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.

No wonder the Hardie fella gets the big bucks

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hardie said...


If you want WSSRC recognition then play by their rules,

Hi Hardie !

Ok, lets regard the rules:
WSSRC rule 9 says: "A yacht (craft) shall sail by using only the wind and water to increase, maintain or decrease her speed."
But: If you take this rule serious, almost each record on the WSSRC website is INVALID,
because almost every recordholder has used the SHORE, in order to increase his speed.
The closer you sail to the bank the less waves you have, which means more speed.
Its... the "SHORE EFFECT" !
In order to illustrate the shore effect below a sketch painted by speedkiter Basil Cambanis :

http://picasaweb.google.dk/Tilmann.Heinig/KnickRigg#5243557839420340018

It shows, there is less chop close to the shore. That means less drag and that means more speed.

The ground and the shore are parts of the same thing: land. The ground is land, covered by water and the shore is the same thing, not covered by water. You see it in the drawing in the beginning of this thread, where I showed a cross-section through a natural speed strip with the THREE elements of speed. You gain the most speed, if you sail as close to the bank as possible (which means less chop) AND as close to the ground as possible (which means less running swell) .
For everybody, who doesnt like to scroll:
picasaweb.google.dk/Tilmann.Heinig/KnickRigg#5243193571128674274

As a result you can say: the ground is as permissible as the shore. So there is nothing wrong with the ground effect.

And its fair as well. Everybody can use it, if he wants.
For example you yourself, the windsurfers:
Of course you know course race windsurfboards. They are 100 cm wide. In less than 50 cm water they benefit from the ground effect. Remove the long fin in the middle, add two shorter fins instead ("twinser") and you can go out sailing - using the ground effect. If you put one or two 24 cm fin near the windward edge you can go out in less than 30 (!) cm of water with a 100(!) wide board and can benefit more from the ground effect than any normal speedkiteboard.
So you can use the ground effect as well and its a fair game.

The WSSRC fears however, someone could use the water as a lubricant only - in a car park. But this will never happen. Nobody will ever be able to set a world record on a lubricant ! I know it from my own experience in extremely shallow water below 3 cm.
Upwind: I could not edge the board anymore,the rail was sliding across the ground and I lost all grip and control.
Downwind: The fin was scratching through the sand and slowed me down. If you dont use a fin, you are slower anyway. I have measured it.
Only if the water provides sufficiant lateral resistance you are able to "sail" in the original meaning. Or able to go upwind or able to sail faster than the wind.
I found out that you need only 3 cm for "sailing". Below that mark you become slower and slower, as you are only drifting and sliding (or scratching through the sand).
No sailing means no speed. So a depth rule is NOT necessary. Its self limiting.
The next sketch illustrates it:
picasaweb.google.dk/Tilmann.Heinig/KnickRigg#5244886361787884594
You cannot sail fast on a lubricant, because it does not provide sufficiant lateral resistance.

As a conclusion you can say:
1) There is nothing wrong with the ground effect.
2) Its fair, as everybody can use it.
3) There is no danger of using water only as a lubricant.
So there is no need for any depth rule nor any rational reason for it. Therefore I am sure the WSSRC will withdraw the rule soon. After that it might be a nice idea to set a WSSRC record according to their original rules.
I am looking forward to that...

cheers
Dr. Speed, who finds his flooded beach in Westerhever - influenced by the moon - much more natural (in the sense of sailing is a sport in nature) than the artificial canal in South France.

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.

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mvm said...


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.

not true - the photo

shows a part where I did NOT sail, but set my PASR personal arse-sliding-record:
2sec (software) : 57 km/h
kite: 12m Caution Answer
wind: 40 knots

The ground however, which helped me to become the fastest man on the water (driven by wind) was hard sand. If the comissioner comes, he will see.

@ Ian K: "ability to return" is no good rule for sailing crafts like Sailrocket or Yellow Pages (whats their name in the moment ?) or for the canal crew.

