AS I said earlier, all we have in life that no-one can take away from us, is our personal experiences. Tillman by needing the approval and recognition of others you are devaluing and spoiling your own personal experience. You are the one that has experienced liquid ice, enjoy it, remember it, if the WSSRC doesn't recognise it, it doesn't take your personal experience away. Though you can let that ruin your psychological state of mind.
Similar, for windsurfers who rue the day kitesufers inevitably take the 500m title away from windsurfers, it won't dimish your experience of windsurfing one bit, unless of course YOU let it.
If you want WSSRC recognition then play by their rules, if not then just enjoy what you do.
From a spectators point of view I'd always liked the purest definition of sailing. ie.
"Utilising the velocity discontinuity between two fluids for travel in a third direction"
I now see that this definition won't work, there's always going to be a solid involved. The WSSRC has got a tricky job to keep everybody happy so they can remain the premier governing body.
So I've been scratching for a simple fairly fundamental rule which would get through the grey area without resorting to arbitrary numbers. How about
" The sailing craft shall demonstrate the ability to return to the top of course under the conditions of the record run" ??
It would get around the "downwind on a mudflat" could be quicker argument.
Quite a few tacks might be required in the French trench though
First of all the WSSRC is the governing body and hasn't got a problem at all. They installed a rule and chose for a definition to exclude sailing in ground effect and set a minimum waterdepth of 10cm on top of that.
All pro kiters can live with the solution which has been found so don't expect the WSSRC to change the rule anytime soon or perhaps even ever at all. The parties involved got a chance to speak out. One guy shouting the hardest didn't want to join the party and plead for his case...end of story. It's a shame and a missed chance for him. On top of this I am quite surprised Tilmann is puttng so much time and effort in finding acceptance from the WSSRC as he has only been fighting and insulting them whe he had a chance to speak out.
Ian K,
Sailing back and finding grip is easy as in off shore conditions the waterdepth will increase while tacking back. But, ok...lets assume you're forced to prove you can tack back in the waterdepth you set your run on, does that say anything?
Like said many times before I personally regard sailing in ground effect as pure sailing, but I can see the point of people pleading against this thought. Knowing all of this I am still interested to hear the opinion of open minded people who say: whether sailing in ground effect is regarded as sailing in it's pure form is a philosophical question, and people supporting the idea sailing in ground effect is still sailing in a traditional sense. My question to them would be: how would you rate a craft using the mud and potentially deform the substance the water is lying on and mixing with? Would you still regard that a sailing in the traditional sense? The reasoning behind this: the mudflat Tilmann is sailing is is very soft and photos show just how deep one can sink in this muddy substance.
Eventhough I personally still feel sympathy for Tilmann's case (but not the way he has presented it) I quit at the very point where the ground/mud is actively being used as a means to go faster. As I don't think the answer is a simple as Tilmann wants us to beleive I feel the outcome of the rule (so not the wording behind it) is a workable solution and therefore I can live with it, just like all but one of the speedkiters.
Apart from this all I totally agree with the input Hardie gave, but unlike many others (and even some of my friends) I am still interested in this topic. I fully accept the role of the WSSRC as sanctioning body for sailing records and I am interested to play the game according to their rules and I love the GPS challenge. All of this won't spoil my fun be sure about that.
I am always trying to find fair solutions and I also want to try and keep an open eye to problems, that's my drive. These are really my last words about it in the open. I want to find out myself who is right here and I will do so behind the scenes as my conversations with Tilmann lead nowhere and like always he is after one thing, getting his personal claim accepted as the new outright sailing record (or World sailing Record). Apart from all thoughts presented a personal record can and will never be seen like that in the long run, eventhough people in the short run might feel sympathy for the claim itself, the effort put into it and the skill needed to get up to those high speeds. There are so many factors related to setting up fair record hunts that persistant personal claims like that in my opinion cannot be regarded as true sportmanshp anymore.
Hi Tilmann,
Whilst I am happy to accept you went incredibly fast and I am very envious of your feat, is there not one main thing that you are forgetting in your quest to have your speed ratified? Don't you have to have a person employed by or a representative of the speed governing body witness and time the run? Correct me if I'm wrong but you didn't have that did you?
Please don't get me wrong, I am not disputing your run, moreso the fact that the official witness and timekeepers were not used which as I understand is a prerequisite for an official record to be recognised unless trimble recording devices are used?
Tillman
Please take your complaints and technical arguments to the WSSRC or what ever international sporting tribunal you like.
We don't give a sh1t what your arguments are, we don't make the rules.
ps
Learn how to swim,
then maybe you'll be brave enough to sail in deeper water
@ Ian K:
less tides mean less current. Means the water scours less deep in its tideway.
The sketch below shows different shore angles which mainly depend on the current speed (exception the artificial canal) I think Sandy Point is somewhere in the middle. Without the moon it would look like Westerhever (cross section at the bottom)
Below a pic how Sandy Point would look like without the moon: covered by liquid ice. By the way you see the water is clear, no mud at all:
PHOTO: FRAU SCHENKEL
Am I the only one that thinks arguments that include the phrase "without the moon" are possibly heading into irrelevent territory?
@ choco
the water depth I set my record in was roundabout 5 cm, that means a little bit more than on the photo. I did not measure it exactly. On that day other things were more important for me than measuring waterdepth
@AUS111
"without the moon" means tides would only be 1/3 what they are now. (As Ian K has pointed out already.) That means less current. That means the water does not scour as deep as now. That means Sandy Point would look like Westerhever. That means liquid ice.
