A new season, a new boat!

It has been a while..... But here we are back with news!
Our new F16, a Falcon, is on it's way to us. It's made by the same builder of our Blade and the changes made to the design look very promising. We can't wait to go out on the water and show you some pictures!


Above Matt and Gina on their Falcon at the start.

We had a great time on our Blade and we are happy that it's sold to a boy/girl team on our club. Not only do we then have a third F16, we don't need to miss our boat :-) !

Check out TheBoatShop.be (Europe) or Falconmarinellc.com (US) for more information on the Falcon.

Winterslaap, hibernation, winter sleep, season’s over for us...

So yesterday was the last day of our sailing season 2009. It was the last day of the Oktoberbokaal. This is a great concept. You enter for 4 races, each Sunday of October. Sailing is on the “Haringvliet”, a nice inland water, a 2 hours drive from our place.



So this means no waves, really no waves at all! For example yesterday we sailed in heavy wind, 5-6 BFT, but we were still very OK, because you really did not have to worry about the waves, since...., ...well because there were no waves! It was the first time we participated in the Oktoberbokaal, but it will probably not be the last time. Another team from our club also joined, so it was cool to sail with 2 Belgian boats amongst all the other Duchies.

A total of 46 boats entered, which was awesome! This way this event was good to practice our starts. We learned a lot during this month. And I think, no I am sure, that we have, up until now, never went this fast around the course. Yesterday especially was crazy! I yelled! I even asked Gill at one moment to go slower, hehe, with the spinnaker up, this was of course no option. But I had to say it, because wow man we were so fast!! We ended on a 10th place in that race, so that was exciting! The other races were not that good, so overall we ended 24th. We managed to get 3 good races in over this month, with a finish 10th, 12th and 9th. The other finishes are not to be mentioned. :-)



What did we learn?

1/ Our boat speed is very good. Especially when it’s blowing. As soon as we need to pull the cunningham we are fast. In lower winds we still struggle. This could be because we do not yet trim our boat’s spreaders and diamond rake. So I think we are trimmed for 4-5 BFT and anything under that we cannot get enough power. But this is something we can easily work on next season.

2/ Our starts can use some more training also. Finding the right spot, keeping the boat still and then learn to accelerate quick. This will not be easy but if we focus we are convinced we can train on this. An event like this, with 46 boats at the starting line, is great for learning and it is so cool to see the pro’s just staying still and then paf of they go, from 0 to full speed in seconds.

3/ Our manoeuvres, boat handling, can also improve some. Yesterday, I saw a top crew (Christa Van Helden) come in under spi, just walking in, over the cross bar and then one step and she’s ready to douse the spi. I, on the other hand, come in sliding with my ass on the tramp, on the side of the hull. And then I have to get on my knees and go forward and then I am ready to douse the spi. She is gaining minutes by her quick walk on board. This will be a fun thing to practice!! Maybe we can make a video report on me practicing this trick next season :-)

So what will the winter bring? Longing for March, the start of our new sailing season. Also some home refurbishing projects that did not progress during summer. And relaxing by the fire place, getting ready again, full of energy for next season!

Here are the full results of the event: Brothers Larsen came in 1st and second, congratulations!

Club Championship 2009 - September 19

The end of September is always highlighted in our agenda. After a season of training and sailing and training and sailing we can finally race to our fullest and enjoy the annual Club Championship at our club VVW Heist.

The week leading up to the event was very exciting. The wind predictions were first indicating that it would blow, 6 BFT. In the middle of the week this got scaled down to 4 BFT, ideal conditions for us! By Friday evening though they were only predicting 2 à 3 BFT anymore. And when we got up on Saturday morning there was... NO WIND, bummer!

This led to hours of waiting on the beach, everyone (18 boats registered!) nervously watching the windsock, the predictions, each other... Some were already converting to Beer instead of Sailing, confident there would be a postponement. I sure hoped racing could go on. I felt like racing and the postponement would not come in handy since we were keen on sailing in Holland during the month of October.

Finally at 3 PM a decision was made: we were going to try and race. Everyone out on the water and we managed to race, yeah! The wind was very little (just 2 BFT probably) so it made for 3 very nerve wrecking races. We were literally crawling over the field. If someone made a good decision and found some more wind somewhere else on the field, it could all quickly turn around.