Just had some philosophical thoughts:
The earth consists of land(solid) water(liquid) and air(gaseous).
To sail we need all three elements. The water would flow into outer space, if the gravity of the earth would not hold it on our planet. So the sea would simply not exist without the land. Nor www.seabreeze.com
Without gravity sailing in general would not work at all. You would just been blown away by the air. The air stirs up what the land calms down: Water.
The water is influenced by the moon, the fourth element. He makes the water come and go, which reveals perfect speed strips all over the world...and let them disappear again. Pure nature.
Sailing on a planet, accompanied by the moon. It would be absurd to exclude the land.

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

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Dr Speed said...

Sailing on a planet, accompanied by the moon. It would be absurd to exclude the land.

Always up for a philosophical thought. There's always the sun - but a bit of googling shows that without the moon our tides would only be 1/3 what they are now. What would mean for the perfectly scoured curve of the Sandy Point speed strip?

@ 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

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Dr Speed said...

If thats the water you sail on that's pretty amazing as the last person I heard who could walk on water was around 2000years ago.

He's not the messiah, he's just a very naughty boy

LOL

By the way this is the best forum I have ever been in - perfect technique

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sausage said...

Dr Speed said...

If thats the water you sail on that's pretty amazing as the last person I heard who could walk on water was around 2000years ago.

He's not the messiah, he's just a very naughty boy

Is that the depth of water you have kiting on?
If a "world record speed" is set in that much water it still has to be a world record because the speed was "achieved"....don't think there should be an outright world record anymore but different classes of records for windsurfers,kiters and boats that way there will be no conflict between the classes and there are big differences between the craft to be grouped together.
example
World SPeed Records for wind powered craft:

Sailboat..............44knts class record
Kite...................50knts " "
Windsurfer..........49knts " "

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 :

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Dr Speed said...

@ 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)

The spit at Sandy Point has just about nothing to do with the tide. Its the wind that blows the sand over and onto itself, eventually creating something approaching your "artificial" pic.

Are you sure this is NOT a tideway ?

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.

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Dr Speed said...

Are you sure this is NOT a tideway ?

SP is definitely tidal - the guys that have had their cars flooded will attest to that...! However, the primary and secondary speed strips are both created from the movement of sand due to the wind.

ie: when its windy, there so much sand in the water at the waters' edge, that you cant see where the shore ends and the water begins -> eventually the sands settles to form a new shore line.

Note that the tide does carry away some of this water/sand mixture, so that the main channel isn't filled - but the point is that the tide (and storms) dont scour away the shoreline like it would in other places.

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[

Note that the tide does carry away some of this water/sand mixture, so that the main channel isn't filled - but the point is that the tide (and storms) dont scour away the shoreline like it would in other places.

Seems to be a misunderstanding. I never said that the tide scours away the shoreline. What I meant was: If the current were only 1/3 of what it is now (due to a vanished moon), the sand would fill the channel almost completely, because the water would not have enough power to carry it away.
Then - maybe - you were all forced to use kiteboards, due to a non-sufficiant waterdepth.
But this faster anyway ...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.
And this brought me to the idea, that extremely shallow water might be the solution for all our problems, we have with chop and running swell.
So you can say: Sandy Point is the place, where the idea of liquid ice has been born.

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???

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Ian K said...

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!

Even more so: kiters only have a high pressure side of their lifting surface.
Windsurfers have three surfaces: Board (high pressure), Leeward surface of fin (high pressure) and windward side of fin (low pressure). I think that it's the windward side of the fin generating heaps of low pressure that causes cavitation and the 50 knot 'wall'.

They also have double the area of 'sail', as well as using it well above the wind shear that we use.

There's no doubt in my mind that kiters will eclipse all other sailing craft in terms of speed, they're just too efficient at high speed.

But will that stop me using my poles and styrofoam? No way, let's see Tilmann duck gybe his kite

See all you physicists at Sandy Point in 12 days no doubt.

Allan.......

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