First session of the 2008 German Speed Tour occured at Dranske /Isle of Rügen last weekend. It is a ten-weekend “standby” contest from 1st May to 6th July, every weekend there may be a session in northern Germany, Netherlands or Denmark depending on wind conditions. After the first three weekends without wind, there was a good forecast for Rügen island with 5 Bft and gusts up to 35kn from easterly direction... there was only light winds from 15 up to 20kn and choppy water conditions, but with nice sun and warm temperatures. Two official races on a 250 m course were started.

I used my Blade 8,5m², the Exocet WS 67 and Hurricane fins between 38 and 40 cm. After calculations, I lead the result list with 30.189 kn and 29.519 kn as average of two runs in front of Torsten Mallon GER-818 (F2/North) and Manfred Merle GER-82 (Tabou/ Gaastra). To get a good mix in all wind conditions for the end result of 2008 tour (actually the German Speed Championships), it was decided to wait for more wind.

To use these light and gusty winds, we did additional a “FunSpeed-Contest”... the best average of 5x10 seconds counting to determine the order, like in the GPS-Speedsurfing website. The goal was to find the flattest and windiest place between around 60 other windsurfers and 50 friends of “flying objects with 30m lines”. We had a short phase with maximum gusts of 22 kn, where I tried my 7,5m² Blade with the WS 62 machine. I reached a maxspeed of 32,7 kn and 31.3 kn in 5x10 seconds average. This gave me the lead in this contest, too.

Full results you can find on www.speedsurfen.de.

Aloha, 
Micha GER-14