Dean Withrow, Peter Richterich and Nina Schweikardt will be gunning for the 24 hour (one day) distance record. Starting at 12:00 pm EST Sunday 4/15/2012. If the stars allign and right conditions come together we hope to make an attempt here in Avon, NC USA. We'll need a little luck and a lot of Ibuprofen... :-)

Great distance @ 351km anyhow Dean!!

Thanks Andrew, it was a bit of a letdown for me as the wind didn't come up enough to plane until 9:00 am and then in enest by 2:00 pm. Not anything close to ideal for distance... Record runs were out of the question as soon as my "partner and teammate" went off solo in the light winds while it was dark. No witness/no records... The water was very rough and punishing, but tremendous fun. No real fatigue on my part, I wanted more, much more! I hope to get another crack at it soon.

As long as we lack a real speed run, we'll just have to be happy with the other disciplines. 

As the "partner and teammate" who apparently gets blamed here, allow me to clarify a few things:

1. My primary goal was to get a great distance rating on the GPS Team Challenge for our team, the Fogland Speed Surfers. The idea was to sail up to 24 hours within one calender day so that the entire distance would count. That requires a 12 am (i.e. midnight) start. 
    
2. The "official" world record was Dean's idea, and I was certainly willing to play along. I actually had purchased a second GPS for this purpose. Alas, while we were in the same house, no Dean was to be seen the entire evening, nor around midnight when I started getting ready. I had positional lights, and plenty of surfers saw me sailing. Dean just needed to look out of his window and come out of his room. There would have been plenty of time to go through the required procedures. There also were plenty of other windsurfers available as witnesses when Dean finally started sailing in the morning, and when he finished around 10 pm.
    
3. We did accomplish the goal of getting the #1 spot for the month on the GPS Team Challenge, posting the session with the 5th-highest distance ever. Nina is now ranked #1 in the woman's individual ranking for distance on the GPS Team Challenge. However, she had only a single GPS, and being the "official" world record holder means little to her.
    
4. The wind was what really killed the record attempts. I was planing on my 8.5 m sail for about 90 minutes after midnight, then the wind dropped below my planing threshold (15 mph). Overall, the day had only about 14 hours of wind above 18 mph. With the high water levels and resulting chop in the afternoon, I don't think anybody could have broken Jaqques' "inofficial" world record of 520 km, or Kato's 540 km. In my eyes, anyone wanting to claim an "official" world record has to go beyond those numbers. We did not have a chance to get anywhere close to these distances. 

There's no 'I' in team folks!