C'était le challenge de Nikos Kaklamanakis, 4 fois champion catégorie Mistral dans les 90's, et la suite de son palmarès là (WIKI). Un symbole fort pour la Grèce dans sa situation actuelle! Voici la superbe vidéo de son défi:

Si quelqu'un parle grec....

Citation :

In 1997 he challenged himself against the elements of nature and won, making with his windsurfing board the long distance crossing from cape Sounion down to Crete, in two days.

Back then, Nikolas Kaklamanakis wanted to try his limits and at the same time promote his homeland, the Greek tourism and the effort of Greece to claim the Olympic Games of 2004.

Fourteen years later the double Olympic medallist, rigs his windsurfing board and puts prow for one still bigger overshooting: Sail Aegean covering 320 naval miles in two days!

With ally the air and drawing energy & force by his internal need to prove that Greece always fights and overcome difficulties, the 43 y.o. champion will start from Andros -in the waters of which his father baptized baby Nikolas as a sailor – will pass in succession from Mykonos, the holy island of antiquity Delos and from Amorgos, will cross small Cyclades at Donoussa & Koufonissia and after a stop-over in Tilos, he will end up in Karpathos.

There in the blue waters of Aegean, Nikolas will give asymbolic big battle, which he considers as his debt toward Greece & Greeks, that suffocate from the economic situation and are maligned internationally.

http://hitthewave.wordpress.com/2011/10/13/kaklamanakis-aegean-crossing-reminder-of-the-greek-fighting-spirit/

Il navigue en RS:X pour le flotteur et la toile aucune idée pour la taille, autours de 9m²?
2e video où voit mieux dans quelles conditions ça s'est fait... impressionnant! En pleine mer Egée ça devait être chaud.

Citation :

Nikolas arrived last Friday, October 21 in Andros island and the next morning sailed for the Aegean crossing.
He first called Myconos island, passed Delos and finaly for the night he had to stop in Donoussa due to heavy weather.
The journey proves more demanding than expected due to the hard weather conditions – wind mostly of force 7 and waves 3.5 to 4.5 meters on Saturday and 4 to 4.5 meters on Sunday.

Citation :

MONDAY 24th of OCTOBER

Well, maybe the forecast about “moderate” wind is just averaging the greatly variable conditions of this last sailing leg. Here is the description given by Nikolas’ support team late in the afternoon:

Good evening to everybody.. difficult day today..for those who dig about weather..the Karpathian Sea is one of the hardest aereas..The last update we got was 2 hours ago..(mobile phones are out of reach and we have no other means for information..)..Even if something happens they have to get really close to the island to get network signal.What we know is that the wind in quite a few places was dropping to 6-10knots(that is 2-3bft) demanding pumping…for extended periods..while there were spots where wind suddenly was coming back very strong…in 1hour & 28 minutes the sun will set and the port of Karpathos(facing East-not West)will have not much light after sunset..We are very worri

BUT HE DID IT ! Pumping & struggling in the dark he dropped his sail docking in the port of Karpathos…Bravo Nikola & THANK YOU.

http://hitthewave.wordpress.com/2011/10/23/kaklamanakis%E2%80%99-aegean-crossing-update/

Chapeau 6 pieds sous terre :mrgreen: