texel surf report: Speedspots on Texel

Speedsurfing has catched on big time in Holland (and worldwide) due to the great appeal and succes of the GPS-speedsurfing format. This worldwide community exists of over 3300 members from 47 countries. It’s actually a Dutch idea. Over 2000 members are posting their GPS speeds on a regular base and 3000 boards, 4500 sails and 5100 fins have been listed op GPS-speedsurfing.com. The site was founded in 2004. In that year 800 sessions were posted on GPS-speedsurfing.com. In 2008 this number has grown substantially to12.941 sessions.

In Holland top speedstrips like The Brace work with southwesterly winds, which are pretty predominant in Holland. On Texel our speedspot De Hors only works with offshore northwesterly winds (and northeasterly winds). Being an open water venue, wind and tides should fall right into sync to get the magic carpet going ......

(illustration made bij Jeroen de Wever)

The first real outing to check out the speedpontential of De Hors was in the fall of 2007 when I invited Martin van Meurs to come over. The wind wasn't that strong and we could only play around with a 6,6 sail and 100 liter board. Later that fall Dirk Doppenberg joined us with better winds and Martin just missed the alltime GPS 500 meter record on Dutch waters.........Northwesterly winds can be very very strong in Holland so the potential is there and it's just a matter of time when De Hors gets propelled into the top op the GPS-speedsurfing rankings. Hope it will be me to do so. I don't have good pictures yet recent speedsurfing at The Hors, only of the lowind session in 2007 with Martin and myself. The ship on the horizon seems to to be stuck on the beach, but it actual shows the great wind fetch from the northwest over De Hors to the speedstrip. De Hors is essentialy a large sandplate attached to the southtip of Texel.

De Hors also works with northeasterly winds. These winds often bring beautiful weather, but they seldom get stronger than 30 knots (rider below: Wouter Verhulst).