#SPEED OF SOUND IN KNOTS PATCH#

“Attached flow,” he calls it, using the jargon of an aerodynamicist evaluating a successful wind-tunnel test. The featureless landscape-no vegetation, no terrain, no fences, no buildings apart from the shelters-makes for perfectly organized air. “No ruffles,” Larsen says, feeling the wind with his hand. It arrives like clockwork, steady and relentless. The desert heat meeting the cool Benguela Current coming up from the Cape of Good Hope creates a powerful natural wind machine. Mornings break as clear and sunny as a Baywatch shoot, but in the afternoon, near-gale-force winds descend on the bay. The dunes march right into the sea, setting up an elemental cycle that repeats itself nearly every day of the antipodal summer. Walvis Bay is one of the Atlantic’s great natural harbors, but it’s surrounded by emptiness: 31,000 square miles of desert. In fact, we are in Namibia, a roughly Texas-sized country at the southwest corner of the African continent. There is a shipping port on the far side of the bay, but over here the landscape is so desolate, so extreme, that we could be on an alien planet-Frank Herbert’s Arrakis, George Lucas’ Tatooine. How Scientists Stalked a Lethal Superbug-With the Killer’s Own DNA “We’ll have to shovel out the timing hut,” Larsen says, peering into the primitive shelter he built years ago and pointing out animal tracks inside. The flying sand sticks to our teeth, turning the insides of our mouths to 600-grit with every word. This is the Bonneville Salt Flats of speed sailing!” Larsen shouts, gesturing to the water just off the sandbar. We climb up on the beach, jellyfish at our feet as thick as paving stones. The wind howls in our faces, blowing so much sand that it runs down the beach in rivulets, like rain across a windshield. The five of us jump overboard into the waist-deep water, following our guide, Paul Larsen, who is wading toward the shore. We motor our zodiac toward the remote beach until we have to kill the outboard and tilt it up to spare the prop. It’s featureless save for two small shelters. As we get closer to what is one of the world’s most perfect speed-sailing areas, I scan the shore.

#SPEED OF SOUND IN KNOTS PATCH#

Seen from across Walvis Bay, the windswept patch of Atlantic Ocean known as Speed Spot is barely more than a sparkle of whitecaps against a long, low sandbar. Photo: Jonathan Torgovnik Reportage: Getty Images When Paul Larsen decided to sail faster than physics would allow, he had only one choice: Reinvent the boat.

Speed of sound in knots