Windsurfing with N95

Windsurfer Finian Maynard currently holds the speed record for sailing vessels. The official speed records are set on 500 meter course. During the last couple of years it has become very popular to use a GPS device while windsurfing. Using GPS you are not limited to a fixed course but can measure speed the whole time you are windsurfing. There's even a web site gps-speedsurfing.com, where you can submit your results.

I decided to test if N95 and Sports Tracker would be of any use while windsurfing. I didn't have any fancy waterproof pack for my phone so I just used two resealable plastic bags - I used two to be safe. First I thought of using just the N95 but for good GPS reception you need to slide it open and that's not very practical so I put a bluetooth GPS in another plastic bag.



Everything was set up and I was ready to go. I sailed for about half an hour and came back to shore to check the log. It worked great. Below is a Google Earth screenshot of my sailing session in Mellsten (local beach here in Espoo, Finland). The fastest speed I achieved was 46.7 km/h. Not too bad for a first attempt and considering my not so speed optimized gear (freestyle board and a wave sail). Sport Tracker allows you to export the log as GPX, XML, CSV and Google Earth KML-format. Click the image to download the track log as a Google Earth kml-file.