Friday, March 18, 2016

Insane Sunfish Sailing




After Sunday's video of some Flying Scot sailors having a blast on a day when racing was cancelled because the winds were too heavy, here is some "Insane Sunfish Sailing" from Stewart Draheim's YouTube channel.

Any guesses as to how fast this dude is going?


4 comments:

Unknown said...

I am not convinced he is going extraordinarily fast, at least by speed sailing standards. He does not have the gooseneck set very far back so he has a tremendous weather helm. Thus the rudder exhibits a large braking action. Also the daggerboard is pretty far down which produces drag.

Are you going to give us the answer to the question?

Tillerman said...

Someone else commented about the weather helm on the blog's Facebook page. (I know the blog is only 11 years old but she insisted I give her her own Facebook page. That's what 11 year-olds are like these days.)

No I'm not going to give the answer. If he wanted to know how fast he was going he should have been carrying a GPS device like the Velocitek SpeedPuck.

George A said...

I'm guessing 10 maybe 12 knots max during those moments when he hikes the boat flat and is actually planing. He's handling the boat well considering the breeze and that massive lateen rig. Someone should loan the guy a Velocitek. Numbers = bragging rights.

Tillerman said...

"Numbers = bragging rights." Couldn't have put it better myself George.

If people are going to video themselves blasting around like this then why not take a GPS device and report their maximum speed? I have even seen some sailing videos where they synch up the GPS with the video so you can see the speeds on the video.

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