Greetings All,

The previous Japanese speed record on a 300m x 100m space in Okinawa stood for 3 years at 69.3km.

In the wake of the currently passing typhoon with a wind straight onto the beach I managed to squeeze 74.0km out of a 2m sail and went on to get bold with a 3m sail and pump 74.7km out of that. That’s of course chicken feed to some of you guys out there with huge spaces. I did this on a 600m stretch of beach between rock walls with the last 150m of soft sand for braking and turning with the winds whipping a huge amount of water 150m beyond where the high tide normally goes. It got a bit hairy when the windicator just blew out of it’s socket on the mast.

On the harder stuff I did some other test runs and always seemed to get better speeds in one rather than both directions regardless of the wind being straight onto the angle of beach and sailing. I’ve found this effect on concrete and even on farming roads between the rice paddies (since we have the disc-brake – all very illegit but quite a buzz). Has anybody come up with a workable reply as to why do you always go faster in one direction and slower on the retuning leg? Technically that’s an anomaly if the wind direction is 90 degrees onto your course. Why is this???

Best regards,

Jimi