Blade/Falcon F16 - BEL666

Tradewinds 2012 - Florida Keys

2012-01-28T17:00:00.000+01:00

How we wish we could have sailed this event in the beautiful Florida Keys! Next year maybe...

This event was an awesome showcase for the Falcon F16.

Matt & Gina were there and wrote this great story about the event:

By Matt McDonald

Tradewinds 2005, I attended with the first US built F16 (US Blade).We had about 4-5 boats and were assigned to the slow boat small course.

In 2012 the F16 class was the winner of the Carlton Tucker trophy for the largest class in the regatta. Add to that prestige, with the F16 event being both the Olympic development team qualification and the US youth multihull Worlds qualifier. 25 F16's registered to race and some of the country's top youth teams and multihull racers got on F16s to race this event.

This event was the brainchild of Leandro Spina, the US development coach and Jamie Livingston , the US multihull youth manager.

As there is not a boat currently selected as the next Olympic multihull, they were instrumental in pushing US sailing to select the F16 as the youth and development boat so teams can move forward with training and associated programs leading up to 2016 in Brazil. Working closely with this group, Falcon Marine set up 5 brand new stock boats to teams looking to enter into the Olympic fray.

3 mixed teams traveled to the event with us, all of who were sailing with each other for the very first time. 2 youth teams came with us as well. All 5 of the teams were sailing a Falcon F16 for the very first time.

After a very hectic few days of assembly, tuning and going over the systems on their new boats all the teams hit the water for the first day of racing on Friday.

This event of course attracts teams in a huge variety of boats from all of the country coming for some winter sailing and of course the lure of the event being the F18 as well as other classes mid-winter championship.

What a great site to see all the boats and especially the huge fleet of F16's on the beach and heading out for the start with a big mix of Blades, Falcons, Taipans and Vipers. After all the build up for everyone, it was a pretty big disappointment to have such a beautiful site, nice weather and then no wind for Fridays scheduled day of racing. A few hours floating around, some swimming and lot of people catching up with each other on the water racing was finally abandoned for the day and the traditional Tradewinds scattering could begin.

Saturday morning broke gray and with the windows rattling in the rental, it was obvious that we were not going to be suffering from the lack of wind that killed Fridays racing. With gusts coming through in the mid 20's as the teams rigged and more than a few boats upside down heading to their respective courses there was some obvious nerves with a few of the less experienced teams in the fleets. The experienced racers headed out with grins.

I was spending the event on a coach boat and got an unique (for me) view of the racing and some great lessons from Jay Glaser on sail shape, tuning and trim. Watching the first few races it was really apparent which teams had been practicing and sailing together as the gusty conditions and busy course made teamwork pay some huge gains over the new teams. John Casey and his new crew Sophie Shultz had to retire from racing after the first race when she was hit in the eye with a trap handle. The top 4 remaining teams though quickly separated themselves from the rest of the fleet as the racing continued.

The highly practiced team of Taylor Reiss and Matthew Whitehead split up to run coed, but their time on this boat and the coaching they have had was evident in their holding the first 2 places for the day. Following closely at the end of Saturday were the 2 Falcon teams of Pease Glaser / John Williams and Mike Easton / McKenzie Wilson.

Sunday broke with a little more sun, but very similar forecast for the weather. There were a few casualties from the weather conditions to the less experienced or prepared teams but a strong contingent headed back out to finish the battle. JC and Sophie made it back out luckily with nothing worse than a black eye. With a bullet and the rest 2's they won the day on Sunday to restore their hurt pride from the day before. With 5 races now under their belts the newly formed Falcon teams began to figure out their teamwork and the boat and showed a lot more consistency around the course.

Despite a rather nasty pitch pole and a messed up spin pole, with some quick on water fixes the team of Pease and JW worked their way into second place for the regatta and finished with a bullet in the last race. Mike and McKenzie continued to sail faster and consistently to finish third. The team of Sarah Newberry and Matthew Whitehead started the event sailing extremely fast, especially in the bigger winds early each day and their skill and team work paid off giving them the 1st place title in the F16's for Tradewinds.

Many youth teams traveled to this event to vie for the coveted US spot at the ISAF youth multihull Worlds. 2 of those teams raced Falcons. Jeremy Herrin and Sam Armington came down from the Sarasota Sailing squadron, where their coach Brian Paine has been working very hard and has put together a great youth multihull sailing program. (Brian was racing an F18 with another youth and many of his other team members were in attendance on other boats as well.)

The other Falcon team of Ben Brown and Luc Lisi traveled all the way from Northern CA for this event. For both teams this was their first time racing on this boat and it was just the second time that the team of Ben and Luc had ever raced a spin rigged catamaran. With almost all top 10 finishes and consistently the top 2 youth boats in the event, the Falcon teams took 1st and 2nd in the youth qualifier. (Jeremy/Sam 1st and Ben/Luc 2nd)".

All the pictures of Tradewinds can be found on our Facebook page.

John Casey was also there and you can read his experiences about Tradewinds and getting his youth sailor chick a black eye :-), on Sailing Anarchy (scroll down the page, article "cat crowd").

New hydrofoil from Hydrosail called the "Osprey"

2012-01-27T10:37:00.000+01:00

While we are still hibernating here in Europe (it's getting colder this weekend!), sailing in the USA is full on.

Here is a cool video from Adventure Online TV of a new hydrofoil from Hydrosail. The Osprey Hulls were built by Matt McDonald from Falcon Marine.

Enjoy!

Osprey Hydrofoil from Adventure Online TV on Vimeo.

Falcon crash at Hiram's Haul, Florida

2011-11-02T15:23:00.000+01:00

This is really something you don't want to experience yourself, ouch!!! From 3:30 onwards:

John Casey and Dalton Tebo win the Buzzelli multihull regatta, USA

2011-10-28T11:40:00.001+02:00

JohnCasey and Dalton Tebo win the Buzzelli multihull regatta on the Falcon! Welldone guys!

JohnCasey's write up on his blog:

Flyin’on the Falcon

Lastweekend was the Buzzelli Multihull Rendevous, a huge multihull event withclasses such as the Stiletto, F-Boat Trimarans, Waves, Wetas, and of course ourportsmouth A fleet, which included some F18s, F16s, Randy Smyth’s Scizzortrimaran and us. Since I sold my Nacra MK2 last week, Matt from Falcon Marinelet me borrow his F16 Falcon. Thaaaank You Matt!

Theregatta started on Friday with a 35-mile distance race from Sarasota up toTampa and back. We were a little late for the start, but on the close reach in10-20 knots of breeze, the F16 took off upwind, bouncing over the waves. I wasimpressed with how much power stayed in the boat during the lulls even thoughDalton and I weighed in at about 330 lbs. The double trap reach was so much funwe didn’t want to turn around. In the first half of the race we passed everyonebut Randy’s trimaran. After the turn mark we gained until we were almost evenwith the tri that we gave a 12 minute lead to, but that was as close as we got.When the wind backed off the light wind designed Scizzor left us in the dust.

Saturdaywas bouy racing and with a 10-15 knot cool northerly we were excited to get outthere. The Falcon performed really well again, outpacing the F18s around thecourse. Upwind, the helm was light and the Falcon accelerated quickly in thepuffs instead of tripping over itself like many other designs. The 12:1cunningham worked well, and the Glaser mainsail flattened out evenly. I wasagain surprised with the amount of power the rig created. We were able to holdthe upwind line of the F18s in lighter breeze, and could hold a higher line assoon as we single wired.

DownwindI didn’t know what to expect. When you first look at the Falcon, since itdoesn’t have much freeboard and even less bow, it looks like it might be proneto pitchpoling. Well, when we were on the boat and looked at the hulls fromabove it’s a whole different story. There’s plenty of volume in those littlehulls. Even in the 15 knot puffs we were never close to putting the bow in, andactually the crew never went behind the rear beam on the trapeze. The volumeand flat section between the bow and front crossbar worked well to keep the bowup and spray flying. We were grinning like crazy downwind! In the lulls theF18s did have a little deeper line, but when it was breeze on the Falcon wasgone.

Sundaywas light and tricky, so there it was more about being in the right place thanhow fast the boat was. However, when we were in boat-to-boat situations theFalcon shined even when it was single trapeze conditions. In the end, theFalcon performed marvelously to give us a victory with six points to spare forthe weekend!

Oktoberbokaal Hellecat

2011-10-26T11:31:00.001+02:00

We have been very lucky with October's weather. The last 2 weekends we sailed each Sunday 4 races at Hellevoetsluis, Holland and each time we had the sun as our perfect companion.

The first Sunday (October 16) we had very light winds, very shifty conditions but nice sailing.
Last Sunday (October 23) we only slept for 4 hours before we had to get up to race and the sun made sure we had enough energy troughout the 4 races :-) It was a good 5 BFT when we started race 1 and it dropped and shifted a bit during race 3, but for race 4 we had good steady winds again.

The Oktoberbokaal consist of 4 Sundays of sailing in October on nice protected (i.e. FLAT!!) water in The Netherlands.

The first Sunday we didn't participate because we were accompanying our VVW Youth Teams at The Veerse Meer (also in Holland). So after 2 sailed days we are happy with our 8th place overall. Can we make it to place 7 after next Sunday's last day? Weather forecast looks promising, sun and a 3 to 4 BFT breeze, nice!

Overall results can be found here: http://www.hellecat.nl/wedstrijden/uitslagen/2011/oktoberbokaal23102011.html

Youth weekend Catclub Zeeland

2011-10-12T19:12:00.000+02:00

Last weekend we joined the VVW Heist Youth team on their trip to Catclub Zeeland for the Dutch Dragoon Cup. Located at the Veerse Meer we were happy to coach the youth sailors a bit.

We also took our Falcon and Emile took his Blade so we took the 2 F16's out for a sail on the Veerse Meer. Gill has been talking alot about how cool it is to sail here, so I had to try this. I don't think it's really my thing, I was stressed knowing that there are alot of undepths and that we therefore risked of hitting the sand with our daggerboards.

On Sunday we went out again and I got used a bit to the location and was more at ease.We had a great weekend, only downside was the weather. It rained all weekend. But the great hospitality of Catclub Zeeland and the great group of people made it a wonderful weekend!

More pictures from us sailing at the Veerse Meer will follow!

October 2, my birthday!

2011-10-12T19:10:00.000+02:00

My birthday weekend was unique, celebrating in sunshine, bikini and 27°C.

To start my weekend I had the day of work on Friday and we tuned our Falcon a bit, just relaxing on the beach, no wind to sail unfortunately.

Saturday there was a bit more wind and we went out in the late afternoon. I steered and managed to get some speed in the boat. It was cool to practice the manoeuvres with this little wind. We ended the day with some nice spaghetti made by Caroline at VVW Heist. And then off to party in Brugge.

On Sunday we organised a little apéro on the sandbank of Heist. One of the last times we could "enjoy" this sandbank since next year we will be moving to our new location, further along the coast, with hopefully no more sandbank in front of the club! Drinking cava in the middle of a sandbank with fellow sailors, how cool is that!

We took our Falcon so the others could use it as a landmark to now where we were located :-)

Once the tide came in we drifted back to the beach on our boat, very nice!

In the afternoon we relaxed some more on the beach and Sonja and me even went on a little "ride" with the Banana, very refreshing. Sour muscles the next day tough, haha. We ended the day with pizza and drinks at Maarten's caravan with Filip, Mathieu and Renke. Had a great weekend!

RBSC Club Championship, September 24, 2011

2011-09-26T14:35:00.001+02:00

Yesterday was the RBSC clubchampionship and this is one of the last races sailed in Belgium. We decided to lend our boats to 2 youth teams: Arnout & Klaas Viktor sailed Falcon BEL666 and Philippe Hendrickx and Gaeton Bols sailed Falcon USA208. The day started early, 9 AM at the beach to rig the boats and to coach the youth with some light wind tips before they were of to the starting area. Emile De Moor sailed his Blade F16 together with Louis Verstraete, so 3 F16's getting ready in the morning, a very nice view!

