A really cool area, by the way. You have to check it out on Google Earth. The canal lies roughly parallel to the shore in a bottleneck of a dried-up river delta through which the wind hammers. Sand, stones and lots of nothing all around. You wouldn't want to hang dead over the fence there. It doesn't matter, but there is wind, offshore and hammering hard.
Offshore? Theoretically yes, because it blows from the land out to sea. But in practice, the canal is only ten to 15 metres wide - and if you take off from there, offshore becomes onshore faster than you'd like, because after five metres downwind you're already crashing onto the other side of the canal and sanding across the karstic desert floor. With a wind force of nine, six square metres in your hands and a kind of balance beam on your feet, this is anything but a comfortable weekend's surfing. Advanced course graduates with seahorses have no place here. Lüderitz is more for Bruce Willis.
But where does this ever-faster pace actually come from? I think it's definitely part of human nature. Millions of years ago, when two humanoids discovered a banana on a tree at the same time, it was game on. Whoever was quicker got the reward. You can buy bananas in the supermarket today, but this primal instinct to be faster is still in us. You're just gliding along on the new board, just enjoying it, marvellous! Then someone comes along and pulls downwind. Wow! Within a thousandth of a second, the brain switches to Neanderthal - and the race begins. You pull on the pipe, more speed, more speed, I have to be faster than this guy. Man against man, just like before, only upright. And then at some point it's done, triumph! I'm the fastest until, yes, until someone comes along and is even faster.
It's exactly the same with this Lüderitz. A mixture of the early Stone Age and the fun of insane speed. And the goal is the 100 km/h sound barrier. And maybe a banana.
