Kite · Bow & safety
2010
Kites beat the hydrofoil
Kites take the outright speed record back from the hydrofoil trimaran l'Hydroptère, and Rob Douglas pushes it to 55.65 knots.
Lüderitz speed channel, schematic plan and cross-section
In September 2009 the kites lost the record. Alain Thébault’s hydrofoil trimaran l’Hydroptère, a boat that lifts itself out of the water on foils, sailed 51.36 knots over 500 metres off Hyères in France.
The kitesurfers answered a year later at Lüderitz in Namibia. On 12 October 2010 Alexandre Caizergues sailed 54.10 knots on an 8-square-metre kite, clearly faster than the hydrofoil. On 28 October they went faster again. Sébastien Cattelan sailed 55.49 knots, and fourteen minutes later Rob Douglas sailed 55.65, beating his own 49.84 from 2008 by almost six knots. On his next run he fell and broke his wrist.
Douglas’s 55.65 knots stood as the outright record for two years. It took a boat built only for speed to beat it: in November 2012 Paul Larsen’s Vestas Sailrocket 2 took the record at Walvis Bay, also in Namibia, and pushed it to 65.45 knots.
The WSSRC dates the Hydroptère record to 4 September 2009; some reports give 6 September.