I’ll try to hit him up about it and see if I can get the track and put it up for download on this page.

Garmin is one of the most trusted names in the gps industry, and owning a Garmin gps unit is a great step in the right direction with some of the best navigation technology around….

haha gotta love it……

Seeing as it’s not an "official" record as such and does require (as all speedsailing seems to) a bit of patience and time devotion to waiting for the right conditions at the right place, I would imagine it’s not financially feasible for many to go and do this. The other point is, from what I’ve seen, not many of the top guy’s own or know how to operate a GPS unit unless they are into speedsailing!

That being said, Dennis Littel has won races at international level, so I would consider him a ‘pro’ even if he doesn’t windsurf full-time. I’m sure more people will get interested in FW speed but in the mean time it might just be the lesser-pro’s of the sport.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get a lot of GPS data from the top guys during the event (or myself for that matter).

We got really unlucky over the week with the gps units Jesper Vesterstrom and Jesper Orth not recording tracks even though the unit was on (you know how you can somehow turn the gps recording off if you take the unit indoors accidently?!). What a bummer!

About the only clean tracks we got of Steve Allen and myself over the week were on the last day which was in 10-12 knots - obviously not incredible speeds in such low wind.

Both Steve and Jesper V run very deep angles downwind; deeper than myself - so I would imagine they are not doing crazily fast speeds (ie, not over 30 knots but certainly fast enough to win races) however their angles would surely be up to 150 degrees downwind. We had very large seas running at the Oceanics so I imagine it would’ve been difficult to get over 30 knots with a 2-3m steep swell running! But high 20’s were definitely achievable I’m sure.

The chicken strap is an interesting one. I for one don’t like to use it at all for racing unless it’s psycho windy, however Steve Allen really likes the chicken and I notice he uses it occasionally in winds where others are in the outside strap.

I remember on the older Fanatic FW boards (03/04/05), Steve talked about the board being so easy to rail downwind that you could use the chicken even in 15 knots and it was very fast and could allow for really deep angles. So I think in the "racing" sense, there’s still opportunity to use the chicken strap successfully and still be fast.

In a "speed" sense I would think its a no-no, because you are really trying to load the fin and rail the board and I don’t feel you can get consistent enough rail pressure in the chicken strap when you are not running such deep angles; also it might feel a little uncomfortable if you are only running at 120 degrees instead of 140-150 like you would in racing conditions.

I haven’t tried the F2, Lorch, MikesLab etc boards in high wind so I’m only commenting on the Starboard/Gaastra boards. It’s possible some boards might be ok with the chicken strap for speed - depends on the shape and their "ride" characteristics…