Crazy French Go fast!
 

This is the craziest speed event I have ever seen! How fast can you make a Go board go?

http://transjai.videos.free.fr/videos/BERT35.5.wmv

Pretty immpressive huh? This is Bertrand Fougere winning the French Starboard Go Challenge with an incredible 35.5 knots with a Hot Sails Maui GPS 2009 6.6. For those of you who speak French:

http://icks.icks.free.fr/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2106

i'll take that chalange on ;) Just need someone to lend me a gps first hehe

If the GPS reading is accurate and this sailor could sail at 40.9 m.p.h. (35.5 knots) in very choppy conditions on a Go board with a 6.6m sail then he should have absolutely no problem doing 45+ knots on flat water with a 5.0m sail and speed board in big wind. The difference in obtainable speed between flat and choppy water is literally night and day.

In the video, his speed looks to be considerably slower than 35.5 knots. This doesn't mean that he didn't achieve that speed at some point, just the the video looks to be no more than 25 knots at best.

hi,
does the rider list on www.gps-speedsurfing.com?
I do not want to dishonour Bertrand´s speed, but especially the garmin devices tend to show impressive top-speeds which later come out to be incorrect. this speeds often result from crashes... i know from own experience.
@ Ken: the "visible" speed on the video might be irritating, since the point of view and lenght of the lens are unknown...
the speedies at my homespot seem always to be slow watched from the beach; because they ride on mirrorflat water behind a harbour wall there is only minor to none bumping or sail correction moves which tend to be "fast" on choppy water. But if you stand on the Wall, they´re f***ín fast (also on GPS).

regards, thorsten

thorsten,

If you look at the formula speeds on speedsurfing.com, you should be skeptical of the claimed 35.5 knots. No one has come very close to that that speed on a formula board in flat water.

I have watched many formula sailors sailing in the 25+ knot speed range in very rough water, plus I have seen slalom boards in plenty of video and first hand in choppy water traveling in the 30 knot plus range. The video of the GO board looks nothing like 35 knots regardless of camera angle or telephoto.

He clearly got a spike or incorrect speed on his GPS.

Ken,

It doesn't claim the 35.5 kts were done on the footage you can see!!! This spot can be a very very fast spot depending on wind conditions but also very choppy as can be seen on the video.

http://icks.icks.free.fr/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2131
http://transjai.free.fr/speed_challenge.htm

These guys are at least as good at checking GPS tracks as gpsspeedsurfing. I believe they got all the tracks from the Canal, it must be posted somewhere on their forum.

Btw a *board Go is nowhere near a Formula board!!!

hi,
a few more questions on it:
1. which size of the 2008 GO was used? (guess 133?)
2. since i don´t understand french, was the challenge on "pure" vmax displayed by the unit
or based on computed results from time or way using gpsar?

again: this is NOT intended to discredit someone, just personal interest. since the new GO is based on the futura shape, i believe it is possible to reach that speeds claimed for an advanced rider without problem on a smaller sized one...

regards, thorsten

http://www.windsurfjournal.com/front...BB_LANGUAGES=1
All in french unfortunately, the challenge was done with the Go 122 and stock fin. They pushed it to over 36 kts (not part of the challenge, either sponsored rider or non stock fin).

ok,
the link shines a little light on it. on the go 122 there should be no problem for that speed.