Wind was very light and start was postponed. Luckily a little sea breeze settled in so racing could go on! Gill went out on the water on a rib with RBSC Youth trainer Laurent to watch the teams and to take pictures. I stayed on shore, as a true trolley dolly :-)

Sun was out and so were alot of boats! No less than 80 boats made the start. This included 60 cats (the other 20 were all yachts from RBSC Zeebrugge). Of the 60 catamarans there were 4 Dragoons battling it out in the youngest class. With the low winds (5 knots) and the heavy current they had the hardest time on the water.There were about 25 boats in both the C3 and C1 class. The C3 was crowded with youth teams. One of the teams was a youth team from our club, VVW Heist: Gilles Hendrickx and Filip Olyslager. They finished first youth on a third place in the C3!

In the C1 the there was 1 youth team on an F18 and 3 youth teams on F16's! "Our youth" had been training the whole week in medium to heavy wind but they weren't too confident to sail light winds. Weighing 138 kgs Anout&Klaas were the heaviest of the three. In total 3 races were sailed in dying winds and increasing current. Clean air and not overstanding the layline was key but very difficult in these conditions. Because of all the training they did, the Falcon teams were off the line very well each time. It was great to see them battling it out in the front!

With steady top 3 finishes it was clear that they had done great! They even came across the line first one time!

Finally the prizes were given and they ended 1st and 3rd in the C1! Winning against some of the best Belgian teams. They were super proud! (and so were weI!).

Great to see so much youth in the top 3, certainly in the 'dad' dominated C1 class!Full results and all pictures.

Raid des Corsaires 2011, France, September 3-4

2011-09-21T09:14:00.000+02:00

Although we didn’t race this one ourselves, we think this is a great race, put it on your list! The organization is wonderful and the scenery magnificent. It was a tough job with the wind changing direction all the time and a heavy current, but I think everybody looks back at a great event.

We let a French team sail our Falcon: Thierry Wibaux with his wife Christine. We arrived on Friday with beautiful weather (finally some sun in Europe!) and great ambiance.

On Saturday the start wasn’t until 2 PM because of the high tide (no beach to launch from, until 1PM!). Thierry sailed very well, finishing after Gildas Griziaux on a Viper and behind the 2 F20's and 2 Tornados. For a long time he kept pace with the Tornados making him finish in front on rating I guess. It was a very light wind day and they had to shorten the course. The latest participants arrived after 9 PM! The 2 F20's had a huge lead on all the other boats in these light winds, it was amazing. We followed the race and this was a race in itself :-)

We took the car and drove from waypoint to waypoint checking the race from on top of the rocks or on the beach, a great day for us with great views of this big catamaran race. Lots of spectators followed this race too, it's truly a legend in the St Malo area.

We ended the day with a great Paella diner and some fun lottery with very cool prizes. They do a great job with many voluntary staff. The diner (with nice free red and rosé wine :-)) was held in a large venue. To clean up the tables and chairs after diner they found a great incentive. They first showed a 7 minutes movie about day 1 at Raid des Corsaires and then after this movie they told all the participants they wanted the venue emptied in less then 7 minutes so everybody had to help. They showed the movie again and indeed once the movie was over the venue was all cleaned up thanks to the effort of all 130 teams! Nice work and they create a very friendly atmosphere like this.

On Sunday it was blowing in the morning so racing was postponed. Thierry didn't start the first race as it was only the 5th hour on the boat and it was very windy just before the start. The second race of that day and the last one of the weekend we watched him from ashore and he had a great start, but then suddenly we saw him coming to a stop?! Some bad luck because his adjustable trapeze came loose, ouch :-).

Eventually he was well in front of all the 16's, gaining a lot on the downwind run he said. Before the finish the wind dropped (and changed directions too, a very tough day of sailing wind wise again) and everyone came together again, so I'm not sure what the final results are (no official results yet). The F18's started 5 minutes after the C1 start and Misha Heemskerk took a huge lead on the downwind, even finishing in front of the F20! Everybody came back around 5 PM and an hour later we watched the price giving.

The best 3 teams of each class (C1, F18 and C3) got a nice Sword as a price, very cool! Micha Heemskerk won the F18 and the F20 (Francis Ferrari) won the C1.

At 7PM we drove back home, tired but very happy after a great weekend at St-Malo!

Diamond Sailing Cup 2011, August 20

2011-09-21T09:01:00.000+02:00

This is one of our favorite events. For Kathleen because she can win a little diamond (very little but she is saving them all to have – one day – a ring made of it) and in general because this is a compulsory mixed event. Since we are always sailing mixed we like this format a lot.

With a total of 71 boats registered this was again a very successful race, organized by RBSC Zoute. Saturday announced to be a very light wind day, with predictions of force 2 to 3 with maybe a sea breeze coming in and making it a force 4 in the afternoon. Gill had hurt his back while biking (in fact he was texting and biking and he ran into a parked car, not so smart!) and up until Saturday morning we were not sure he would be able to participate. On Saturday morning he felt ok and since the prediction was for light winds we decided to go out.

Start was at 12, we were out on the water at 11 to make it in time (we had to sail for about half an hour to the starting area, because of the light wind). The racing committee did a great job and managed to get 3 races in, but it wasn’t an easy job. They had to change course after each race. The wind turned but no real sea breeze settled. We had a lot of shifts and holes of no wind in the racing area. Tactical sailing!

In the second race we were in 7th place when suddenly the wind turned and instead of sailing downwind we were faced to drop the kite and sail upwind. Unfortunately 3 other boats who were sailing a bit higher than us could keep their kite up and these 3 boats passed us right in front of the finish. Damn! We finished 7th, 11th and 13th, leaving us on a 10th place overall. We were happy with this result, with these light winds and tactical course we still struggle but we had good boat speed and we didn’t really screw up.

Youth team Klaas & Valerie sailed for the first time together (Klaas is normally crew for his brother Arnout Viktor) and they needed some time to get into the groove, but when they did, they rocked. They were very happy to finish race 3 in front of Olympic Sailor Carolijn Brouwer on a Viper, even on corrected time! Great sailing guys! They finished overall on place 9, their last race they were place 4, just behind Wouter Samama, Wim Deca and Patrick Demesmaeker, very happy faces after this great result!

We beached at RBSC Zoute to derig the boats and to put them on the trailer. After the price giving (yes we got another little diamond!) we left for our next race in Oostduinkerke, the Raf Verhaeghe Challenge at Sycod Oostduinkerke.

Club Championship 2011, August 14

2011-08-23T14:08:00.003+02:00

Exciting times: would we be able to obtain this title for the 3rd consecutive time or would we have to pass the honor to the upcoming talented youth team Anton Coppens Anton en Louis Verstraete on their Nacra 500?

I don’t know how long I am already talking about driving a race but anyway in the week before the race we decided I was going to drive 1 race to see how this would go. After this decision I had 3 more days to prepare mentally (in other words to get nervous). Sunday came and the sun was out, the water was flat and the wind was a nice force 3-4. We went out a bit before the start so I could drive the course once before I had to drive the race.

We went over to the starting line and this was something I was a bit afraid of, but nothing to worry, Gill knows what he has to do and he just told me to bear off, go up again, stay, go,… we didn’t start on the second, but pretty close so this felt rather ok. The first upwind mark along the coast we could both trap and Gill kept telling me “watch the jib, watch the jib, watch the jib…”. The second upwind tack we noticed that the Nacra Infusion (not from our club and with a good sailor on it) was in front. Again I heard a lot of “watch your jib” but I found it very hard. If my tell tales in the bottom were ok the top ones weren’t, and each time I was about to correct my steering Gill was already seeing it just a second faster so he had to say it again “watch your jib”. Difficult! So we were second at the upwind mark, dog leg went ok, bearing of to pull the kite also. The downwind leg went fine, short courses, so a quick run to the gate.

Now I know what Riley meant when she told us in her interview that she likes the downwind best because she feels in control. I didn’t understand this when she told this because as a crew I like the upwind better than the downwind (although this is changing too). But as a skipper the downwind feels indeed so much more under control, you get the speed, you feel the boat, you go up and you feel the speed increasing, you bear off if it is too high and you can feel that the crew can control this too. The only thing here is learn not to bear off to quickly, but this is just getting used to. It was nice to have a silent crew for a bit too, haha.

The thing I liked the most about my first drive was the feeling you get when you get out on the wire with the stick in your hand, it feels so powerful!

On the last downwind run to the gate, Gill was on the wire and he fell forward, I did a bear off, but… too much and we gybed! Ah shit! Since we were both still on the same side, Gill on the trapeze, gybing was NOT a good idea, so we went over (well over is not really the word when the boat just falls onto you). I thought this was really funny, my first race and I capsized! Especially since when I am the crew I always tell Gill to be careful and not to capsize. Haha. But my crew was pissed off. “Why did you do that?!.

After righting the boat Gill stated “I’ll drive the 3 other races!”, owkay message understood! The 2nd race wasn’t all that good either, we weren’t focused and since I prepared myself so much for driving I forgot to do my crew job, so not a happy boat! The last 2 races we were back in the groove and we managed to stay in front of the Infusion right up until the gate. Due to some tactical errors (we’ll have to get into match racing a bit more!) we let the Infusion creep in front of us just before the finish. Damn!

We were very curious to know if we would still be Club Champions, the boys on their Nacra 500 sailed very good and with their rating it is hard to tell if they sneak in front of you or not. Luckily the price giving started with on place 3 the boys, on place 2 us and on place 1 the Infusion.

Since the Infusion wasn’t a club member, we were crowned Club Champions 2011, yiha! We got 2 nice big bottles of Duvel beer again (who wants to share?) and the trophy is ours!

After the racing a nice evening bbq with all the participants (16 boats!).

Our next races are the Diamond Cup (compulsory mixed event at RBSC Zoute) on Saturday August 20 and we’ll also participate in the 2nd day of the Raf Verhaeghe Challenge on Sunday August 21 at Sycod Oostduinkerke. Stay tuned for more reports!

Falcons having fun at F16 Worlds France - video!

2011-08-05T09:48:00.000+02:00

F16 Worlds France 2011

2011-08-03T15:51:00.006+02:00

This was a great event and we are sad it is already over. We had a very good time, a lot of fun, met very cool people, had nice drinks and dinners and above all we had some great sailing. Not always great results, but most of the time we enjoyed ourselves on the water.

There were alot of nations present at this first F16 World Championship: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, France, Italy, The Netherlands, Switzerland, United Kingdom and United States!

We had several boat types all trying as hard to win this event: AquaRaptor, Blade, Bimare, Falcon and Viper. There were a few one-up sailors too, fantastic job done by them, I couldn’t do it, I need the extra pair of hands on board!

Gill and I and Matt & Gina travelled to France on our National Holiday, July 21, we arrived late at the Falcon House and we needed some coffee to wake up the next day. Luckily it was a sunny day and we enjoyed rigging the boats up on the beach of the lake and we even went out in the late afternoon for a sail. We immediately found out that the yellow buoys mean that there is a shallow. Unfortunately we found out too late, so rudders clicked out and the spi had to be doused immediately, quick quick! Luckily we didn’t touch the daggerboards and we made it out of the shallow quick and without damage. Back to sailing the lake! Matt & Gina were fast with the kite up. Gill and I felt immediately that this would be a tough battle, they sailed away from us, unbelievable. We decided that beating them once during the entire race would be a cool goal for us.

On Saturday we had our boats measured, this took a while and in the mean time we just hung out at the beach. Weather was not really fine, some rain, not much sun, but other sailors were arriving and we had fun seeing familiar faces back and meeting new faces.

That evening we took everyone to the house and Paul & Ann and Geert & Joanna installed themselves in the other bedrooms. In the mean time we had new visitors: from lush Switzerland: Andi & Martin and Sandro & Philip. We invited them to camp their tent in our backyard together with Marc, Mandy & Johannes from Germany. Camp Falcon was born! For the whole week we stayed with 14 sailors in one house, crowed but very cool! We had breakfast together (Andi was our breakfast delivery guy, he apparently liked the French bakery a lot?!) and in the evenings after diner we could unwind a bit in the house, talking about sailing, sailing and sailing and our stories of that day.

