Thierry Bielak takes the record to 44.66 knots

After Erik Beale broke 40 knots there in 1988, the speed canal at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer became the place where records were set, and in the early nineties French sailors pushed the outright sailing record up step by step.

Pascal Maka raised it in 1990. In 1991 Thierry Bielak took it twice, first to 43.06 knots and then to 44.66 knots, about 83 kilometres an hour. Sources differ on the day of the second run: one gives 18 April 1991, another July. In 1993 he went faster still, to 45.34 knots.

For those few years no boat or other craft sailed faster than a windsurfer in the canal. That changed in October 1993, when the Australian speed craft Yellow Pages Endeavour set 46.52 knots. Its record held for eleven years.