Sandy Point Speed Week–Not Nukin’ Yet: The king of all southern hemisphere speed weeks got underway Saturday. No official report yet, but I snagged this brief summary off a chat forum:

“The unofficial, underground, unrestricted (etc) Sandy Point GPS SpeedWeek started with a bit of fun yesterday (Saturday). The forecast was ‘iffy’ and the winds were light in the morning with a gentle southerly breeze. By the time the tide had receded far enough to get into the inlet easily there was 11 knots of SW. As the day wore on it gradually built and by midday there were sailors everywhere on large boards (Hypersonics and similar) and sails. During the afternoon the equipment was scaled down slightly as the wind eventually built to 15-18 knots. (I had my fastest runs on a Carve 99 with 340 Hyper fin and 6.6 KA Koncept at 30.9kts)

About 20 people where squeezing every last drop of power out of the wind and a few were peaking in the low 30Kts. Maquarrie Innovation had two runs at low tide and got up to over 40 Knots on one with the crew pod flying over 1 meter above the water. (15-18 knots of wind remember). It was not a good average as they had difficulty getting planing and entered the course slow. The second run they struggled to get going and did not get the crew pod flying. I doubt they went much more than 30 knots. On this run they lost part of the endplate under the wing so I wondered if it had been dragging in the water and prevented them from planing. Don’t know though.

Ian Fox and Mal Wright were busily downloading tracks and working out results last night. I saw some preliminary results that had some low 30’s (Kts) 500m averages but I will have to wait ’till I see the full results to say more.

Long range forecasts are saying 30+ knot SW winds on Wednesday. Bring it ON!”

Stay out of the Fishy Pub, boys and girls. Big winds are on the way…



The Sandy Point Speed Track: Could it look any faster…?

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