Below the corresponding board for my spot: an 1/3 moon bidi :
We've digressed into coastal geology here. Lake George NSW is an internal drainage basin, 8km by 23km, so is not subject to tides. The bottom is shaped purely by wave action. The bottom has a remarkably uniform shallow slope. It's a great sailing location in non-drought years but you have to drag your gear for 100 metres or more form shore to get ankle deep water and maybe 400 metres or more to sail with a 30cm fin.
Couldn't find a picture of it with water, last time it was full was before the invention of digital cameras, but here's a link to some wheeled kiters which shows how flat the bottom is. Unfortunately the westerly winds you'd need for great speed sailing are gusty due to a mountain range.
?
...if you have liquid ice. Which has been proven first by David Trewern, who reported a waterdepth of 5 cm in parts of his run in Sandy Point (at high tide, if I remember right, will say: more on the beach than in the channel). So he was able to blow away all pole-sailors and set the first GPS world record for kiters in December 2005.
G'day Doc,
I think you have brought liquid ice into the limelight worldwide.
So people like myself have gone in search of such a phenomenon...and i have viewed such a water state in 20mm of water!I,to this day,can not find such smoothness on the top of the water in much greater depth than 20mm when it is really blowing(other than next to the shoreline).
With such a perfect water state I think it is feasible you can reach the speeds you do,but now it is up to you to prove to the world that you are not touching the bottom in your runs.
Perhaps a close up video of your Wake on such a run might be good for your cause.
I thunk perhaps the choice of term "Liquid Ice" may not have been a clever one to use in any discussion as it naturally makes you think it's something other than water which you are sailing on.
My advise is to loose the term and call it simply shallow water sailing.
Tillman
A serious question without any emotion or other stuff.
Most kiting vids I've watched show the board on a 30º-45º angle hence the that lovely sheet of water you guys through up.
My very(gut feel) basic thoughts on ground effect are that it happens at 90º to the planing surface of the object.
This is where my thoughts start getting a bit squirrelly.
Ground effect requires the 2 surfaces (the moving object and the reflective plane) to be parallel with each other so that the pressure wave from the board bounces of the sea bed and lifts the board.
But
If your board is on an angle, then the pressure wave from your board is coming of at 90º to your board. As the sea bed is no longer parallel to your board there can be no reflection back to it.
My gut feel is that your lovely arc of water coming from the underside of your board is the energy which would normally be reflected back as ground effect and as its flying away from your board you can not be receiving any benefit from it as it's wasted energy. It's like shining a torch into a mirror on an angle.
Providing that you don't contact the sea bed and gain any perceived benefits from this (edit Forgot second half of this sentence)
My recommendation would be to get some clear film of you (and other kiters) in action from the front showing the angle of your boards and the spray coming of and take that to a hydrodynamic's(?) engineer and ask their opinion then take that to WSSRC.
Hope my gut feel isn't to wildly inaccurate
One thought that has been bugging me since the start of this topic has been:
when I go swimming in a pool and I feel a little faster in the shallow end - have I been cheating myself?
That's a good point to get us all thinking Elmo. That lost energy seen in the wake you mention is also there when kite boards are in deep water?? They generate horizontal lift with a less efficient one- sided foil which is ventilated. The advantage kites have over windsurfers is that they figure out which direction they need to generate lift in the water - the one vector needed to balance the force of gravity and the tension in the string - and then they do it with one foil.
Windsurfers generate roughly the same net hydrodynamic force, roughly in the same direction but they do it with two foils (hull, and fin) which are working at 90 degrees - not at all efficient - Even though the fin and the hull individually may generate lift more efficiently than the one kite board, the hull and the fin are fighting each other to a degree. I'm back on my old canted fin bash. Formula boards are doing it!
One way to look at ground effect is "back pressure". If the fluid can't escape as freely as it would in a deep fluid you get a lift advantage. But the shallow water under a kite board is escaping pretty freely, a bit of shear stress on the shallow bottom, not much. So I'd guess its not as big an advantage for a kiteboard as it is for a flat horizontal planing surface - but not completely zero as you've speculated???
The sketch below shows the parallelogram of forces during my record run.
The atmospheric wind came 55° from behind (course angle 145°).
The wind caused by the board speed came from the front.
The resulting force (the only wind we sail with) called the apparent or better: the relative wind came 37° from the front ! This is the ultimate proof, that it was sailing. And NOT sliding across a lubricant without any lateral resistance.
Below the corresponding photo. Although the relative wind comes 37° from the front,
the board is barely edged. The only theoretical explanation I have for this phenomenon is that the surface of the water becomes harder and harder (like ice) the faster you sail. So a little edging has a big efficiency already concerning lateral resistance. And so there is almost no spray behind the board (similar to a windsurfer)
Concerning efficiency in general: Being a low aspect ventilated foil a kiteboard is not very efficient in a storm. But on the other hand it is perfectly controllable in these conditions (at least on liquid ice). And thats the most important thing at the absolute limit (gusts).
The feeling on liquid ice is like rolling over a highway. No bumps at all. You feel unchained and gusts in gale force are pure fun, because - instead of the unpredictable leverage of a mast - all forces are in perfect balance. You just enjoy the massive acceleration.
For waveriding however I like windsurfing still more than kiting