Sunday morning we had a very interesting clinic, given by Matt McDonald. He talked about general upwind – downwind settings and trim. And then he added some very useful information about sailing on this particular lake of Maubuison, looking out for the wind, seeing the gusts, taking benefit from the wind changes. Everybody was listening intently and we all made mental notes of things not to forget while sailing. In the afternoon we could already test our new learnt capacities by sailing the Practice Race. Started at 3 PM, 1 race of 2 laps. We didn’t do well. Matt & Gina did but decided not to finish since finishing a practice race could mean bad luck later on…

Monday morning was the first day of the real F16 Worlds, start at 1 PM, bad weather, no sun, a lot of gusty wind, a difficult day to sail. But we managed ok. We sailed a 12 and a 15, very happy with that.

Unfortunately we had to retire from race 2 since something broke on our spin halyard. We raced back to shore (a long way), repaired the halyard and raced back. Ouf just in time for the start of the 3rd race. In the mean time we found out that Matt & Gina retired from racing. While back on the beach we saw Matt but no Gina? They were racing to the finish line of race 1 and they had a gust hit them, they pitched, and then it felt like they hit something and they went over. Gina fell into the daggerboard (we all know those hurt!) and Matt fell on top of her. Gina was in a lot of pain and couldn't stand on her leg. Luckily the club had a doctor present and they immediately took care of Gina, put ice on her big bruise and told her she tore a muscle so she had to rest for the rest of the day. So no more racing for Matt & Gina. They were really sad, coming over from Florida to sail and already been stopped after not finishing 1 race, there are better stories. So much for not finishing a practice race for good luck… We hoped Gina would rest well and be ok for the next days of sailing!

The other Falcon teams were happier with their first day of sailing. Paul & Ann scored a 16, 15 and 12. Andi & Martin a 9, 10 and 9. Marc & Johannes a 26, 22 and 20 and Geert & Joanna a 19, 16 and 17.

On Monday evening we had the country diner with some specialties of the participating countries. The drink Chris Sproat & Georgina Burk brought had a lot of success: the James Bond cocktail: Vodka-Martine with an olive, great! Hans Klok from Holland brought some candy, with anise in it, but well this wasn’t loved by everybody (remember the taste!?).

The social program of this event was well worked out. We had the country diner, an official dinner (with yummy duck), a pasta party and some cake with the price giving. We enjoyed hanging out at the club a lot although next time a bit less program could work ok also, so we could go out more and see the surroundings of the club. We only ate in 2 restaurants and we didn’t get to taste the lovely looking paella the Maubuison market proposed!

Day 2 of the Worlds and good news: Matt & Gina are back, yiha! Gina still feels a bit sore and her bruise is turning all kind of lovely colors, but she is able to sail. Instead of Go Pete, Go Gina! They score an 8 in the last race of that day, fighting their way back to the top. Geert and Joana also scored an 8 that day, in the first race. Andi and Martin are the more consistent good sailors right now, they scored a 11, 7 and a 15 today! It is difficult sailing on this lake, very shifty and gusty, you have to look out for the wind and tack and gybe a lot. Don’t just sail to the mark in 2 or 3 tacks like we are used to on the North Sea races!

Wednesday, day 3, the sun is out! Finally nice weather to sail. But the wind is so tough to read well. While Matt was struggling reading the shifts Gina told him that this is normal. You know the shifts are in French, so we don’t understand them! Hahaha! I don’t remember if this was our bad day or not, probably not but anyway on Tuesday or Wednesday we had a very bad day, not a happy boat, not a happy crew, not a happy skipper, a day not to remember. So we are moving on. Best results on this Wednesday were a 5 and 6 for Andi & Martin! An 11 for us and a 4, 8 and a 12 for Matt & Gina.

The 4th day of racing on Thursday was again a very lovely day to sail, it is so much nicer to sail with the sun out. We scored a 7 in the first race, adrenaline rush! This was a great day, we felt so good about this. Everything was right, we took the right shifts, boat speed was brilliant and we rocked :-) Matt & Gina did very well today, they scored a 6, a 5 and a 13 and were already ahead of us in the general ranking without having sailed the first 3 races! While the sun was out we decided to gather all the Falcons after the racing and shoot a cool movie while sailing with the kites up. We are still working on making the final cut, so stay tuned for a cool movie with 5 Falcons (we were the film crew while sailing our Falcon). The different spin colors make it a really nice colorful movie!

And then it was already Friday, the last day of the F16 Worlds. We had to get up at 7, ouch, racing started at 11 that day. But damn we should have slept a bit longer because there was no wind at all. It was a very warm sunny day tough, so relaxing and waiting on the beach was the back-up plan. Just when Ann and I had decided to go swimming in the lake the signals were made: racing is on, leave the beach. Hurry hurry to put the wetsuits on and of we go. Only 1 race of 3 laps was sailed this last day. We scored a 15, right behind Andi and Matt who scored a 12 and an 11.

Final results can be found here: Results F16 Worlds 2011 France

Falcon results:
9 – Andi&Martin – SUI1
14 – Matt&Gina – USA208
15 – Gill&Kathleen – BEL666
17 – Geert&Joanna – NED237
21 – Paul&Ann – GBR207
29 – Marc&Johannes – GER002

After the price giving we went out to eat at a nice ocean view restaurant. We had a big menu with great food and nice Rosé wine. The racing was over, but the holiday still had one great evening left before we had to drive home. Thanks to everybody for making this a great event, we enjoyed it very much and we hope to see everybody again at a next Worlds or other event!

F16 worlds day 4

2011-07-28T18:32:00.002+02:00

Conditions were super today for sailing! Pretty steady breeze, nice double trap conditions for the second and third race and a nice sunshine and warm weather.
Water on the lake was super flat and allowed everyone to power up their boats to the maximum.

Top 4 boats having a heavy battle today. Bundock secured his win already today with again 2,1,2.

The one up boats were not in advantage this day with the heavier wind. Hans Klok is securing his first place among the one ups.

After day 3 with 2 teams finishing top 10 everytime (including a 4 and 5) also day 4 was a good one for the Falcon teams. Again 2 to 3 boats finishing top 10 every race.

Everybody is having great sailing and party at the club. Wonderfull times!

F16 worlds day 3: Falcons are on fire

2011-07-28T11:21:00.005+02:00

Great sailing conditions today. Moderate winds, a bit higher as yesterday, and finally the sun is out. Everyone is enjoying la jolie France.

The racing is getting a lot more mixed today as all the teams are getting used to the shifty conditions. Falcons are moving up in the ranking and everyone is doing good.

Andi Lutz keeps improving his results and is making the pro guys having a real run for their money. With a 9,6,5 he is moving up to 8 place with a tie for 7.

Also Matt is back in the game (12,8,4), really matching the pro teams.

Andi chasing olympic sailor Carolijn Brouwer

Ourselves and Geert are battling to get closer to the top 10 again, and keep up with the Van Helden sisters.

The one-up teams have their own race, with Hans Klok clearly leading that fleet, with a 10th finish as best result, even Greg couldn't match his speed the day he sailed one up.

Tomorrow will be another interesting day on the water for sure!

Texel racing > Texel Dutch Open and Round Texel

2011-06-27T10:52:00.002+02:00

We finished first MIXED multihull and first Belgian team in the Texel Dutch Open on our Falcon F16! We are very pleased with our 19th place out of 68 top competitors. This was a very high level racing field, with again strong winds, crowded starts and huge waves. A more detailed report of our week in Texel will follow this week.

In the mean time have a look at the results of the Texel Dutch Open and enjoy all the action pictures taken by Thom Touw and Boot in Beeld.

This is our favorite image of the week, thanks to and copyright of Thom Touw! This is a picture we will buy and print for our living room :-)

Belgian Championship Multihull 2011

2011-06-27T10:08:00.000+02:00

First weekend of June we had our 3rd race in a row: the Belgian Multihull Championship, 2 days of racing and 1 day a complimentary raid for those who wanted, with a seperate ranking.

After a heavy weekend at the Gaastra Cup we were looking forward to another race but we were crossing our fingers for more regular winds :-)

Thursday promised to be a good day with 5 BFT, Friday was going to blow again and on Saturday they were expecting 5 to 6 BFT. No light wind settings...

Start on Thursday at 1 PM, 4 races, we managed to sail consistently and scored a 10, 9, 10, 11. We were not really happy with the first 2 races. No boat speed, bad communication on board and some tactic errors. The last 2 races we decided to talk again :-) and we managed to get our head out of the boat. On the last race we saw a lot of capsizes, key here was to sail safe and finish! Unfortunately on the last downwind race when going out to trap my adjustable trapeze unleashed and I was waterskiing behind the boat on the lowest position of the trap. We were going fast, there were lots of waves and I didn't have the strenght to pull myself up again. Not a good situation! Gill took over the kite, tried to steer dead downwind and pull me up all at the same time. I tasted a lot of salty sea water! For what felt like minutes I was hanging there, trying to get back on, trying not to panick (not one of my strong points hehe). I asked Gill to hand me my adjustable trap so I could pull myself up higher, he did and finally we managed to get me back on board. Owkay, I was beat, totally done, but we still had to finish. We did and we managed to come in 11th that race, so I guess alot of other crews retired or capsized.

With the weather predictions like they were we decided not to sail the raid on Friday and to just relax and focus our attention on the racing on Saturday. Good decision. Only 9 teams finished the raid, in heavy conditions, alot of wind and huge waves.

On Saturday the day started with such light wind! It was very serene drifting to the racing area. It felt so surreal, hardly 2 BFT while the predictions were for again 5 to 6 BFT. But we didn't have to worry, right after we got to the starting area, the wind flew in, BAM, right away 4 BFT, rising steadily again to almost 6 BFT after the last race (we did 2 that day). We scored a 9 and a 9, how consistent :-) that day, putting us on a final 8th place for the Open Belgian Multihull Championship!

Verry happy with this result altough we now we still can improve a lot, heavy winds are not our cup of tea yet, but with all this practising lately we sure have learnt alot!

Verry happy to finish first MIXED team in this Belgiam Championship on our Falcon F16. This is why I love sailing with Gill, these results make us feel very good about our skills and our boat. Now up to Texel for the Texel Dutch Open and Round Texel. We will keep you posted!

Woooooosh

2011-05-30T21:29:00.004+02:00

Splash! First capsize this season with Kathleen!

What a weekend we have had. This is the windiest I probably have ever sailed in my life.

Saturday morning I left the beach in Heist with one of the youths that would sail another Falcon during the Gaastra F18/F16 race held that weekend. It was already quite windy (about 20 knots) but not too gusty. Once on the water I put the boat downwind and handed over the tiller.

We sailed about 5 minutes without the spinnaker, so Philip could get used to the boat (he normally sailes a Hobie16 or SL16 and was on the Falcon for the first time). Then we pulled the spinnaker and I got out on the wire. Almost immediately he popped the hull up and we were blasting away! What a guy and what a boat, first time on a high performance boat and sailing it to its potential from the first time. I cannot think of any boat where that is possible!

We passed our neighbouring club, hosting the event, at full speed. Some time later, after an upwind leg we beached to prep the second Falcon. Conditions were good, but at the upper wind range....

About an hour later I launched again, this time with Kathleen, to head out to the racing area.

By the time we arrived at the starting line the wind had gone up to about 25 knots with gusts to 30. We started the first race together with the F18's and were racing with 3 other F16's.

In our first upwind leg we had difficulties to keep the boat up to speed. The high waves caused the nose to be blown away each time so I had to correct each time with the tiller. That was slow!

As 2 F16's had gone over we still managed to get first to the upwind mark, with a single handler following in second!

Also on the first downwind leg we needed some time to get a constant speed. 2 gybes later we were ready for the second upwind tack of the race. This time we moved our weight more forward on the boat to keep the nose down and pierce through the waves instead of going over every single one of them. Now we were really getting powered up. Everything was sheeted to the max. We had no more sail, but a wing :-) It was really flat.

On the second downwind we were also able to get the speed in the boat sailing the gusts and surfing the waves. By the time we reached the gate we had built a nice lead on the second F16. But unfortunately in the last gybe disaster struck :-), we went over! By the time we had the spinnaker in, the boat up and did a small upwind leg towards the gate as we drifted, the solo F16 had managed to sneak just in front of us to finish. Second place. The youth team made a second capsize and didn't finish that race.

