Menu

Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

Displaying items by tag: GPS Speedsailing

The Irish GPS Speedsailing record fell again last Friday in Dungarvan when Oisin Van Gelderen broke all previous speeds, becoming the fastest sailor ever to sail on Irish waters.

The speed is ratified by the WGPSSRC (World GPS Speedsailing Records Council):  
http://www.gps-speedsurfing.com/default.aspx?mnu=records, who issue GPS records based on the best 10 second run of 45.02 knots, and a distance travelled of around 270 metres in this time.

The 5 x 10second run average, currently puts him in fourth overall on the 2011 GPS speed ranking list and 23rd overall in the all time rankings.
Peak speed for the day was 46.32 knots (84 kmph), and 500m speed was 43.96knots.

Even though Van Gelderen broke the late John Kenny's 500m speed, he retains that title for now, as the WSSRC (World Speed sailing Records Council) issue National records for that distance, and do not yet recognize GPS.

The rise in popularity in GPS speedsailing has made the competition a worldwide phenomenon, as people from different countries compete year round to push their personal and international speeds. Over 4000 members subscribe to the gps-speedsurfing.com website.

Published in News Update

Dublin Bay Sailing Club (DBSC) is one of Europe's biggest yacht racing clubs. It has almost sixteen hundred elected members. It presents more than 100 perpetual trophies each season some dating back to 1884. It provides weekly racing for upwards of 360 yachts, ranging from ocean-going forty footers to small dinghies for juniors.

Undaunted by austerity and encircling gloom, Dublin Bay Sailing Club (DBSC), supported by an institutional memory of one hundred and twenty-nine years of racing and having survived two world wars, a civil war and not to mention the nineteen-thirties depression, it continues to present its racing programme year after year as a cherished Dublin sporting institution.

The DBSC formula that, over the years, has worked very well for Dun Laoghaire sailors. As ever DBSC start racing at the end of April and finish at the end of September. The current commodore is Eddie Totterdell of the National Yacht Club.

The character of racing remains broadly the same in recent times, with starts and finishes at Club's two committee boats, one of them DBSC's new flagship, the Freebird. The latter will also service dinghy racing on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Having more in the way of creature comfort than the John T. Biggs, it has enabled the dinghy sub-committee to attract a regular team to manage its races, very much as happened in the case of MacLir and more recently with the Spirit of the Irish. The expectation is that this will raise the quality of dinghy race management, which, operating as it did on a class quota system, had tended to suffer from a lack of continuity.