By Tom,
Last sunday I finnaly managed to get the Maui Vmax GPS Speed Sailing series going. We were supposed to run in May, but there was just no wind, and our mail server was down so I could not send out announcements. The week before was the Maui Race series slalom at Kanaha which had a lot of strong wind. We were hoping for the same.
Unfortunately it was not to be and it turned out to be quite light. I should have rigged my 7.3, but I was desperate to put the new GPS 2010 6.6 through it's paces. Due to the lack of wind I had not sailed it much. Dionny had modified it for me by taking a big crash and going right through it and reduceing it's area by about half a meter. It had taken me a couple of weeks to get round to fixing it. The sail was also fitted with my new 4 roller cam design which I was desperate to test. So I rigged the 6.6 and stuck it on my Tabou Manta 67 (100l) and swapped out the 36cm Vector fin for a 30cm.
It was flukey to say the least, but my gear delivered the goods. Alex and I were on the lower reef at around 12:50 and both found some good gusts setting first and second fastest speeds respectively within a minute and a half. After a long break I went back out with the helmet cam and chased Alex around for a bit. The wind got worse after that and by 3pm I was in my street clothes working on downloading the tracks. The wind picked up right then and everybody went back out on the water. I was a bit worried everyone would find wind and go faster with me stuck on the beach. In the end the early speeds held up and I took second place with a 33.92 knot 100m to Alex's 34.08.
The new sail proved to be superb with very easy handling and good low end power, and obviously it had loads of speed. It was a complete succes for the cams too which rotated effortlessly and performed very well.
The full story, results, pictures and videos can be found on the event sites:
http://mauivmax.blogspot.com
http://www.mauivmax.com
Cheers,
Tom