By the time they gave the start of the second race the wind reached 35 knots. Sailing upwind now felt more like flying and boats were tipping over everywhere. All of the F16's decided to come in together with most of the F18 fleet. Only 8 boats finished the second race.

Great stories were told that evening and great pictures were shown!

The second day is short. Wind was blowing again 30 knots. F18 former world champ Coen de Koning decided to go out without his jib!

On the first start we were with about 12 boats. Clearly a starboard start but also tricky to do so. We went conservative and did a port start...and got hit by a starboard boat, a Hobie WildCat dug his nose into our hull.... End of racing. Luckily only some cosmetics and no structural damage! We managed to get back safely to the club and enjoyed a nice sunny (but very windy) afternoon on the beach.

Well next week we'll be on the water again with a 3day regatta! Stay tuned!

Gill

Interview with Riley McDonald, 14 year old Falcon skipper!

2011-05-04T12:35:00.002+02:00

You all know Matt McDonald as the builder of the Falcon, the latest light weight Formula 16 catamaran, based in Florida. But do you know Riley, his daughter? Let us introduce her.

Riley is sailing with her dad for almost a year now. She is skippering and doing a very great job! She is young, ambitious, light and the perfect skipper together with her dad as crew on the Falcon. We tought it was about time to have a short Friday afternoon interview with Riley.

Can you tell us how old you are right now?

14 yrs. old

How did you get to know sailing?

Well, my dad is a great sailor and he taught me everything I know.

What do you like about sailing?

I love meeting new people and setting new challenges for myself.

What do your friends think about that?

Oh, they love it and they support me and they are very proud of me.

How long have you been sailing the Falcon with your dad?

Almost a year now.

Tell me what you like the most when you are sailing?

The rush of it and at the same time the relaxation.

You are helming the boat and your dad is crewing. That must be a nice feeling that you can tell your dad what he needs to do?

Well, I wish I could tell him what to do, but he doesn't really listen very often :)

What did you think the first time you got on such a big and fast boat?

It was amazing and I didn't want to get off.

We heard you got a call by one of the heads of the youth sailing program and you got an invite to train with the youth girls development program? That’s awesome! When would you be starting this training?

Hopefully I will be starting this summer, but who knows. I'm really excited though.

Any tips or tricks for other young girls who are thinking of starting to sail?

Go for it and sail with someone you can trust.

When is your next race?

Kelly Park River Regatta, May 28 - 29th.

You did very well on the last races: finishing first on Saturday and Sunday at Charlotte Harbour: great job! What was the weekend like? Good winds?

Decent wind and it was fun, but GYC was more my type of wind. Spring Fever was really fun, light winds and frustrating at times. I need a lot more practice to race in that kind of wind because I really need to pay attention to the wind shifts.

What do you like the most: sailing upwind or sailing downwind?

Sailing downwind because it feels easier to me.

Your mom is also a very good sailor, do you ever sail with her too?

Nope.

Thanks Riley for taking the time to answer these questions! She is the future. Starting young on a high performanca multihull, aiming for the best and still having fun!

Falcon sailing @ Bala Open, UK

2011-05-04T09:22:00.003+02:00

Paul & Ann, fellow Falcon sailors in the UK participated in the Bala Open this weekend. They had a great time and sailed a bullet in the first race. From then onwards tough it started blowing very hard and racing was postponed. The next day they ventured out again to find even more wind an gusts. But I'll let Ann tell her story herself below! (she posted this on Catsailor, I took it over here)

It is a great story to read! I hope Ann doesn't have to many bruises from all the capsizing!!! :-) This story reminded me of the video they shot in Zandvoort (Global Challenge 2007) with a camera on the mast of their Blade F16. I dug it up and here it is for you to see for the first time or to rediscover viewing this great video before!

----
This year we arrived in Bala in the light – much better than darkness for squeezing the boat over the stone bridge to get to the water and the campsite. It’s pretty tight, only a couple of centimetres gap each side. We arrived to a friendly welcome from Bala Cat Club members and then found Rutland A sailors Dave and Gordon enjoying a lazy evening – so set up camp and joined them.

Saturday morning was sunny with a stiff breeze, so we put the boat together and looked forward to the event with anticipation. There were 21 catamarans signed up to take part – great! The first race started promptly at 12. The wind was great for us, and we were third round the upwind mark close behind Gordon on his A, and one of the local crews on an F18. The rest of the lap was a tussle between us and the lead F18. We finally got them on the next upwind. We kept the lead through the second lap, but the wind was building and we saw several boats retire. The third lap was hairy – the wind was stronger and still building. There were capsizes all over the course. We managed to stay the right way up, but didn’t push it. We won the race! An excellent start for us and the F16.

Unfortunately, after lunch, the wind was still too strong to sail safely, so racing was postponed, then postponed again, then finally abandoned for the day. We enjoyed a couple of drinks and a meal at the pub.

Sunday morning looked more promising, a nice breeze, perhaps a little more gusty than Saturday. Unfortunately, the wind kept building again. By 11 when the racing was due to start, several crews had decided not to go out. Paul and I decided to go out and see. It was certainly gusty! We had an average start, but were doing well upwind. The course was different to Saturday though, and on rounding the mark, it turned out there was not enough water to get the kite up, so a gybing/raising mess ensued and resulted in a capsize! Damn. We were dangerously close to the shore, so getting the boat up and away without damage was a bit fraught. Just as we were getting going, we capsized again through a gybe. Again, far to close to the shore. We’d lost a lot of time, but decided to carry on since boats were going over all the time, and we might make up some ground. We limped down to the downwind mark, rounded and got ready to get back into the groove going upwind. It was impossible. The gusts were crazy, the wind shifts were almost tacking us. It wasn’t fun any more. We decided to call it a day to avoid breaking the boat or us! Only 5 boats finished the race. Racing was abandoned for the rest of the day. We dropped to 5th place.

Monday morning we decided to start early, hoping the wind was lighter, and we’d get some races in. The conditions were similar to Sunday, perhaps a little less, but still with fierce gusts coming through. We decided to go out and see. We nearly didn’t start since we had a few failed attempts at bearing away until the gust had passed! We had a terrible start, but kept going. Managed to almost complete the downwind leg of the first lap until a gust hit as we were gybing. Despite being almost dead downwind, we did an almost perfect pitch pole! Both hulls buried, a nose dive – complete turtle! Both unharmed, we set about righting the boat once more. Again we started drifting towards the shore, and had to call the rescue boat for help. He grabbed the spin pole to try to pull us out of danger. It snapped. But we were saved from the rocks. We limped back to shore just as the race was shortened and sailing abandoned again. Only two F18s finished the race! Bacon rolls were most welcome.

So, we came 4th out of 21! And were rewarded with a box of chocolates – more for giving it a go I think! First place went to an F18 crew from Glasgow St Helens who had managed to keep their boat the right way up all weekend, and one of only two boats to finish all three races.

Despite the lack of sailing, it was a great weekend. Wonderful hospitality, great company and plenty of sunshine. And some great capsize and righting practice! Thanks Bala Cat Club - we’ll be back next year!

Ann and Paul

We are back!

2011-04-27T09:28:00.000+02:00

Ok so I admit it has been way to quiet over here. No excuses just apologies :-)

Winter is far away already since we had such lovely weather in Belgium the last 4 weeks. Sunshine, warm temperatures and a good breeze for sailing. So let’s go for a quick recap of our start of the season so everybody is again up to date!

First of all I would like to introduce you to Arnout & Klaas Viktor.

These young Hobie 16 sailors are going to sail a Falcon F16 for us this season. We are very excited to have this young talented guys sailing the Falcon. We already had 3 training sessions with them and they rock. They mastered the boat very quickly and they are able to get the maximum out of the boat. This weekend Arnout will be sailing the Paascup at VVW Heist, unfortunately not with Klaas but with a stand-in crew. We will be there too and we look forward to see how things will run along the race course.

We have also been very busy with TheBoatShop.be, unloading containers and putting Falcons together. This weekend we delivered the last Falcon in Belgium, in Oostduinkerke. We showed him how to rig and derig and Gill took him along a test ride. Next day we already got a text thanking us and he already went out again on his own and he had a great ride and was very happy. We love to hear this feedback! Test sails were also on the agenda this month. We had a very good turnout and lots of nice feedback and interested people.

Last Sunday we had a training sessions with Harry Michel Peeters and we learned a lot. First of all we learned the next day where to find our muscles :-) Ouch beginning of the season and lots of tacks and gybes made us feel old the next day. We practiced starts, we tacked 10 times in a row each time Harry Michel blew his whistle and we did a race to finish the day of training. Afterwards a debriefing to let us know where to improve. We are ready for our first race of this season: the Paascup at VVW Heist, this Saturday. Let’s hope for a good turnout and perfect weather (sun and wind!).

As of now we will be back soon with lots of updates on our racing season. Stay tuned!

We wish you all a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

2010-12-24T10:41:00.002+01:00

To all our readers: we wish you happy holidays! May 2011 be filled with good health, cool sailing trips, lots of sun and nice winds! Gill & Kathleen

September and October activities

2010-10-29T11:42:00.008+02:00

So what have we been up too in September and October? It’s been very quiet here, luckily because we have spent a lot of time on the water. Those last 2 months also mark the last months of our season, so we had to sail. Winter’s here now, so time for a little write up. After that: 4 months of thinking about sailing, looking at video’s of sailing, dreaming of sailing,… in between doing some other winter stuff: mountainbiking, climbing, cooking, reading and renovating our house a bit more.

Gill started September of by participating in the RBSC extreme. His report is already on here. All I did that weekend was sailing our Falcon alone with Gill’s dad as my crew and getting tangled in a kite surfer just as we went trough the surf… ouch. No damage, but a lot of shouting and swearing! Sorry! After that I had a nice upwind sail and I was looking forward to head back with the kite up. If it weren’t for Gill’s dad who hadn’t rigged the kite correctly… hehe. It was a nice day out nevertheless!

On Sunday I went sailing with Wim Deca on his Nacra Infusion. We sailed towards the Dutch border to catch up with the guys from the Extreme but we didn’t see them. How should we have known that they were already on the other side of the coast watching the new wind mills from the Thorton bank. We managed to catch up with Gill and Manu tough just as we were both getting back in. Cool!

On my birthday, beginning of October, we decided to participate in the RBSC club championship. Best birthday ever! Not! There was sooooo little wind, very boring, and so not our kind of weather. Humph. We didn’t sail well that day and weren’t happy with each other on the water. Luckily RBSC knows how to throw in a good party and so that day did end very well with yummy food, cava, friends and music! The next day we were supposed to go out for a cruise to Cadzand to have lunch over there. But it was hauling! I think we hit almost 7 BFT. Wind was inland so flat water, but way too gusty to get there safely. So we hung out on the beach at VVW Heist instead.

In October we sailed a lot, we had such good weather the first 2 weeks, with a lot of sun, temperatures near 20°C and good wind. We went to Cadzand for a sail + lunch date, we had some training in front of our coast to practice our tacks and gybes and we finetuned the boat some more, getting ready for the last race of our season… in Germany! We were invited by Marck Kühn to sail the Brombachsee regatta on the 23rd and 24th of October, so we decided to take a long weekend and enjoy some German sailing. Report of a great weekend will follow shortly.

RBSC Extreme 2010 - the longest ever

2010-09-14T20:57:00.003+02:00

As the last 2 years also this year I sailed the 3 days long distance race RBSC Extreme with my sailing partner Manu on his Nacra Infusion F18.

The last 2 years were really fun and the weather forecast (3 days of 15 to 20 knots) promised for some great North Sea sailing.

At 10 am 12 cats started of towards the first gps waypoint, first of the many to come.
This year the organisation prepared no less then 220 waypoints to guide us along the Belgian and Dutch North Sea coast and Ducth inland waters.

Keywords of the first day: 15 to 20 knots, spinnaker sailing, speed.
In less then 6 hours we covered 70 miles or 130 km! Meaning we ended at the end of the first day just below Rotterdam in Hellevoetsluis.
We had a day of ups and downs with a 1rst and a 3rd, but also with a couple of 7ns...

