* Two new speed records have confirmed. On October 20, 2006, Sjouke
Brendenkamp (RSA) set the outright Women's KiteSail World Record, recording
37.24 knots on a custom Excellerator board with an 8.0 Naish Raven kite. The
previous record was 35.20 kts by Aurelia Herpin (FRA) in Oct 2005. Also,
Zara Davies (GBR) set a new Women's Nautical Mile World Record of 34.74
knots on October 31, 2006, using a Thommen 44 custom board with a 6.5m
Gaastra Vapour sail. The previous record was 33.69 kts, set by Valerie
Ghibaudo (FRA) in Oct 2005. All current and previous records occurred at
Walvis Bay, Nambia. -- John Reed, Secretary to the WSSR Council

I'd say they do. There's a bit of a difference sustaining that speed to just hitting it though, the records are set over 500m, with the nautical mile version being another variation that records are kept for.

I just happened to be in Namibia for last years speed competition and had a couple of runs on the strip there. This is what my GPS said at the end of the day. I have no more information than this though, just that I cracked 70km/h. It was fast. I've been fast at Woodies before but this was seriously ****ing fast. Like Robby Naish once said, "80km/h with a kite and board feels like 250km/h in a car". So what I was doing probably felt like at least 200km/h in a car...

quote:

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Originally posted by ianyoung

Hey GreenPat I'm off on a job in Namibia 24 Feb - 3 Mar, is it worth taking a rig this time of year? Do you have any local contacts?

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Hey Youngy,

Yeah it should be worth taking a rig. The season there is centred around the Summer, however it runs about 9 months of the year. In the other three months they reckon there's still a 50/50 chance of wind too. That's what they tell me anyway. I was only there for a month in September last year and still got a fair amount of kiteable days.

The people to talk to are Jurgen Geiger and the crew at the Free Air hostel and windsports centre in Walvis Bay. http://www.free-air.net . Otherwise I know a few individual kiters there, I can dig through my contacts and correspondance for their details later this week.

Cheers