Kite · Bow & safety
2008
Past 50 knots
Sébastien Cattelan becomes the first sailor to go faster than 50 knots; a day later Alexandre Caizergues raises the record to 50.57.
50.26knots
Sébastien Cattelan, Lüderitz, 3 October 2008
Two weeks after Rob Douglas’s record, the Lüderitz Speed Challenge in Namibia was still running, and the kitesurfers kept going faster.
On 3 October 2008 Sébastien Cattelan sailed 50.26 knots over 500 metres, the first person to sail faster than 50 knots. He held the record for only 24 hours. On 4 October Alexandre Caizergues sailed 50.57 knots, and not in one run but three over 50 knots. By 6 October the event had produced ten new outright records and four new women’s outright records.
Recognition was not automatic. In November 2008 the sailing federation ISAF at first refused to let a kite hold the outright sailing speed record, then in December reversed its decision and allowed the World Sailing Speed Record Council to ratify kite runs as outright records. Caizergues’s 50.57 knots was the case in point.
Kites now held the record, and the windsurfers would need four years and a new channel at the same spot to pass 50 knots themselves.