The warm up of the second day was Rondje Tiengemeten, a yearly long distance race held by the sailing club Hellecat. By 12 we finished the round and were ready to go through the lock out to the sea again. 5 hours of upwind sailing were waiting. Luckily the wind went down to a nice 15 knots after the first hour, so we returned from survival mode to racing mode :-).
We steadily finished around 5th position, but felt we improved during the day as we got more used to sailing with each other.
Finally we ended up at the Roompot in Holland, 110 km from where we started this morning.

On the last day we had no idea what the organisation had still up for us. We were just 2 hours from your club, but imagined they wouldn't just let us sail in like that.
What a great last day we had. After a couple of normal legs, we started of for a 10 mile upwind leg. The whole fleet was very close to each other then entire time. Every 15 minutes the fleet crossed each other, everytime anxious to see if positions had changed. Finally we were able to finish 2nd in this leg, with a finish at the Thorton bank, where they are installing an offshore windfarm at the moment.

Once there we headed back to shore a 17 mile leg! What a great spinnaker run!

I'll still upload the original gps track we sailing if I'm able to download it.

This was the longest extreme we had sailed up to know. The organisation each time knows to surprise us and we'll be competing again next year to defend of final 5th position!

Club Championship @ VVW Heist

2010-08-24T11:28:00.003+02:00

Stress!! Being the title defender sure brings the nerves into the game. This game should have been played last week but since we were faced with Force 7 winds on that Sunday the Championship was postponed to this Sunday.

After getting back from a great Raf Verhaeghe Challenge at Oostduinkerke on Saturday night we decided to rig the Falcon on Sunday morning. Start of the race was scheduled at 1PM so with our newly mastered fast rigging techniques we could put the mast up on Sunday and still be ready in time to start the race.

Predictions were Force 3-4, South Westerly and rain. Wind speed and direction perfect (flat seas!), rain not so much. But still after lap 1 of race 1 we were happy it started to rain. The first lap started in very low winds, very stressful, so we were happy a rain cloud passed over so the wind could pick up again. It is so much more fun to be able to trap out with 2 than to just sit in on the hull. We got first at the upwind mark and could immediately hoist the spinnaker. Gill was so focused on doing it right tough that he immediately decided to gybe of to the sea where the bigger winds were. But hey wait not so fast, you forgot to take the spreader mark. Ouch. I didn't notice it, and neither did Gill. It was only at the second lap when we did take the spreader mark, Gill noticed we didn't take it the first time. Oh no, no way back now, not taking this mark meant that we got a DSQ for this first race, altough we finished first. Sh*t! :-)

Even more stress from then on, since we really needed 3 more races so we could get one reduction. Thanks to the racing committee (they were really fast!) we did manage to pull of 4 races that day. And all 3 next races we scored a bullet. Fffew. We were very happy to take the title after all that stress!

We were again very thrilled with our boat speed and power. We found the right settings! Everything went very smoothly. Altough we have found some more points to focus on. We noticed that we loose speed during a gybe, so we'll have to practice to maintain boat speed after gybing.

The day ended with us receiving the very nice trophy for the second time in a row and a nice Fajitas dinner at the club.

Right now we are taking a holiday from sailing. We are going to explore the beauty of nature in Sweden and after that Gill will be ready to sail the RBSC Extreme again, with Manu Proot (who came in 3rd at the RBSC Diamond Cup, congratulations!). After that our next big race will be the Club Championship at RBSC Duinbergen. We are very much looking forward to that since we want to compare our new found skills and speed to the very good sailors Patrick Demesmaeker, Vincent Thierry, Jan Verlinden and Wim Deca. Exciting!

Raf Verhaeghe Challenge 2010 @ SYCOD Oostduinkerke

2010-08-24T11:10:00.004+02:00

The Raf Verhaeghe Challenge is a 2 day race in Oostduinkerke that has been on our "want to do" list for ages. Finally this year we could schedule it and we were really looking forward to it. Unfortunately the weekend before the weather gods didn't cooperate so our Club Championship @ VVW Heist was postponed to the Sunday of the Raf Verhaeghe Challenge! Dilemma...

We couldn't keep away from our Club Championship, moreover since we were the title defenders. But we also didn't want to stay away from the Raf Verhaeghe. So we decided to take it all and sail the Raf Verhaeghe on Saturday and the Club Championship on Sunday. This meant of course that we would need to trailer the boat to Oostduinkerke on Friday, set up, sail and then on Saturday evening break everything of again and trailer back to Heist. Let's say we now know how to rig and de-rig our Falcon very quickly :-)

We are very happy we chose this option, because we had a great weekend. We really feel we stepped up our level again. On Saturday we scored a 3, a 3, a 5 and a 4 and ended 4th overall after day 1. Our boat speed was amazing. Boat handling is also getting better and since we bought a TacTic compass we now also start to play the wind shifts more. So overall we are still improving :-)

We had 4 races in different conditions. The first 2 races we had high winds (force 4-5) and going upwind we faced long waves. Race 1 started with a pin end favored start line so we started on starboard and we managed to cross the fleet! Great feeling. We would have been 1st at the upwind mark if we got the mark right, but we had to make 1 extra tack. This put us in second position at the upwind mark. A short spreader and a quick spin hoist and than off to the gate. We had to do 3 laps each race and since there was a lot of wind we really were totally beat after race 1. But we were also very happy since we finished 3rd! The French Black Moon sailors, Joel Lefèvre & Erwan Griziaux, called our Falcon "la bombe", how cool is that!

After the races Gill took interested sailor Bert Desmet along for a test sail on the Falcon. Bert was really impressed with the boat and back on shore we also had some more interested people checking out the Falcon and asking questions. Very nice!

The day ended with a tasty paella served at the club and a good night of socializing with the SYCOD sailors. Great bunch of people!

The final results of the 2 day event are not yet available. As soon as we receive them I'll update this post. We also have some nice pictures shot on Saturday, so I hope we'll get them too.

F16 Europeans - Day 5

2010-07-26T11:46:00.003+02:00

Day 5, last day, and a very important day for us. With our performance yesterday we managed to loose our 7th place, and were now in a draw with Chris Sproat. He was 8th, we were 9th and place 7 got taken by Paul & Ann on their Falcon. So Chris was nicely sitting in between 2 Falcons :-)

It was the decision day for us. We were only separated with 1 point from Paul and on a draw with Chris, how cool a racing day this would be!

But the weather gods decided the decision was made and it rained and t-stormed all day. So at 15h the decision was made: no more racing. So there it was, the F16 Europeans ended with a non sailing day. But we do not complain, we had a fantastic week, with really the best sailing we ever had. Such a great scenery, nice weather, 12 races, sun, great people to hang out with. It was all marvelous!

The club organised a perfect regatta and it ended with a perfect price giving with prizes and food and drinks, offered by their sponsor, Ferrari. The winners of this event are the very young Australian "kids": Jason Waterhouse & his crew Lisa. Congratulations!

Full results on the F16 website.

Stay tuned for a picture and video blog, following soon!

F16 Europeans - Day 4

2010-07-26T11:35:00.002+02:00

Day 4 started of with no wind, a very quiet sunny day. The locals didn't really know what to expect. Would the wind kick in at 13h? Or would it be a no wind day? If the locals don't have a clue, it is really hard to decide what to do! So we set the boat up for a very light day, mast and jib were all rigged for little wind. At 12h everyone started to drift away to the course side, daring to hope for some more wind to race.

At 13h we crossed the start line and so did the wind! There she was, blowing in all force, probably 20 knots. Haha that wind can fool you. So there we were, all rigged up for light wind and it was blowing. We were heavily overpowered. Gill had to put in all his effort just to steer (we had a very heavy helm due to the wrong mast setting) and he was beat just after race 1. We finished 10th, and were not happy about that.

In between race 1 and 2 we adjusted the settings for the heavier wind (jib and mast settings). We hit the starting line for the 2nd time that day and where was the wind??? Hmmm okay so now the wind was gone, well not gone, but still a fair bit lesser than race 1. Cracks you up heh? So we were not overpowered, and luckily we managed to sail well and we ended up 6th, before Paul & Ann but behind Cris Sproat.

Our goal of today was to stay before Paul and Chris, so we could keep our place 7. In race 1 we didn't manage to defend our place, and in race 2 we could keep Paul behind us, but not Chris. Ooooh how exciting, very very bad for the nerves...

Race 3 had almost the same wind as race 2, but a bit more shifty. We played it well and managed to get an 8th for the last race, in a tight duel at the gate with the Viper Dutch Boys Thijs Visser. We finished just before Paul did, but after Chris again (he really found his groove on day 4!).

Back to shore in a nice one on one race with Paul and Ann. For the fun of it we even double trapped with the kite up and Gill's dad filmed this. So stay tuned for some cool footage later on :-)

This day ended perfectly with a barbeque with some of the sailors at their appartment. To make it perfect we even had a T-Storm and some rain, but luckily their terrace had a covered top so we could stay outside to enjoy the lightning over the mountains.

F16 Europeans - day 3

2010-07-21T18:24:00.002+02:00

Day 3 is over and we made it again :-) It was a lighter day today but very exciting. We did very very bad in race 2, finishing 11th. Boehoe. We had a bad start in that race, due to this bad start we didn't have clean air on the left side of the course, so we decided to tack and found ourselves without pressure in the middle of the course. To top it all of we managed to over sail the gate in the last lap and then there was a kite surfer in the way so we had to douse the kite before the gate, so yeah, not a good race at all. So that will be one of our throw outs.

We are currently in a draw for 7th place with Paul and Anne, who are also sailing a Falcon, so that is really great and also very exciting for the next races.

Race 1 was our best race today, were we scored a 6. We had a clean high start and we were able to tack away quick to the right side of the course and that did pay off. We were 3rd at the upwind mark, but then we lost 1 place in the downwind run and than another 2 in the upwind mark (we over sailed the upwind mark a bit).

Race 3 we scored a 7, so also very happy about that. We had great pressure going downwind with the kite (Kathleen had to sit in, because there was not enough wind to trap out) and we had alot of speed and depth.

Overall we are very happy with our results, and we find ourselves as one of the 1st amateur sailors. The top 6 is not possible anymore due to the difference in points but we will do our utmost to keep our 7th place. And I am sure Paul will do the same :-)

Tonight we have a dinner and party offered by the club, looking forward to that. Gill's dad also got out for a little ride on the Falcon today after we came back from the races. He just took the jib of, and of he went. He had a great ride and he enjoyed the beautiful lake Como scenery :-)

F16 Europeans - day 2

2010-07-20T19:11:00.003+02:00

Day 2 is over and it was perfect. A bit more wind than yesterday for all 3 races. Very close rasing, closer than yesterday. It was very exciting. And the downwind races were so fast, whow! We loved it. But now I (Kathleen) am totally knackered. I feel my arms!

We managed to get in the top 5 today with our last race, a 4!! Paul and Ann were flying on their Falcon, they scored an 8, a 3 and another 3, great!

Our final scores for today: 10, 7 and 4, getting better yet again :-)

There were some protests and some OCS, so could be the scoring changes a bit.
We had again 3 races, but the course was a bit smaller, so it all went a bit faster. Our downwind speed was great and we were overtaking boats, sailing deeper and faster.
Upwind was another story, we had great laps, but also not so great laps. Paul and Ann were able to point higher and they were faster. So we will have a talk to them I guess :-)

Now off to eat something, bon appetito!

F16 Europeans - day 1

2010-07-20T11:52:00.000+02:00

Day 1 of the Europeans

Day 1. Skippers meeting at 11 and the race course gets announced: 3 laps, upwind mark - spreader mark - gate. Three races are scheduled for today and for all the 5 days of the week.
Still no wind, but weather prediction is that winds of 15 knots will kick in.

12h30 all 17 boats get on the water. By the time we got to the racing area the course is set. Great organisation and we start on time, 13h.
The starts are tight but fair, no recalls, no Black Flags.
We manage to get off the starting line very good each time. About 4rth to the committee boat and always with clean air.
Shortly after the start everyone tacks to shore where the wind and the shifts are. Up to the shore it's a drag race.
Because of our clean starts we manage to be in top 5 almost each time we round the upwind mark for the first time. With the spinnaker up we learned to leave the boards down even in 15 knots as the lake is sooo flat :-)
Once we did this we could keep up and even gain some boat lengths on the pro teams.
On the upwind beat we tend to loose a place each time. After three laps we are about in 8th position to finish everytime.