Conclusion of the 3 races: WE WON!! :-)
We scored a 2nd place, a 3rd place and a 2nd place. Due to a DSQ of the team that was just before us, we skipped over them and we won. On a second place team Nele De Somer/Pieter Vandendriessche with their Hobie Tiger. On a third place we had Werner and co on his nice carbon Eagle, very slick boat!

Results can be found here.

Evening festivities were very fun, especially for us, since we got to go home with a beautiful trophy. You can see this special trophy on these pictures.

RBSC Extreme 2009 - the pictures!

For those interested, a more detailed report! :-) And pictures.

First of all a screen shot from Google Earth so you can see were we have been.



The first day (Friday) we started from the beach club in Duinbergen in very heavy seas and winds up to 24 knots. We headed North East and in 3 legs we ended up before the 'Roompot' lock (top of the map where it says Rijksweg 57).


Great picture of a Hobie Wild Cat dealing with the waves and wind.

After the lock at the 'Roompot' we sailed on around 'Noord Beveland' towards the second lock to give us entrance to the 'Veerse meer'.
The leg between the 2 locks was the heaviest of the entire weekend... wind speeds up to 30 knots and the only goal for this leg was to finish, which we did! :-)



Us (Manu and me) in a LOT of wind.

By 6 or 7 pm we arrived at the second lock giving us access to 'het Veerse meer'. Once we were through the lock it got dark and we sailed the last part with our headlights on, cool!



Pulled the main again after the lock.



Oh yeah!

Saturday we stayed on the 'Veerse meer' all day. We saw every corner of the lake in great sailing conditions and a nice breeze of about 12 knots.



The first start at 7 am was just outside the club 'catclub Zeeland'.

The last day was a straight line home. We took the first lock early in the morning and took the canal between 'Veere' and 'Vlissingen'. Since the canal is only 50 meters wide, we couldn't race here. Also to gain time at the different bridges and locks along this canal the committee decided we shouldn't hoist our mainsails.



We pulled the spinnaker without mainsail....



... and used a trap wire as back stay.

Once in 'Vlissingen' we were almost home. A dazzling half wind leg in 20 knots brought us from 'Vlissingen' to the beach club in Duinbergen in only 54 minutes! So fast the committee didn't even have the time to take some pictures...

I wonder where the journey will take us next year....

RBSC Extreme 2009

Wow! Auch!

A perfect summary of my last 3 days of sailing and what the RBSC Extreme is about.

Wow,
because this race makes you experience sailing in a whole different way,
because we flew the spinnaker in the dark,
because all teams measured 20+ knots on their GPS.

Auch,
because my hands are not used to 3 (long) days of sailing,
because I feel every muscle I used the last three days (and there a quite a lot),
because sadly enough one team couldn't compete the last day due to a bruised rib.

The concept of the race hasn't changed. You start Friday 12am and 60 waypoints, 27 hours and 282 km's of sailing later you finish Sunday afternoon again on the beach of Duinbergen. In between are 2 nights, great food and fun and a couple of locks to take.

A detailed report will follow when I have some more pictures to show.
Oh yeah, we finished 6th out of 9 boats!

Dutch Nationals 2009

So the first Dutch Nationals ever. You know the saying: "Tall oaks grow from little acorns"? Well we did start small, unfortunately only 3 Formula 16 boats (all Blades) on the starting line. Apparently some people on holiday, others with injuries and other more recent F16 owners did not feel ready yet to compete in a race. What a pity! But still we made the best out of it. Here's our story.

Gill and I arrived in Zandvoort Friday at noon. We unloaded the boat, rigged everything and immediately went out for a test drive on Zandvoort water. Woaw did we get smacked in the face! Those waves! They were huge. Really huge. It all reminded me again of those terrible waves during the Global Challenge of 2007. Some nasty memories of lots of bruises.

We shortly met Hans and learned that on Saturday we would start at 1 PM. Then we went for dinner in a nice Indonesian restaurant. After that, back to the beach and into our tent. Lots of noise of halyards against the masts, but we had a nice sleep.
On Saturday Geert and Raymond arrived and they rigged their boat. Hans arrived a few moments later with his boat and his orange rudders! Really nice looking! This was the time for the guys to compare the gadgets and the settings on their boats and boy did they have fun!

