Kite · Bow & safety
2008
A kitesurfer is the fastest sailor
Rob Douglas sails 49.84 knots at Lüderitz on a stock 7 m kite, the first time a kitesurfer holds the outright sailing speed record.
Lüderitz, Namibia, with today's speed channel · Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL)
In 2008 the fastest sailor in the world was a windsurfer: in March, Antoine Albeau had sailed 49.09 knots at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. Six months later a kitesurfer went faster.
The place was Lüderitz in Namibia, at the second Lüderitz Speed Challenge. At the southern end of a lagoon west of the town, a straight course had been dug along the shore that year, about 800 metres long including the run-up and the slowing-down zone around the official 500 metres.
On 19 September 2008 the American Rob Douglas sailed 49.84 knots over 500 metres. He used a stock 7-metre Cabrinha kite, not a special speed kite. It was the first time a kitesurfer held the outright record in speed sailing, a title that had belonged to boats and windsurfers. At the same event Sjoukje Bredenkamp sailed 45.20 knots, a new women’s outright record.
The World Sailing Speed Record Council ratified Douglas’s run as a kiteboard record; kites were only accepted for the outright record in December 2008. The next weeks showed it was only the beginning: two other kitesurfers were already close behind.