We'll change our mast settings just a bit to have a better upwind performance and to go for that top 5 today! Well we'll see how that turns out today!

First days at Como and the practice race

2010-07-18T21:52:00.003+02:00

Sun, water, wind, nice sceneries. That is Como, Italy in a nutshell. A great place for the first F16 Europeans.

We arrived on Thursday, a few days before the actual regatta that starts on Monday.
We had the boat measured on Friday morning. After that we set it up, adjusted some things we already wanted to do long time, but hadn't have the time for, and then set off for the first short sail.
Damn, what a great lake! From 1 pm onwards the wind starts to blow Southernly (Nothernly in the morning) untill about 6 pm. When we went on the water it was about 15 knots and a great ride with the spinnaker.
Also the wind and water is so hot you only need a shorty and that is still too warm at some times! :-)

Same thing on Saturday! That looked promising for the rest of the week and the championship!

Saturday most of the teams arrived and we could meet up with some familiar faces we hadn't seen for a long time.

Today we did our first race, the practice race. In fact it was held together with a local regatta.
2 small races were done today, with only 5 boats on the starting line the first race. Us and 4 Viper teams.
The wind was blowing Northernly the whole day because a storm hit us last night and this caused very shifty wind and a lot of dead spots during the race.
This race we finished 4rth, with Darren Bundock and Carolijn Brouwer having a huge lead of the rest of us.

The second race of the day most of the F16's were out on the water. (I think we are about 17 in total).
We positioned quite late for the start, but found a hole 4 boats from the committee boat. We had a great start and got clean air immediately.
We tacked quite early and got a great shift on that tack. The whole fleet turned to early to the upwind mark and had to do 2 more tacks, while we sailed into more wind by going further.
This got us first to the upwind mark.
We could keep our position up to the downwind mark as we did a great thing looking for pressure again.

We continued to keep our lead second time at the upwind mark, but a group of 5 boats had gained a bit on us.
On the second downwind we made the mistake on to gybe immediately into the pressure and got caught in a deadspot 50 meters below the upwind buoy!
We saw the group of 5 gybed immediately and sailing 50 meters higher with the hull out of the water.... (Cursing on the boat :-) )
By the time we got to the finish line they had overtaken us moving us to 7th.... Well at least we know we got our boatspeed right :-)

We didn't manage to do another race as the wind totally died and everyone headed back to the club.

Well great first day for us, but I'm sure we'll have to be at our very best from start to finish if we want to be at the top of the fleet.

Check our our website for more pictures the coming days.

Gamblers long distance

2010-06-13T17:18:00.004+02:00

This race is always a fun race.
If you are looking for a fun race during the season take this format.
In short: you are given a course at the time of briefing. You have 10 minutes to guess how long it will take you to do the course. Finishing time is 4pm, starting time depends on how long you think you will be sailing. (more here)

The course this year was 21 NM. Wind force 5. Waves height 1,5 meters. Wind direction 5°.
(the white line is approx. 6.8 NM. The black arrow is the wind direction).

We started at 2.20 pm (last boat). Our initial guess was 2.10, but I got persuaded by another team to go for 2.20. :-)

After 5 minutes on the beat we (me and my dad) saw that getting to the first mark in 30 minutes was impossible... Or we would have to sail fast on the half wind legs or someone had to do something wrong if we still wanted to win.

45 minutes of heavy seas later we got to the 1st mark. To our surprise we saw the 2 F18's - that had started 10 and 20 minutes before us - sailing just in front of us. (all the others left even earlier and even with the penalty we could get for finishing late we would still be in front of them. The 2 teams just in front were the ones to get!)

The line from mark 1 to mark 2 was a terrible one. The line we had to sail was about 15 to 20 degrees off from a spinnaker leg. This got everyone stuck in a no spinnaker, heavy wind, high waves 20 minutes of sailing. The F18 slighty gained on us as we were slowed down because the bow digged into the waves at times. We tried to speed up as much as possible as the boat didn't pitchpole at all. If the nose went in, it nicely came up again, but at a loss of speed ofcourse.
To make it worse an ocean container cargo passed us at 500 meters giving us even bigger waves right from the side.

The leg from mark 2 to 3 was more our cup of tea. First we surfed down the big waves to "calmer" waters. Once there we could sail almost half wind, bearing away and making lots of speed in the gusts. By the time we got to the 3rd mark we passed an F18 and were right behind the other.

Now we were very close to shore and the waves were a lot shorter at the same height there. The first half we played it safe and didn't trap out. We could keep up with the boat in front but didn't come any closer neither.
The second half I decided to trap out in an all or nothing attempt to catch the leaders. Slowly we gained some ground, but way to little to catch them before the finish line.

The time we finished behind them was going to be multiplied by 3 as a penalty. We started 20 minutes after this team, so if we were 6 minutes or earlier behind them we would win, otherwise they would....

And we were just 5 minutes behind! Yes!

Duinenresidence/Zeeschelde Cup - 29/5/2010

2010-05-31T14:42:00.005+02:00

What an awesome day we had! I must admit that right before the start of the Duinenresidence Cup I was really scared of what was about to happen. There was a lot of wind announced, inland wind, so very gusty. When we hit the water it became immediately clear that the predictions were right. And when Luc Claeys announced that he was not going to participate, my heart stopped for a second :-). Luckily as soon as I start the timer and the 5 minutes start procedure every fear disappears. I am focused and concentrated and in full control. We had a good start but couldn’t tack right away. Joris Vandeneynde and Vincent Thery tacked right away after the start and they gained a lot, they were first at the upwind mark. After the upwind mark we had a short half wind leg and than back to the upwind mark.

Once we finished this loop we were off for a long ride along the Belgian Coast up until Holland. It was an awesome ride, lots of wind, lots of gusts, but we managed to keep control. Gill trapped out and I was stuck sitting at the back, focusing on the wind, the shifts and keeping the main sheet on the boat (all very important tasks of course).

Lots of wind!

We had a real fight with a Capricorn, who passed us, then we passed them, they came closer, but we managed to stay in front. Just before the finish we managed to steer a bit deeper so we had more wind and we could trap out the both of us a bit sooner than the Capricorn and Joris & Vincent on their Infusion. This few minutes advantage on the trap made a huge difference and we could easily keep up our lead. We finished 4th.

Very pleased we had a short lunch break on a sandbank in the estuary of the Schelde.

We didn’t stay long because the wind was only increasing. After a half wind start (wow exiting and very easy to gain speed right at the start) we found ourselves in a bad position, almost behind all the F18’s, with no wind and no speed. We decided to pull the spi. After a short ride, we took the kite back in, bad decision, we were still behind and we couldn’t steer high enough to get out of the estuary. So the kite back up (hello muscles). We gained speed and managed to cross a lot of boats. Finally out of the estuary we could steer half wind again, so the kite got stowed away, but now we wouldn’t need it again today. Again in the half wind leg I sat on the trampoline while Gill trapped out, way to the back. Our boat speed is great and we passed a lot of boats. After a while we found ourselves in 4th place. Drag racing started. We had Joris & Vincent right next to us but they stayed closer to the beach. We were a bit deeper and had therefore also a bit more wind. Later on the leg I finally was allowed to stop sitting and trap out also :-). This was great. We could easily fly the hull and keep control, no diving and full speed.

It was incredibly exciting to race so close to each other. We also had Francis Proot on his wildcat close to us. He was way in front of us but capsized. Just when we passed him they righted the boat and started to come after us. We had the same boat speed so they were not able to pass us. And a few minutes later they went in again. Ouch. They managed to capsize 4 times that day! They must have been tired afterwards. Once we reached the Belgian coast we managed to stay well ahead of Joris & Vincent so our place was secured. We finished 4th, what a consistent result. Minutes after we hit the beach rain dropped down from the skies. And it never stopped raining that evening. We derigged our boat and headed to RBSC Duinbergen for the price giving. The end result was a 4th place for us. So we just missed a spot on the podium but we are really happy with our performance. We managed to stay before 18 good F18 teams, our boat speed was great, we had control and we didn’t capsize in those heavy winds, yihaa!

This event was really great. 22 boats in the C1 class (20 F18’s, 1 Nacra 20 and us on the Falcon F16) and a great ride along the coast. I was really happy I did not let my initial fear from before the start rule out this great race. Up to the next one!

Eurocat 2010

2010-05-03T20:08:00.003+02:00

The best edition up to now! (for us).

Last year we ended 25th and this year we managed to get into the top 10 (9th place) out of 53 boats!

Again a great event as Eurocat always is. Great scenery to sail in, great fun as we are with a big group of Belgian sailors and a great race as a lot of great teams show up.

In the C1 class the teams to beat were Carolijn Brouwer/Liz Hurley and Chris Sproat/Georgina Burke.

We left early so we had some days off there before the regatta. It gave us some time to get some more sailing together as most of the sailing lately were test sessions....

Friday the first day of racing was scheduled, a second one on Sunday.
On the first day we had almost perfect sailing conditions. In the beginning quite light with no trapping, the final 2 races double trapping in a nice sunshine!

We did 4 races on Friday and we managed to get good starts everytime. Our boatcontrol in these conditions has become very good so from this year onwards we are trying to start in the first line.
On the course our boatspeed is good too (we even came first at the upwind mark once!). Especially when we double trap we sail great angles upwind and are able to keep the hull our of the water longer and longer which means speed! :-) Kathleen is working her ass off going higher and lower in the trapeze to keep the hull steady :-)
Reward of the day: 8th place!

On Sunday the wind increased to 20+ knots. We did three races and my body was happy they didn't have the time to throw in a forth! :-)

Also now we tried to start front row, but in these conditions it was a bit more difficult. We ended up in the front row but didn't get up to speed fast enough everytime and had to deal with bad air...
During the 3 races we started to push the boat harder and harder. It was a real test as this was the first time we sailed these conditions with the Falcon. I have the feeling we didn't came near the limits of the boat and this gives great prospectives for the future! :-)
Especially on the downwind the boat was a sweetie! Super stable to sail and by the end of the third race we managed to do a downwind leg with a hull out of the water most of the time! And what a great speed we had! Great kicks on the F16!

First race of the season: the Paascup!

2010-04-19T10:47:00.004+02:00

Saturday April 17 started of with no wind. We had a nice and sunny time on the beach rigging the boat.

At 12h the sea breeze started to blow and the scheduled start at 13h could begin. We had 15 boats at the starting line, which is a nice amount considering the early start of the season with still very cold sea water (7°C) and an outside temperature of around 12°C.

The first race started with not that much wind, but during the race it gradually build and we finished the last race of the day at 16h with a nice 4 BFT. The sun was shining, we had no waves to speak of so this was a very good start of the season. It was also nice that we started of with little wind (no trapping out), to a bit more wind (only me on the trap) to the nice 4 BFT were both Gill and I could trap out upwind and were I could trap downwind too.

We had good clean starts 3 of the 4 times were we tacked of to starboard real soon because the wind was a bit more stable on that side of the course. Those 3 times we started well we also won! And the only time our start was not that good we finished 2nd, right behind The Zeppos team (Jan & Iris) on their Nacra Infusion. There was also an A-Cat racing and man his boat speed and boat handling were awesome! Overall he finished 3rd!

We were very happy with the boat speed and the boat's reaction on the wind and waves. Last year we always came in right behind or together with the Zeppos team (especially in light wind they always beat us) so we are super thrilled that this time we had an advantage on them and we won 3 of the 4 times. It is a great indication of how well this new Falcon performs. She is a beauty and a speed devil.

Upwind we gained a little on the Infusion and we also had a sharper angle to wind. Downwind with the Blade we always lost ground as we were stuck at the back beam and we did not generate lift easy. With the Falcon we noticed that we really had more volume to the front and so we could sit way more to the front, generating more lift immediately. It was awesome how easy it was to fly the hull and to gain speed and depth.

We managed to get in 4 races (2 laps each) and we had a great 4 hours sailing day. When we got back to the beach we had a nice Sommersby (apple cider) reception and then the price giving wich announced us the winner of the day! Yieha! :-)

The day ended with a nice Black Mango party at the club. Thanks to VVW Heist for the organisation of the first race of this season wich started of really beautiful for us!

