The one up cup and Belgian A-cat championship was held this past weekend (12th and 13th July) at Knokke-heist “Het Zoute” (sea-shore between Zeebrugge and Cadzand).
This race is open to all single handed multihull classes mentioned in the ISAF “SCHRS rating system”. The 4th year this race was held and the most participants ever, 25 boats! This made for an impressive start, clearly visible from the shore line were I was watching and crossing my fingers for Gill.
The race course was a classic sausage course. Windward buoy, gate, windward buoy, gate and finish. The A-Cats were mostly faster in the upwind course. But downwind the F16 is so much faster. That spi is really a nice wannahave when sailing solo.
I very much needed to cross my fingers because Gill participated for the first time ever in a race alone. He sailed our Blade F16 as a one-up boat, without the jib and without me…
But we didn’t need to cross our fingers… He sailed fantastic. Everything went very smooth, no troubles hoisting the spi, no problems gybing. What else do you want? Luckily the weather was very cooperative. After the first day racing was cancelled due to too much wind (6 BFT), the 2nd day, Sunday, was beautiful. Nice and sunny with winds varying 3-4 BFT, WNW. A great job was done since he arrived 2nd in the overall competition. One A-Cat beat him. In the “not a-cat” results he even finished 1st! He got 2 bullets and a place 5. Waauw!!
Congratulations Gill. And I do hope you’ll want to keep on sailing with me :-)
Kathleen
Ps.: Pictures and maybe some video will follow depending on the recording quality…