Did some distance today: 600 km !!..........................with the car ;-)
I was ready to go at my homespot (oesterdam) where the low tide came in around 10:30 am, when Dirk Hacha (teammember gpstc) came by and convinced me to go to The Brace. So packing everything in again and off we go. 210-230° and 30-40 kts was an ideal situation to explore The Brace for the first time, isn't it? Ready to pimp our topspeeds !! :-)
Luckily no traffic jams and we arrived well before low tide. Martin was already fully prepared (with 5.0) and the wind was already increasing. Prepared my TR 4.7; I had also the TR 4.3 in the car :-( and added 4.5 kg of weight.
In a timespan of an hour, alot of other top speeders arrived at the spot. Most were 'sailing' (read: 'had prepared') 5.0-5.7, but all the riders were at least 20 kgs heavier then my featherweight of 73 kg (except for Jan). The way to the the speedstrip (mudsurfing) was the easiest part of the day. As soon as possible (5cm of water), Jurjen jumped on his board (without fin) to get to the water asap without losing too much energy. There it was already obvious, that he was waiting for that kind of day !!
Counted 15 people in/around/under the water, and only 2 did (at least) 5 valid runs !! And when you see the elite class having trouble in the transition between the course facing the sandbank and the downind run along the sandbank, you know it's not a shame when you never succeeded a single run. I went out to the 'start' 2 times and tried 2 times to start my run. Heavy chop, but controllable, but then... When you reach the sandbank (angle ard 70°) you have to make and extreme turn (70°) and fly over the high chop (white foam) while accelerating as hell. I never had the balls to do so, so I went back upwind to try again. My fantastic topspeed of 51 km/hr was even done halfway between start and sandbank, in fact this was already insane knowing the conditions...
The only one I saw totally in control of all (or at least the ones I witnessed) his runs, was Jurjen. It seemed so easy for him, as he had done this a dozen times... He also didn't take alot of time to ease down, the red Reflex sail was the sail I've seen most of the time. All the other were, or on the beach, or at the starting point waiting for a few knots less...) I also witnessed one run of Jan and I must say: Jaleous !! Even 8 kg lighter then myself (dunno if he had extra weight) with the same board and almost same sailsize (4.6 iso 4.7) and, ok it was maybe not the nicest run to see, but hey, he did it (even twice)!!! And seeing Blue Steel going crazy is always nice to see !! Congrats Hans, you haven't reached your limit yet, that's for sure !!
Maybe I didn't go close enough to the shore before trying to go downwind. When you do so, the chop is off course alot less then 15-20 m from the shore (where I tried to go downwind). But afterwards it's always easy to find an explanation... I was dreaming of the 80+ when walking to the strip, now i'm still dreaming... The thruth is, that 15 good to very good surfers were present and alot of them didn't succeed to do a single run. It was just TOO MUCH TO HANDLE for most of us. This was absolutely not the predicted wind. The angle was perfect for record conditions, but 5-10 kts less was better for us to explore the spot for the first time.
I always post every session, even when it's a total disaster and together with the fact that this is most probably the first Belgian (posted) session @ The Brace makes this posting some sense to me...
Had my Go Pro on my helmet, but it seems that even for the camera the wind was to strong, because I lost almost 80% of the data on the SD-card... Strange !! Hopefully Jurjen has some nice video footage from this epic day !!
After the horrible way back, enjoyed a well deserved meal with 6 Dutch speedies before going back to the south.
Thanks guys for the nice day/tips/talks
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