So tired of waiting that I finally gave it a go. Altough the strong winds, the speeds were very disapointing. The canal is not yet ready, some guys crashed in the vey shallow finish, the sandwalls on both up and downwind sides create huge turbulent flow and  channel the airflow into the canal creating that nasty chop.

Because of the (irregular) upwind sandwall, you have the one moment a lot of power and the next moment no power at all, so certain moments you find yourself edging up to the sandwall. I didn't want to risk the new Loft Speed proto, so I took my good old, but very fast Firewing MK3 5,2 and rigged it on a soft 370 RDM mast. the heavier the faster as we all know, so I took 10 kilo of lead. The first attempts I only made it just untill around the "corner" The others were on 5,6-5,9 sails so they had more "juice". 

so I had to dump all the lead and did a run averaging 33,98 kts, with a peek to 40kts, I think that says it all! Then I took 2 kilo lead and immediatly went up to 36,76 kts, next run again 2 kilo lead more and I went a good 38,22kts, another 2  kilo's got me to 39,21kts. Then I dumped the vest again resulting in a 36,61kts runs, then I used again the vest and did 39,83, next run with same weight was 39,86kts(only 0,03 difference!) and because I promised Jonathan the photografer a nice racejibe in the finish, I simpy gave it all for the last run and ended with a 40,21 kts average or 74,47 km/hour. 

But the sad thing is, I should'n be playing around with lead, but go for my record and that is not possible in that canal like it was today.