How many meters of bungee go in a beach cat?

2010-04-04T20:26:00.002+02:00

Today was our first sail out on the sea. How do you call those watery things? Waves? Damn. Forecasts for this weekend were different on every site. Some predicted force 3 other up to force 6. Well it turned out to be a force 4 rapidly going towards 5.

We had a very nice hour of sailing to get used to the rougher sea conditions again. Only one sparring partner out there, our Blade in one-up mode.

Back on the beach we decided not to go out again in the afternoon and did some fine tuning of the lines on board.
I must say the Falcon comes well equipped and had a clean tramp to start. But I thought it could be even more tidy :-)

We've been spending 2 hours tying bungees, undoing them, cutting them too small, re-doing them,... Finally all the bungees are there. Right length and right size as that is equally important!

I hope we'll be able to have another sail tomorrow to test it all out!

How many meters? I'm guessing 18...

First sail of the Falcon F16 in Europe!

2010-03-29T14:01:00.003+02:00

This weekend we finally had our maiden trip with the Falcon. And it was awesome :-)

We sailed at Lac l'eau d'heure, a lake in the middle of Belgium. At this time of the year this location is great because even if there is a lot of wind you will have almost no waves and no chance of getting too wet in the still very cold weather!

Temperature was about 10°C and the sun even came out for a little while. We had almost 3 hours on the water and it was good to get to know the boat. It's very stable in the water, very easy to handle. I liked the spin tack release to pull the spi forward during the spreader run.

There was not that much wind (3 BFT?) but we had alot of power with the spi on.

Here are the first pictures!

All the pictures can be found on our
Facebook page

And they will be uploaded to our website also later on together with some video stuff!

Article on CatsailingNews

2010-03-18T08:50:00.002+01:00

Martin Vanzulli wrote a nice article on CatSailingNews. He compares the new Falcon F16 to the Nacra Infusion, something we also think to be true. Head over there to read more.

This weekend we'll put the boat together and next weekend we will have our first sail at Lac l'eau d'heure, cannot wait!

Stay tuned for more pictures.

Spring is in the air...

2010-03-01T14:21:00.004+01:00

The sun is finally shining again in Belgium! And that sure feels good. We are counting the days to go back on the water again. Next Saturday, March 6, our new Falcon F16 enters the Antwerp harbor and from there it will be transported to our house in Ostend. Let's hope the container transport goes well. And than we can finally touch our new beauty :-)

In lack of real sailing we are already planning carefully where we will attend and how much we will sail this spring/summer. Our first race will be in Belgium, on March 27 and 28. Like last year we will be attending the Season's Opening on Lac l'Eau d'Heure (inland water, so no waves and easy winds should make for a nice wake-up event). We hope to have some practice before the race, so we will be already there as from Friday, to give our new Falcon F16, his/her first run.

I am also really looking forward to the first big international event, Eurocat Carnac, which will only be 3 days this year (2 days of buoy races and 1 day long distance). We'll be there for one whole week to enjoy the beautiful environment and to be prepared real well for the fierce international competition.

And then there is also the F16 Europeans, which will be held at Lake Como this year. For a whole week around July 21 (our Belgian national holiday) we will be sailing in plenty of sunshine, tasting excellent food and partying with alot of F16 sailors, woehoe!

So in short lots to look forward to and ofcourse we will keep you updated!

A new season, a new boat!

2010-02-07T21:05:00.003+01:00

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...

2009-10-26T10:53:00.006+01:00

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

2009-09-29T16:33:00.004+02:00

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!

2009-09-17T20:16:00.014+02:00

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

2009-09-07T20:29:00.004+02:00

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

2009-08-11T08:47:00.001+02:00

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

2009-07-26T19:55:00.008+02:00

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

2009-07-21T21:45:00.003+02:00

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!

2009-07-15T09:59:00.014+02:00

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!

2009-07-10T16:36:00.003+02:00

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.

3rd F16 arrived in Knokke-Heist!

2009-07-03T18:25:00.006+02:00

Last weekend the 3rd Formula 16 catamaran arrived in Knokke-Heist. It is great for us and shows that the concept slowly gets known in Belgium and that it has started to grow. The other great thing is that all three boats together show the versatility and flexibility of the concept. The guy who just bought the Viper F16 sails it with his daughter, while the guy at our club is mostly a single handler, ocasionally sailing 2up).

After the first 2 days of sailing they were very happy about the boat and we hope to have a sail with them later.

For more information about the Formula 16 concept and the Blade F16 in particular or a test sail, feel free to contact me.

One up cup

2009-07-03T17:51:00.003+02:00

As last year the one up cup was held again at the RBSC Zoute. It's is a great location to sail and the races are very well prepared. And I should forget the great barbecue they have!

Also this year the A-cat Belgian nationals were held during the same weekend. 13 A's turned up so I was confident there would be a nice racing field.
With the F18 worlds coming close (starting 11th of June), the turnout of the other singlehandlers was very low (3 compared to 13 last year). The A's also had a seperate start, leaving us starting with 3 boats....

Both of the racing days were quite comparable to each other. Both started with lots of fog and about 7 knots of wind. Towards the end of the day the wind gradually dropped to about 4 I guess.

Great thing that there were only three of us racing was that you could really concentrate on getting settings right (because you hardly ever had someone near you) and I learned a lot about pointing and getting to feel the boat in light conditions (there simply was no one to follow).

Generally I could say that I could trap out faster then the FXones upwind (but those A's are trapping out even faster! It is really unbelievable how little wind they need to go on the trapeze). And when it was the case the Blade was a lot faster upwind. When the wind dropped and I had to sit in, I got away from the FXones, but I couldn't take a really big lead.

On the downwind the difference between the Blade and FXones was bigger. I could easily fly a hull and when I did the Blade was a blast.
When I couldn't fly a hull, the 'cruising' speed was a little higher then the speed of the FXones, but in the (small) gusts I accelerated a lot more and this gave a great advantage by the end of the downwind run.

It was a great experience again to sail the Blade F16 singlehanded again and I can only encourage other singlehandlers to join the event again next year!

In the one up class I finished first overall (results).
The A-cat top three was: 1) Sjoerd Hoekstra(NED3), 2) Chris Field(GBR007, 3) Areno Terra (NED2) (full results).

New video of us sailing!

2009-05-26T08:11:00.000+02:00

Belgian Championship C1 in Oostende

2009-05-17T18:14:00.012+02:00

Our hometown was the place to be this weekend. The OSRC hosted the Belgian Championships (BK).

The theme for this weekend was wind; lots of wind. On Saturday we managed 4 races, in 18 knots. Sunday was announced to be less windy (10 knots). But as from 9 o'clock the wind only got stronger.

On Sunday we managed 2 races, in 18 knots again, with gusts to about 22. Very tiring but we learned alot and we sure gained some more confindence on our boat and on our capacities as a team :-)

Now about the race...
20 boats on the starting line (including 4 new Hobie Wildcat) and all very good teams (in our opinion). The first races we started in the second row because we had to get used to the high wind and gusts and didn't feel confident enough to park on the starting line. This meant ofcourse that we gave them already a lead, something they didn't give away anymore. 12,16,12 and DNF (mainsail leech tensioner snapped...).

We were dead beat when we came of the water. But happy! In the past we were almost always suffering in these conditions but now we had speed both up and downwind. In the past I had difficulties keeping the windward hull out of the water with waves and a lot of wind. But this Saturday we stood a lot more to the front of the boat. Weight positioning on this boat is very important. We noticed that with a hull in the water, the Blade wanted to dig the nose in, but once the hull came out of the water a little bit we sailed a steady 10 to 11 knots upwind.

The second day (Sunday) 2 more races were performed. As said before the wind was even stronger then yesterday and this was a good test case to show that a lightweight F16 can be sailed in any condition!

These last 2 races of the weekend we had a better feeling. We could keep up with almost everyone and got in fifth position at the upwind mark in the final race. Also on the downwind tack we could keep up with the F18's. But here and there we oversailed the gate, touched the bouy and pitchpoled (in the last gybe of the very last finish...).

Anyway, we learned a lot this weekend, certainly not to stress if you're sailing in the front pack :-)

Our best result was an 11 and a 13 overall. Thanks to the OSRC for the great organisation and especially for the hot dogs at the end of the weekend!

More pictures from Eurocat Carnac!

2009-05-08T14:58:00.003+02:00

Thanks to Laurent from RBSC Duinbergen we have some very very cool pictures of us on our Blade on a reach.

Enjoy!

Eurocat 2009

2009-05-05T20:20:00.013+02:00

Eurocat is one of our biggest races of the year. This year 3 days of racing were scheduled, from Friday (1st of May), until Sunday.
On Friday and Sunday we had buoy races, on Saturday we did a long distance race to an island in front of the coast called l'île d'Houat.

We sailed in the C1 class and were the smallest group (about 60 boats). Next to the C1, there was the C3 group (97 boats) and the F18 (120! boats).
Anyway, 60 boats made for an already very busy starting line.

The first day was most fun sailing wise. We did 5 races in winds of 10 knots, up to 20+ in the last race. In contrary to the North Sea, were we are used to sail, the water here stays relatively flat with these kinds of winds. One of the biggest adrenaline rushes I've had and the gps to prove it (top speed of 21 knots on the reach and 18 downwind!).
On the downwind we really noticed the difference in our skills compared to last year. The Blade didn't pitch pole or stuff it at all and we could keep up with the other competitors.

21 knots!

At the end of day 1 we were 21st, but our ambition was to end in the first 20 boats.
During the entire regatta the pin end was heavily in favor, but due to the strong winds on the first day, we decided to go for clean air and start at the committee boat. So this still gave us room for improvement on Sunday (second series of buoy races), so we were confident we could do better.

At the upwind mark

On Sunday the winds were a lot lighter and we only did 2 races. Every time we managed to get a good start at the pin and with clean air. We were 5th and 10th at the upwind mark!

But then the tactics started to come into play. We lost places on every downwind leg, so we ended up racing in the pack again by the time we finished.
Eventually these 2 last races were our worst and we ended up 25th overall...

The other 2 F16's competing (2 Vipers) ended 2nd and 17th overall, a very good result.

Next to the buoy racing we also managed a long distance race on Saturday. Very light winds making it not the most fun race, but the views of l'île d'Houat made up for it. The rough Atlantic Ocean coast lines, sunny weather and long ocean waves made it an unforgettable experience!

Well, the racing was great again and I can only encourage the other F16 sailors to put this event on their agendas for next year!

You can find the C1 results on the website of the Yacht Club Carnac or by having a look at these pictures. Unfortunately boat types are not mentioned on these results. I have added the 3 F16 boat types to make clear who finished in what spot.

Paascup report

2009-04-20T19:58:00.008+02:00

The very first regatta in Belgium that is sailed on the North Sea. We were looking forward towards it with mixed feelings. It's great to be sailing on the North Sea again and seeing the other sailors again, but on the other hand we remembered the cold and windy race we had last year....

Luckily the conditions were better this year. About 12 knots of wind and quite sunny.
There were 3 races scheduled and 18 cats on the starting line (with 2 F16!).

In the first race we took a flying start and had clean air all the way up to the upwind mark. The rest of the race was close sailing with 2 F18 and after a second downwind run (with Kathleen trapping out) we finished half a boat length after a Nacra Infusion.

The second and third run the wind kept increasing (up to about 15+ knots) and so did the waves. We had a flying start every time and got to the upwind mark in first position too. But on the downwind run the 2 F18 catched up every time and by the time we finished after the second run they were in front of us.

We sure have to learn to sail windy and wavy (1m waves!) conditions with the spin a bit more, but finishing second overall makes us very happy!

No pictures of us, but some images of the other sailors.

-> on the edge upwind!

-> the winning team

This weekend we'll pack the boat for 3 days of racing in Carnac, France!

SNEH season's opening - report

2009-04-01T18:22:00.007+02:00

We've been sailing again!
We're back from our first sail and regatta this year and here's the report.