Racing started at 1.30 PM and we did 4 races. Each race had 2 or 3 laps, upwind mark, spreader mark, downwind gate and then finish. We scored 2 - 3 - 3 - 1. Provisional result Day 1 = Geert/Raymond 6 points (1,2,1,2 ), Gill/Kathleen 9 points (2,3,3,1) and Hans 9 points (3,1,2,3).
In the first three races we had some difficulties to keep a constant speed and finished after the other 2up Blade every time even though they were 20 kgs heavier... Still have to improve our light wind sailing :-) Also our spin halyard twisted, so spin hoist wasn't as fast as it normally was, also causing us to loose precious boat lengths. In the last race the wind picked up (instead of 1 person trapping, we could double trap) and we started to get into the groove and we ended the day with a bullet!

By 4 o'clock we were off the water and could enjoy the great sunshine on the beach.

The next morning we got up early and adjusted the spin halyard. Also Hans was early on the beach to change his spin setup because he also had some difficulties on Saturday to hoist and douse the spin.
The predicted wind for the day was about the same as yesterday and we only hoped the wind would pick up quickly, so we could sail as much races as possible in higher wind conditions. The situation at 11 o’clock was very different with little wind and an exceptional flat sea to Zandvoort conditions.

By 12h00 we were on the water waiting for the first starting signal. 2 races later everything was still possible as Hans and we managed to close the gap with Geert and the three of us all had 9 points. The third race would decide on who would win the event. For this last race we had to sail 4 laps before crossing the final finish line.

After the start Geert/Raymond and Hans stayed along the shore (less current, but more waves, especially breaker waves due to a sand bank) while we went off to sea. At the upwind mark, we could tack just in front of Hans, with Geert/Raymond following a couple of boat lengths further. At the spreader we had an excellent spin hoist and could continue in the leading position.
First time at the gate everyone was still close. Unfortunately Hans' spin got stuck under the hull while dousing, putting him out of the race.

Second time at the upwind mark we tacked again just above Geert/Raymond. They took a gamble by tacking early and combined with some dirty air caused by us they could not make the mark. They had to make two more tacks to round the mark giving us a more comfortable lead.
During the other 2 laps we made no more errors making us finish first! Yes!

Final results for this excellent 2 day event:

Gill/Kathleen 10 points (2,3,3,1,2,1,1)
Geert/Raymond 11 points ( 1,2,1,2,3,3,2)
Hans 12 points (3,1,2,3,1,2,dnf)

We ended the day with a nice price giving ceremony on the beautiful roof terrace of the Zandvoort Club. The sun was out and we enjoyed the end of a superb weekend!

Training day

It takes 3 buoys to practice.

This Saturday was announced to be a sunny windy day. So we decided to ask our club to lay out a mini race course with 3 buoys. They made us a start line with 2 buoys and the third buoy was used for the upwind mark. This way we had a quick and cheap way to practice or manoeuvres and starting skills. No club personnel or rib was needed. Starting procedure was as follows: Gill made a warning sign by sounding a horn 3 times and after 10 seconds he made a horn signal for the 3 minutes starting sequence. Everyone had to start after those 3 minutes and be fair not to start early. This procedure went very well, everyone was honest and we even had some very exiting close starts.

The course was small, so in 15 minutes we were at the upwind mark, and then in 5 minutes back at the gate. We did this twice for one race and 4 races were held in total. We enjoyed this concept very well and learned a few things. The other club members were thrilled also since we were with 9 boats in total!

The first 2 races we scored 2 bullets, yeah baby! Everything went very smooth, from the start, over our upwind trim and to our downwind speed and depth. We noticed that we had learned alot from last weeks Zwinrace and we had a huge lead over the number 2 and three boats.



The third race we underestimated the current. Tide was coming in and the direction of the current was equal with the direction of the wind. So at the upwind mark we had to be very careful! In the last round of the third race we rounded the upwind buoy, Gill was still in trapeze, I was in front ready to pull the spinnaker when suddenly BOOM a huge break and I almost tipped over the boat. Our speed went from 10 knots to 0 knots in a split second. Our daggerboard was caught on the buoy rope. Damn! This took us a while to get loose, so no results for 3rd race. The current was so strong (we just had spring tide) that 4 other boats also got caught. Check out the video below.



