Hi, I'm Patrick Van Hoof from Belgium and I'm a member of the Masterteam (www.masterteam.be), sponsored by F2 – Maui Sails.

We do a lot for the promotion of surfsport. For example, we organize a slalom-event every year, that in a few years became the biggest 'one day - event' of the Benelux and also each year we organize The Belgian Speedweek in France with 80 (!!!) competitors of all nationalities.

I'm already windsurfing 25 years in competition. Till a few years ago, I did especially formula and slalom, what gave me a few national titles, but since a few years I'm more and more going into speedsurfing. I had already 5 times the first place in the Belgian Speed Competition and for 10 following years, I had the fastest year time in Belgium.

Last year, I competed in Namibia at the World Championship Grand Prix and I ended 16th overall. This year I've competed in Karpathos - Greece (also at the World Championships) and this brought me a 18th place in production boards and the 7th fastest time of all competitors.

But why do I send you this news? The 14th of July, I was in Tarifa and the wind was blowing 25 knots with gusts till 30 knots. I was there with a few guys from Loft Sails and we went for a few hours on the water. I was sailing with the Maui Sails TR-3 6.3m, an F2 Missile with standard fin.

I was sailing for a while around 42.6 knots. Then I trimmed everything a little better and after a few runs I had a run of 45.6 knots (86.5 km/h) on my GPS!!! This is the fastest time ever sailed by a Belgian guy and at this moment, I'm on the 7th place in the world ranking 500m GPS with 43.2 knots .

Photo courtesy of ISA/Thomas Degen

These are my other GPS rankings:

• 2s max 45.6Kn 13e place
• 10s max 44.0Kn 14e place
  
• 100m 44.4Kn 15e place
  
• 250m 43.6Kn 15e place
  
• 500m 43.2Kn 7ste place
  
• 10s avg 42.34Kn 17e place

You can see these results at www.gps-speedsurfing.com. I'm very proud with these results and I'm very happy that I made this speed with the TR-3, that's why I thought it would be nice to let you know, because with a 6.3m and only 25 knots doing 45.6 knots max. is really amazing, don't you think ?

In fact, I'm very sure of one thing: the hunt at 90 km/h has begun for me !!!!

Greetings,
Patrick Van Hoof, B-52