From www.windsurfjournal.com (a great site for those that don't yet know)
"The new sail speed world record holder on water, Antoine Albeau talks us through his incredible day of March 5th 2008, and the world record speed that’s just beginning to properly sink in !!!
"When I go through the day again in my mind, I end up asking how I managed to get down the run so many times, and specially with such good times, because the conditions were truly radical, a very strong wind with big gusts up to 55 knots. At the start of the day I was waiting for the gusts to start my runs, but by the end of the day I was waiting for the lulls !!!
It was a really amazing moment when my father took the call from Pascal Maka to tell us about the 49 knot run. But I still didn’t really believe it because we still had to wait for verification…
It’s just now that I’m beginning to realise the importance of the record because everyone keeps phoning me up and I keep flashing back to all the wipe outs, so many in one day !!! I really stoked to have broken the record, more so because I did it here in France, and I’d like to thank all my sponsors for the incredible support they’ve given me over the last few years, NeilPryde, Starboard, Quiksilver, Ford Auto-Vital and Deboichet."
Here are the details of the 9 runs that Antoine made that day
Run 1 - Start : 08.34.53.790. Finish : 08.35.14.410. Speed : 47.14 Knots.
Run 2 - Start : 08:59:12:800. Finish : 08:59:36:860. Speed : 40.40 Knots.
Run 3 - Start : 09:13:50:820. Finish : 09:14:12:850. Speed : 44.12 Knots.
Run 4 - Start : 09:38:07.350. Finish : 09:38:28.310. Speed : 46.37 Knots.
Run 5 - Fall at start
Run 6 - Start : 11:48:03.060. Finish : 11:48:23.250. Speed : 48.14 Knots.
Run 7 - Start : 12:12:36.530. Finish : 12:12:56.330. Speed : 49.09 Knots !!!
Run 8 - Start : 15h. Fall 170 metres after the start (instantaneous speed from the start camera 49.91 knots, calculated over 5m).
Run 9 - Start : 18:22:29.830. Finish : 18:22:56.810. Speed : 36.03 Knots.
He wore a foretrex but it didn't give any useful data... hey we all knew that!!!
I spoke to MvM last night, and he said that they are trying to get AAs GPS in case the tracks were not downloaded properly. There is a small chance that something went wrong in that process and there is more info available. It would be great if the data were there- even if it were "only" from a foretrex...
