The story of those flying towels

The stage was made, the scene was set. Engineering, geometry, math, sheer will and absolute talent came together to catch two towels unseen.

How It began

It all originated form a simple idea from the best Sauna show technician Michel Vonk, what if we could launch a towel using dmx? Nice plan, didn’t fly when he came up with it though.

It was two years later that he mentioned the idea to Sigrid, who was working on her False Fortune show, and she immediately wanted to do it! Big challenge really something new, that could fit well to a climax moment in False Fortune, so Michel went to his drawing board and called in the help of the builder, Alwin. An amazing person, saunamaster and engineer.

After some time we got to test the first concept, lots of tweaking, loads or research and testing different towel fold variations, because simple thing you think…. Hmmm not very much. I think we tested like 8 variations until we came upon the ‘castle’ method, perfect weight distribution, perfect grip & angle sight when launched, and very consistent in testing.

Time for the national championships

With the machines tweaked and perfected for their location at Thermen Berendonck we were ready for the NK’s!

Well they flew, but one a little later than the other (thats why the picture below only shows one towel), so it was a half good half awkward catch yet still amazing! It was new no one expected it to happen, and all of a sudden there’s towels flying.

Prepare for the big leagues

So on to the WM! Yeey, now stress begins straight away… as there’s really no way to go to Italy with the machines and try them out, I mean the sauna wasn’t even really finished let alone the electrics.

So Sigrid went to Italy to train, work out a floorplan and through the phone she measured certain distances in the sauna. I used this to calculate a floorplan and lay it out with ropes in Thermen Berendoncks saunatheathre. Now we could test ‘as if’ we were in Italy. We calculated the correct place, angle, height and strength of the machine and documented it. Then knowing how to place them I worked out a template which I could use during prep at Aquardense WM.

Aufguss WM in Italy

Okay lets go WM setup, gongggg 15 minutes to set everything up before the show.

First the machines, the wiring was intense, set them up using the template, adjusted hight using folded towels, then loaded them up for a testshot. Sigrid was distracted as it took long to fire, missed one towel and said: ‘they feel like they are in the right place lets trust it’.

Okay during the show my nerves were crazy, I had one thing to do, make sure these machines are in the right place, and she catches the towels (as we practised 100 times), I put them down according to the plan hoping it was correct. Never been so nervous for one moment in my life…

Curtains up, show starts she absolutely nailed everything. Moment of truth, she stands there, confident, strong, holds out her arms.. whoosh, they fly, she catches perfectly, waving like crazy. Crowd literally explodes, people were on their feet yelling & cheering, it was wild… felt like a soccer match. still thinking back to this moment brings tears to my eyes, I was so proud of her, myself and the Thermen Resorts Team for making this happen.

To ensure my math was correct we had to do the show two more times after that. Sigrid did not only caught the flying towels in the finals to win the WM aufguss but she also did it again in the Sunday after where we enjoyed a more relaxed set-up.

No towel drops, she won the WM, I’d say mission successful.

Big big thanks to Alwin, making these things, and adjusting them for the finals to allow for a test shot gave us more confidence, its really impressive how skillfull this thing is put together, nothing breaks and the shots were consistent and precise. The NK shot was the only time they appeared out of sync, still no clue as to why as we tested them straight afterwards and they worked fine, lets just call this a little fortune, we had to go to the WM to show a succesfull catch!