TR-3!! The main goal for me when I joined Maui Sails was to try and break 50 knots, regardless of the distance. Training sessions throughout the year showed me I had made huge progress in fine tuning the gear and adjusting my stance for record breaking conditions. However, up till now I wasn’t very lucky with the wind. In Soutehnd, the venue for an official record attempt starting in January 2006 finally my luck changed. I wanted to get to know the spot where the attempt will be held and thought I would get a nice but for sure no epic session in. The Ray itself looks amazing. As the tide drops an incredibly long sandbank gets exposed. It was a pretty long walk to get to the strip but as soon as I got there I knew this is one of the few places where the record can be set. The very first run I felt the TR-3 5.1 worked just like it should. I cranked the downhaul to make sure the sail got enough breathing room for acceleration. The run was smooth but the strip wasn’t totally flat like pics we’ve seen from Sandy Point. The wind wasn’t particularly strong but still I felt I was smoking. In the end it turned out I immediately did a 45,4 500 meters run with a peak speed of 47 knots. The wind got less, the speeds got down and all of a sudden the swung around in a fierce rainsquall and dropped a little again.

Maui, Hawaiian Islands

We moved to the second strip. I lost valuable time because I needed something to eat in what later turned out to be the best section of the day for average speeds. Because of this I needed to stay for the day ranking (5x10sec) when most others were going back ashore since it was getting late. I got pretty tired and almost thought about giving up, happy with the 500 meters speed I got in. Bob Cunningham, the only one left on the water with Dave mc Innes and myself was smoking on his 5.8. I was way underpowered and could only get some decent peak speeds in, but the averages were way too low. I needed one more fast run for my day result, decided to put in a lot of negative outhaul to try and compensate for the smaller size and all of a sudden I saw a cloud nearing which could bring the needed wind. As soon as I saw the first whitecaps flying I got onto the board, felt the wind increase and bore off at the wall. Apart from the start everything went very smooth.. The start was critical since I could only build up speed 2 meters from the shore because outside there was too much rolling chop. I was nearly overthrown because of the push in my back from the squall and then the “magic carpet ride” began. I slowly moved from front foot to back foot pressure, made sure I wouldn’t over sheet the sail, locked in the mast foot pressure and released back foot pressure a bit since the 5.1, once on the run, still felt a little small.

Photo : Eric Baardman

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