Speed Windsurfing at Primbee

Primbee Speed Windsurfing II 4K HD

Speed may be nothing but a number – but when it’s approaching 100kph on a windsurfing board it’s the kind of numbers no one has ever seen before.

The French windsurf legend Antoine Albeau obtained the World Speed Record when he bettered his own world record, achieving 53.27 knots while speedsailing in Luderitz, Namibia, in a custom-built ‘ditch’ designed to offer the perfect water conditions. It’s the fastest anyone has gone on a windsurfing board, ever – and it wasn’t easy to do.

The first challenge is finding the location – the ‘ditch’ at Luderitz offers optimum conditions for speed sailing. What they’re looking for is strong wind to power the sail, and extremely flat water to control the board. Those two things come together every year in the late autumn as westerly breezes blow in from the Atlantic.

Screenshotter PrimbeeSpeedWindsurfingII4KHD 0’28”

An ideal place to develop speed Windsurfing is Primbee, a residential suburb situated on the Windang Peninsula between Lake Illawarra and the Korrongulla Swamp. The Windang Peninsula consists almost entirely of unconsolidated Quaternary beach and dune sands. The large hill at Primbee, however, consists of Budgong Sandstone, a Member of the Permian Shoalhaven Group. Budgong Sandstone is a red-brown to grey volcanic sandstone.

The source of the name Primbee is uncertain. Farms in the area were owned in the 1860s by James Stewart, David James and Thomas Griffin. An 1893 map for the Parish of Wollongong shows the bay off Purry Burry Point as Primbee Bay. The area was subdivided and the land was offered for sale in 1919, not as Primbee but as “The Lake Suburb”.

The Korrongulla Swamp is a freshwater wetland. It contains stands of swamp paperbark and small pockets of rare coastal rainforest. This rainforest is an important sanctuary for birdlife in the area. Bird species sited in the area include the Little Grebe, Australian Pelican, Little Pied Cormorant, White Ibis, Black Duck, Australia Pipit and the Dusky Moorhen

Screenshotter PrimbeeSpeedWindsurfingII4KHD 1’14”

Since 1970 this area has been used for sand mining and waste disposal. Sand has been removed from the site and the area has been refilled with industrial waste such as slag. Residents of Primbee have been involved in legal actions in the Land and Environment Court to protect this area from mining.

When the lake was closed and flooding occurred access was over the Tom Thumb bridge which linked Port Kembla and Wollongong, or via the Steelworks along an old track and over the bridge at Allens Creek.

The runs are short – after all, when you’re travelling at nearly 100kph, 500m takes just over 30 seconds. To unlock your highest speed potential you will need the perfect board to combine forces and moments under wind conditions, which are well known by theory and practical research on sailboats and yachts for many years.

Screenshotter PrimbeeSpeedWindsurfingII4KHD 0’22”

A good windsurf system we have the aerodynamical sail force producing a heeling moment which is balanced by the sailors weight. The total sailforce is transferred via the sailors feet to the board. The total sailforce could be divided in a part which is directed into the sailing direction, the driving force or thrust of the sail. Then in a force perpendicular to the thrust, the sideforce which must be balanced by the fin. On the other hand we have the hydrodynamical drag force of the board and the fin which are in opposite to the thrust. When both are equal the maximum speed is reached. This lets the rider maintain the trim through the meanest of gusts and achieve breathtakingly fast runs.

Summary
 Speed Windsurfing at Primbee
Title
Speed Windsurfing at Primbee
Description

Speed may be nothing but a number – but when it’s approaching 100kph on a windsurfing board it’s the kind of numbers no one has ever seen before.


51 responses to “Speed Windsurfing at Primbee”

  1. Awesome sailing and video, in chocolate water, yum! Thks for sharing. Watching this hurts my ribs as I just got caught full speed (well, not as fast as this) in a kelp bed and got launched..

  2. saw the other vid of you guys in primbee. and it was so exiting. even the background sound [love somebody else] matched so perfect ..I wish I had that wind here in Miami…regards ?

  3. Excellent, I would never dare taking out my phantom 4 in those kinds of wind! However this will help me try with probably stronger winds than I usually do 🙂 The Cure!!! does remind me some good teenage years 🙂

    • Nicolas Bryant go for it mate you’ll be surprised what the drone can take…. just make sure you can fly home without draining battery!

  4. Hola hombre! It’s not for me, that I wrote that.. It was just a suggest.. I think that with those beautiful scenes you composed your video, you show much more that “tecnical skills” about windsurf.. Also thanks to the drone, that video can be an artistic rapresentation of many other things, like the power of Nature espressed through the wind, the sense of freedom that gives that experiece, etc.. I mean.. the music, in my opinion, should be something like an “evocative soundtrack”.. Not that terrible plastic acid old 80′ forgettable track..
    But it was just my idea, man..
    Saludos!!

    • Looks like 6 people agree with you, and 471 don’t. ? But I know what you mean there’s many ways to approach making a video… for this one I decided to go high energy.

  5. Wooooouuuuwww… what a great Vid. This shows perfectly, how exciting and terrific Speed-Windsurfing in flatwater is… Great job, Paul. Thanx a bunch.

    • +Lakesailor71 yeah I just checked that clip…. it looks that way because I filmed in 24 frames a second and the action is moving too fast for the frame rate so you get this effect like things are moving around faster because of the clipping.

    • +Paul van Bellen the video and footage is actually fantastic, I just thought at 5:00 to 5:05 it looks like speeded up but maybe that’s just my pc. Congrats.

    • Which part of the video do you think is sped up? These guys were sometimes doing over 40knots, on video it looks fast!

  6. I was waiting for someone to attempt a jibe! 🙂
    I never felt more alive than the moments after an epic windsurfing sesh!

    • Yeah I was hoping for that too but it was too shallow so most of the time they slow down and jump off the board. It was like 20cm deep in places

  7. Great skills, I didn’t know drones could keep up with speed boards. Tell me, how can a big lake be so flat in speed board conditions, is it very shallow?

    • +Paul van Bellen Sounds like heaven. I thought I was lucky living around the corner from West Kirby lake, UK, But Primbee looks epic 🙂

    • mark051262 thanks mate. The lake is shallow where they are sailing it’s like 20-40cm deep which means chop doesn’t build up like in deeper water. Also there is some weed under the water too which also helps break down chop energy resulting in flat water in strong winds!

  8. I was having a peaceful session until a massive flying mosquito started buzzing around my head. Seriously I’ve woken up for the past 3 night in a hot sweat thinking I’m getting attacked by Mossies. Bloody drones ruining my connection with nature.

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