On sunday 14th November, Finian Maynard set a new speed sailing record of 46.82 Knots, 0.3 knots above the previous and long standing record of Yellow Pages Endeavour.

Our sincere cogratulations from the entire Windjet team on this remarkable achievement.

Sailing on the 'French Trench' at Saintes Maries, the 'Masters of Speed' team finally got their long awaited 'Big Wind' Day;

From mastersofspeed.com;

" The forecast was big for a few days but I had seen them drop out before so I was nervous if it would hold or not. The isobars were crunched on every pressure map so I knew that we would get something and that was reinforced the night before when every TV weather channel were claiming 120 km/h winds right down the middle of the Rhone valley.

I got pretty nervous and already started to think of having a smaller sail! The smallest I have for either tack is 5.0 but I was excited all the same and knew that this could be the chance to break YP.

From what I had heard from Pascal, Christophe, Michel and Thierry the Mistral was a hard wind and hard to go fast in so 50-knots would probably have to wait. What arrived was beyond my wildest dreams and everyone else's for that matter. There were stretches of wind that were almost hurricane strength with a bright blue sky! We had gotten the real Mistral, the true French wind that is so famous worldwide.

I was sharing the van with Erik and when we arrived at the beach at 9am on Saturday it was clear that it was going to be a good day. When we opened at 10am I went down the run with my big board (37.5 w/ 24 fin) and my 5.4. The time was 43.5 but I could already feel that this course was much harder than the SE and I wanted to get on smaller stuff immediately. I had to work so much more and the little gusts all the way down coming over the land were super tough. They are invisible basically so it is just a feeling and a hard-core one at that. The power surging that I felt last December 3rd when I beat 46-knots for the first time was tiddly-winks compared to this rugged North wind.

I switched down quickly to my 5.0 and tiny board (33) after several more runs that were between 43 and 44.5. I just wanted to get rid of as much surface area as I could because it was simply easier to hold down. Erik helped make a key change happen for me with my fins as I had too small of a fin in my little board that became nervous sometimes so we put a 24 in the 5.0 setup and instantly I gained directional stability and smoother average speeds.

For the first time I wore a GPS unit in my runs which was exciting and very useful to learn what was happening with my top speeds versus my average speeds. My times will be posted on www.gps-speedsurfing.com.

For those who are curious I have set a new unofficial GPS world record with a top speed of 49.3 knots!!! When I saw that and after Roger of gps-speedsurfing.com analyzed my run it was clear that I actually was averaging 48-49 knots for 400 meters of the run and I had a dip of 100 meters where I went down to 45 knots. As Erik puts it that is the ‘Mistral dip' that happens just after the midpoint of the run so that is why my run ended up at 46.82. It was technically faster than that but that is the hard part of the ‘average' speed calculations. One must maintain it over the full 500 meters.

When I see the small video clips from the TV coverage (soon we will release some video footage on this site), I could see that I was just trying to hold it.

It was pure gladiator fighting, the type of caveman uga-uga stuff that is hard on the mind and body. Our biggest problem was getting to the beginning of the run as there was a manageable 40-45 knots on the run but the start was freakin' blowing 50-60.......it was insane. That is the only word that describes it. It was so hard to get up, even to get the feet in the straps, even to get the sail out of the water without it knocking you on the head super hard. The Canal was smoking with spray everywhere. It was incredible and unrideable with the gear I had. I tried pretty hard but I was tired already after the record run, which drained so much energy. I had a huge crash just before the start late in the afternoon and I got my bell rung mashing my body into the rig pretty hard. My GPS speed at the crash was 48-knots! After this I was more careful as I knew I had already broken the WR and I wanted to live to fight another day from the SE wind hopefully soon so I tried to wait for the wind to drop but it didn't. It just got stronger towards nightfall and we were getting a solid 60-knots with gusts to 65 by the time we were driving home. Ruff & Rugged.

Sunday morning the wind was still cranking and we arrived at the beach to 40-45 knots with 50-knot gusts soon after and a nice angle. I was the first on the course with my same record set-up and I did a run of 42.5 pretty much on the edge. Chop had developed on the course overnight from the 70-knot winds and the run was sketchy, bumpy and required a lot of concentration to go fast. The surface state change made a big difference to the speeds on Sunday.

On my second run I had a good start on a solid gust and maintained the speed through the middle this time only having a small let down in the last 50 meters but the time was fast and it was my second time over YP with a speed of 46.60. I was already pretty depleted at this point as the cold was numbing my feet and hands even though I had booties and gloves on. The cold really hits at your energy reserves.

I did runs after but they were only 42-44 knots and not fast although the chop on the course made them all feel like 50! The wind then picked back up again to 60-knots at about 1pm and it stayed like that until 3:30pm......it was almost surreal. I had never seen anything like it. Not in Gran Canaria, not anywhere. We all sat at the end of the run trying to go but it was too much. I was done, absolutely finished so I sat and waited out the next 90 minutes until 4:30pm when we decided to call it. The temperatures were dropping quickly and everyone was ready to get back to the house and relax.

It was one of the best moments of my life to break Yellow Pages. Pascal and I talked about how it was for him to break Crossbow 2 in '86 and how it was now for a windsurfer to now break the boats again and bring the fabled outright title back to our camp.

Of mention I think that the other sailors in the MOS really put up a big effort and we really helped each other when there were crashes or if gear went flying or getting rides back up the top of the course etc. etc. It was a real family atmosphere and I think that is great. The entire crew is professional and we all have fun doing it even though the conditions were very difficult and hard.

There are many other syndicates going for the WR right now and we are still far away from the 50-knot marker but what happened last weekend is historic and I sincerely hope that we can all generate much more momentum in speed and the world record from the fast times that have been set here in SM.

There just isn't any feeling quite like holding onto a boom at 53 mph and harnessing the awesome energy from the wind.

The next goal is now 50-knots and everything in between so pray for that strong SE wind and we will try again.

Thanks to my family and friends for the support over the years and thanks to all of my sponsors for their continued support (Naish Sails, F2 boards, ProLimit, Deboichet, Maverx, Multipower).

Yours Sincerely

Finian Maynard "