A message from Irish Speed Champion 2010, Oisin van Gelderen…

With the start of a new year, the 2010 speed-season is now complete, I’m happy to report that I have taken the Irish Speed-sailing Championships title for 2010.

The years results are calculated from all rounds of competition held during throughout year, and also from our best 2010 results posted on gps-speedsurfing.com. I had a clean slate of results, with bullets in every round!

Part of the trick to going fast is finding the best conditions (the flattest water with the strongest wind), and the Irish Championships runs on a rolling venue theme, where the event location is decided at the last minute to find the best wind/water conditions on the planned weekend. This worked well this year, with wind strong enough for me to use my favorite JP Speed 45 at each round.

Without a doubt though, the highlight of my speed year was smashing my own personal records during a trip to West Kirby in the UK, where I got a Max GPS speed of 47.17knots (54.3mph), and a 5×10 sec GPS average of 43.19knots. This also gave me the Irish GPS records, now becoming the fastest Irish Sailor.

It has been an extremely difficult year, both for me personally and many Irish Windsurfers, as we continue to mourn the tragic loss of two legends in Irish windsurfing. Alan Harris, founder of Surfdock and a very close personal friend was my biggest supporter for longer than I can remember.

Then very soon after setting my top speed, we also lost John Kenny, who to this day remains the Irish 500m Speed Record Holder. In life JK always pushed me to go faster, and now in death his record remains the goal that I want to try and better.

I would like to dedicate this Championship to the memory of Alan and John.

I am looking forward to 2011, and hope to improve my speeds, and spend a lot more time back in the waves this year too.

More at ir777.blogspot.com