LOGISTICS
The beginning of February arrived and the Beast was finished. It was displayed on the floor of the Cobra factory (where Fanatic boards are also produced) and a crowd of proud Thai workers gathered round it, congratulating each other and taking photos of the biggest and most incredible windsurfing board ever made! On the box the address was “Le Marin Surf Shop – For Raf Filippi, Carro / France”.
The transport however was the absolute cherry on the cake. Since the board does not fit in a regular container, it took four months until it made it to Europe and not just anywhere in Europe but to the depths of Austria, in the middle of nowhere, where the central warehouse of Fanatic is located. I’ll skip the details but we finally received our baby the day before the Défi Wind, on the 24th May 2017!! All this was made possible thanks to the dedication of a Polish truck driver who drowned litres of vodka, and after getting lost several times, finally found our little village of Carro. It wasn’t the perfect timing to get to know our new toy and refine our trimmings etc. but we took the opportunity to baptize our baby on the Lac de la Ganguise, a beautiful lake near Toulouse, with a solid 35 knots of wind.
RECORD BREAKERS
It was during a very festive evening exclusively dedicated to the Quadem at the Fanatic booth at Défi Wind (involving considerable amounts of liquid refreshment!), that we decided to simply go for it and explode the sailing world speed record (after having blown ourselves and the booth away thanks to Matthieu’s Ti’ Punch!) Intensive training started very soon after this, with the objective to go this winter on a proper speed strip to practice. Do not ask us where exactly, several speed bases are fighting to get us. The goal is clear: the absolute world record.
BREAKING UP
The story of the Quadem is currently being written and let us see where the wind will bring us. In fact, last July during a pretty hard-core training session at Etang de Berre we had our first big crash, it didn’t end well. With 40 knots of wind and very rough chop, our board suddenly split into two tandems.We then realized that the tall tree for the stringer might not have been found as we discovered there was actually no stringer inside our board! The two riders at the front ended up in a slightly tricky position and, without any fin, discovered the joys of the synchronized Spock. The two riders on the back (including myself) kept on going full power. It took us a few hours to recover from that blow, to find all the bits of the board and all the members of the crew – luckily nothing sank.
We are now in a delicate position with choices needing to be made.Do we take the old Tridem out again or re-build a new Quadem. The rest of the story will be decided d uring the winter on one of our heavy drinking evenings, as usual!!