One for the Record Books
The cruise ship AIDAbella broke a Guinness World Record and is now the largest cruise ship ever to pull a water-skier. The world record was set in early October off the Spanish coast in the Bay of Alicante. In the shallow waters during the early morning sunshine, Jan Schwiderek, a reporter for the TV show “Galileo”, skied behind AIDAbella at a speed of 14 knots for a time of precisely 6 minutes and 25 seconds. Using a “flying start”, Schwiderek stepped onto his skis from a speedboat driving at full throttle. The cruise passengers watching the spectacle from the outside decks and AIDA Captain Josef Husmann were amazed. “I’ve never witnessed anything like this before as a captain. It’s absolutely fantastic that we actually brought it off”, says Husmann. A film team from the ProSieben channel’s Galileo program captured the record on camera for the Guinness Book of Records. It is expected to be transmitted at 7.10 p.m. on October 24, 2010.