The 4th race started well, we were second to tack for the upwind mark. But the other boat (Infusion) who sailed a bit higher but below us, played it well and pushed us over the layline. We waited for them to tack and when we tacked we noticed that we were over the layline so we had to bear away a lot. And we stuffed it! We both got slung to the front of the boat and somewhere I hurt my foot so we decided to quit the rest of this race.

All in all a very nice sailing day. And a good concept for those of you who want to train and don't want to have a rib, a starting boat and a racing committee out on the water.

Some pictures

Zwinrace

Every 21st of July (Our Belgian National Holiday), we race to the nature reserve 'Het Zwin' and back. Today we had lovely sailing weather, a nice breeze (7 to 11 knots) and sun all over the place!

There were 50 boats in total, divided in two groups (C1 - 21 boats and C3).

Our first start was great. We had clean air and started third from the committee boat. We have been practising on our upwind sailing and in this race we had all the settings right. The result was that we were 2nd at the upwind mark!
Downwind we lost just a little and could make up for it on the second upwind.
After this we had a long upwind stretch along the coast. Because the wind came from over land and we were close to the coast it was very unstable, so we had to work it a lot. Eventually we finished in third position and we were thrilled.

During this regatta we also stop to eat. We beachlanded and ate 'frieten and stoverij'

When we headed out on the water again for the second race, the wind picked up to 15 knots. We changed some settings to the jib because of this increase. In the end it was clear we shouldn't have done this...

Our start was not as good as the first one and we were in the middle of the pack. We could tack away but still had no clean air. The ones with clean air sailed faster and higher, something that would we difficult to make up for.
Halfway the first upwind run we had room to tack and finally got clean wind. However we couldn't keep the speed up as in the first race. We had moved the jib out on the track and now we had difficulties to maintain a good heading. F#@&!

After 2 loops in front of 'Het Zwin' we had the same stretch along the coast towards the finishing area. Again difficult sailing, but we managed to overtake some boats eventually. 2 cats had a blasting start and were waaaay ahead of everyone. We fought with about 5 cats for third place.

During the race the wind started to decrease to about 8 knots in the end. I guess we were too late to trim the boat for lighter wind and couldn't keep up with the first two boats of our pack. After a very close finish we came in 6th. This made for a final score of 4 for the day. Very happy with this result! Next time we'll make sure to be in the Top 3.

Overall a great race that assured us of our upwind settings and mostly that we shouldn't alter them too much... :-)

Up to our next race which will probably be the F16 Dutch nationals in Zandvoort, Holland.

Results

Another F16 model hits the water!

Built/designed by Matt McDonald, producer of the US Blade F16, the new Falcon F16 is still a wave piercer like the Blade and shares many similarities.

The Falcon takes the design evolution a few steps further, a more refined hull shape with additional volume, free board and styling highlight some of the changes made to the design.



The goal of the designer was to create a platform that had equal or better upwind performance to that of the already proven very fast Blade, yet is more stable and easier to push in strong and gusty downwind conditions.

Based on the boats first sail, those goals have been met and Falcon Marine looks forward to continuing to dial in the rig and prove how fast an F16 can be.

This design is the 7th production F16 design on the market giving the class another boost. And we really like this new design! :-)

Check out the website here. European Dealer for the Falcon is Hans from Catamaranparts Holland.

Here are some pictures of the new Falcon. We can't wait to see one on European waters!

F18 Worlds in Belgium!

The F18 Worlds are held in Knokke, Belgium. Start this weekend and races planned for an entire week. We are sure going to have a look at all the top teams performing here.

It will be a very interesting race. Sailing on the North Sea can prove very difficult. Like John Casey mentions on his blog the current is really strong here. And he has only experienced a weekend with not too much current yet... :-)

The website for the Worlds lists all the teams and boats to have a look at this week. 180 teams entered! Whoaw!

Enjoy your weekend of sailing everyone! And good luck to all the Worlds participants, let the game begin.