Friday afternoon we headed to Lac l'Eau d'Heure, the lake where the SNEH sailing club is located. After a two-and-a-half-hour drive we unloaded the boat and set it up. By the time the Blade was setup it was getting late in the afternoon and chilly so we decided to wait until the next day. So our first sail would immediately also be our first race of the season!

Saturday morning we met the other sailors and counted 5 boats. 4 single handlers and ourselves, there was an A-cat, two Shadows and a Bim X-16.
By the time (14h00) we were getting ready to launch, the sun had disappeared and the temperature was about 8°C. By the time we got onto the water the wind suddenly picked up to 25+ knots! We even got hail and snow! Everyone returned and racing was suspended....

Luckily Sunday started of better. There was sun, but temperatures were lower (not above 4°C!). Anyway, everyone was thrilled to go out sailing so we headed off.
The first and second race we tactically sailed a good course, taking the shifts and finished first over the line, just in front of the A-cat.
It was good sailing, double trap upwind and trapping with the spin downwind, where we did 14/15 knots.

By the start of the 3rd race our feet were freezing off! Our dry suits kept everything on us warm but our feet....

The 3rd and 4th race the Bim was really in action and finished ahead of us.
Overall we were scored 2,1,2,3 and shared the first place with the Bim. He finished 2 times 1st (in the last races) and won the event.

Anyway a fun event to do and a good "warm up" before heading to the North Sea again.
Thanks to all the people who welcomed us at the SNEH.

Is it a plane?

2009-03-31T13:54:00.004+02:00

We're back from our first weekend sailing. A detailed report and some pictures will follow. But a great time was had by all!

When we unloaded our Blade at our house there were 3 little children passing by and I overheard following story:

Kid A: wow look at that, is that a plane?
Kid B: no no no! That's a car!
Kid C: no not a car, it is a very large canoe!

Ha very funny, kid c was almost right ... it's the coolest catamaran ever, ours! :-)

SNEH - Sports Nautiques de l'Eau d'Heure

2009-03-25T22:46:00.002+01:00

Yes, finally something to look forward to again (sailing-wise that is)!

The coming weekend we're heading to our first days of sailing. Because the temperatures are still very low (a bit above freezing), we'll start off on a lake this year.

This is the club and surroundings. I just hope the ice will be gone! :-)

Midwinter update

2009-01-20T09:44:00.007+01:00

It's been very quiet around here. We are still here tough. Not sailing obviously. It's been 3 months since we went into hibernation. And it starts to itch to go sailing again! Our boat is cleaned and almost ready for a new season. But that season only starts in March. So 2 more months of waiting and trying to forget (it's impossible) how great being on the water really is.

Even on Catsailor (the forum we frequent) it's very quiet. Only the new Hobiecat F18 can bring some interesting news. In the US they had the Midwinter F16 race, at Tradewinds, Florida Keys. Matt & Gina McDonald won, followed by Tim Bohan and Andy and 3rd place went to Ben Moon and Lindsay Cross. Full story can be found here.

The other thing that keeps us occupied is the online Volvo Ocean Race. Our boats are named: "BEL 666" and "The Green Team" and we are member of the Catsailor group. Currently we are sailing leg 4 and it's going very well.

A few highlights of the coming season:
- Eurocat Carnac, in May, first real big race of the season. Hope to see some fellow F16 sailors there!
- All our club races ofcourse
- The F16 Global Challenge in Florida. November 2009. We so would like to be there!

Stay tuned, as from March we will be back with new sailing stories! :-)

And this picture makes me want to go sailing!!!!

(Ben Moon on his Blade at Tradewinds, copyright picture: Adventure Online Tv, follow this link).

More sailing pictures

2008-11-14T19:00:00.003+01:00

Below you can find some pictures that were taken for the article in the French sailing magazine!

(c) Voiles et Voiliers

Upwind, lot's of speed!

Spinnaker sailing

Interview on the Blade F16

2008-11-12T22:50:00.006+01:00

For those of you who want to learn French, you can find the article on our Blade F16 that appeared in Voiles et Voiliers this year.

Enjoy your read!

For those of you who like to watch, we will post some pictures later on.

Part on the Spitfire

Part on the Blade F16

Part on the the Bimare X-16

F16 and other designs

Sailing season almost finished, but we won't leave you!

2008-10-30T21:40:00.003+01:00

The coming weekend we'll be moving our Blade to our garage. In the next four months we will have some time to change a few things. Things we haven't had the time for during summer.

But we will also be entertaining you!

We will regularly write sailing 'tutorial' posts. Monthly we will explain some of the most common sailing terminology used. Next year our posts will be even more interesting to read!

Some more pictures of the club championship party

2008-10-21T16:55:00.003+02:00

2nd place at club championship 2008!

2008-10-19T20:27:00.005+02:00

This is it! The race of the year... :-)

I guess everyone who likes cat racing at our club looks forward to this event. And so do we, but....

Saturday was cold and the sun wasn't out. 14°C and we were heading towards the club to rig the boat. Was this the event of the year...?
Yes!
We arrived and it was blowing 11 to 15 knots, the wind came of shore, which made the sea flat! This looked like fun sailing!

A minimum of 3 races was scheduled. Each time 2 laps. This time there was no gate downwind but a buoy to take. And with the strong current heading in the same direction as the wind it would be a tactical difficult buoy to take.

By the time we started racing the sun came out and the wind was about 15 knots with 18 in the gusts. The sea stayed flat, so everyone enjoyed themselves.

The first race we missed our start and started at least 20 seconds after the signal. Good thing was that we started above all the rest, giving us free wind and a good speed.
At the upwind mark 2 Infusions were close together, we followed at about a minute with 2 other F18's (Cirrus and Tiger).
After a short spreader we pulled the kite and Kathleen was trapping out.
By the second time we came to the upwind mark we were clearly in third position, with a comfortable lead over the other 2 F18's. We gained on the Infusions, but they were just too fast, this time....

Once we finished we heard that the current club champions (who did finish first) got an OCS! Meaning we were second!

Second start was ok and we were closer with the Infusions. This was real racing!
The whole first lap we were chasing the first 2 but couldn't get any closer. In the second upwind lap we tacked away from the line the other boats sailed on. We did 2 tacks more than the other boats but had more wind and less current. Meaning we were first at the mark, followed, at a few seconds, by the other 2 F18's.
We gave everything with the spin up and managed to keep this position till the finish! First place!

In the third race we were burning upwind again. We were going faster and pointing higher than everyone else. Downwind we lost a little every time and finished second. At that moment we were first overall!

But the weather was nice and the laps rather short, so the race committee decided to hold a fourth lap... Now everyone could drop a result and the current champions could still finish first. If we finished before them now, we won, otherwise we would be second.

The fourth lap was no different from the third one and we finished second again...
Still we were happy with our second place and we had a super sailing day!

I hope we will still have a couple of nice sailing days this month, because then the Blade will go to the storage till beginning of March....

The last day of the race...

2008-09-23T22:40:00.007+02:00

Again we got up early -> 8 pm sharp start!

Today we had to get back to the open waters (we were at the "Veerse meer" at the moment). We started to race towards the channel that connected the inshore waters with "de Schelde".
It was blowing force 4 and the racing was very intense. The channels we went through were sometimes only a couple of 100 meters wide, so we had to come of the wire, tack, and go out again quite often!

Once we reached the channel, we had to take the main down and go through it with the jib only. A pity we couldn't race in these extremely flat waters, but if you consider the traffic, it was a logic decision.

By noon we reached "de Schelde". Here we started to sail with the spin and we didn't take it down until the finish on the beach of Duinbergen at 5.15 pm!

These seals we didn't see, too busy with the spin I guess...

Thanks to the organizing club for a great event!

RBSC Extreme - day 2

2008-09-23T22:13:00.008+02:00

Day 2 started early... Rigging a cat in the dark with flashlights isn't easy but, ... great when you're sailing with a sunset!

At about 8 am we arrived at the first lock, just before the wind fell... When we came out of the lock, the wind hadn't picked up so we had a paddle start...

After a paddle race of 4 miles the fleet finished and we waited until the wind would pick up... and at about 11 am it did!
We continued sailing on inlakes and creeks... Technically quite challenging and very beautiful! (Holland is known for its waterways).

After another lock we arrived at the campsite about 5 pm. After a short break we still did some racing in the surroundings and finished at 6.30 pm.

Again food and drinks were served and I want to thank the organizing club for an excellent job!

Was it extreme....? Day 1

2008-09-23T21:08:00.009+02:00

Finally a report.... Yes I was tired and went sailing with the Blade last weekend so it took a while before I had the time to write something about my extreme experience.

On Friday we (Manu and I; Kathleen preferred not to do this extreme event) met at the beach around 8 am. We still had to prep the boat (Nacra F18) before sailing of to the beach club RBSC (15 min sail).
When preparing I mean adding 'extreme' items to the cat. This went from a rudder system to lock the rudders in case we had to paddle to top lights and a radar reflector for security.

Around 11 am we arrived at the beach for a thorough security check. After that we received a map with all possible way points they could send us to.

At about 2 pm the first (beach)start was given and very soon it became clear we were heading for Holland.

Checking the next way point....

At about 5 pm we finished at the beach of "De Roompot" about 30 nautical miles later (in force 4 to 5).

This is us!

The sun was out and the entire group of sailors (10 cats) decided to call it a day. We enjoyed the BBQ and went for a short rest.... The start on Saturday was planned around 6 am (but we still had to eat, rig the boat and break up the tent...).

RBSC Extreme

2008-09-05T17:49:00.004+02:00

No regattas/races this weekend... It has been a long time since we had no sailing planned at all during the weekend, but we'll have plenty things to do.

Next weekend I'm sailing the RBSC Extreme on a F18. Extreme = 3 days of GPS cat sailing.

Start on Friday around 2pm, finish around 8pm. Saturday we'll be sailing from 5am till 8pm and Sunday from 7am till 2pm...

Goal for this regatta: crossing the finish line on Sunday!

I hope we don't get too much wind, but if there isn't enough, you're allowed to paddle!!

Gill

Less common competition...

2008-09-01T20:01:00.003+02:00

M20

Viper F16

Eagle 18HT

Euro Cats Cup 2008

2008-09-01T15:29:00.005+02:00

This is a classic long distance raid not to be missed. Altough... we were very much doubting if we would participate or not. Mainly because every weekend of August had been full of races with lots of wind and we didn't really feel like "surviving the winds" again. BUT Saturday was announced as a lovely summer day, high temperatures and a moderate Easterly breeze. The perfect conditions for this long distance. So we entered. The good conditions showed: we had 80 participants! The club really was alive and kicking. Very nice to see.

And we had great fun. Wind was a bit more than announced, with again high winds of up to 5 BFT, but the sun and the not too big (it still is the North Sea ofcourse) waves made up for this.

For the first time ever I trapezed with the kite up: what an experience! Very mixed emotions: very scared and very excited all at once. But we went fast and didn't really stuff the nose. I am still on the learning curve, I hurt myself a fair bit while falling backwards between the rudders or while hitting the side stay and the dagger board at the same time. But well, once I am more experienced I will have a more stable position and the bruises always disappear anyway :-)

The long distance starts with a buoy triangle race in front of the club, an upwind and a downwind beat and we did very well on this triangle. I think we were between 10th and 15th at that time and we were even in front of some of the better sailors of our club!

Ready to hoist the spin....

Then we were off to Holland, back to the club and then off to Holland again. Finish was in front of the club. We really felt our muscles while trapping upwind! Gill would have really enjoyed a crew who did the main sheet ;-) The downwind legs were very long, with some really big waves in the beginning. And not being used to trapping downwind I felt it!

It was an exciting race, we were close to 2 other club boats and we finally finished between 15th and 20th place.

But... a major but! We got an OCS :-( DAMN! What a pity. We apparently went over the starting line a few seconds early and got disqualified, together with 4 other boats. There was an individual recall but we decided to race on because we were convinced we didn't start early. Well, tough lesson learned. No finishing place for us.

But we know we did good, better than last year. So we are learning and evolving. Great news!

The next few weeks no races scheduled. If the weather cooperates we can enjoy some casual sailing and prepare for the last big race of the season: our Club Championship. To be continued...

This year's flyer made for this race:

MExT long distance - day 2

2008-08-17T20:19:00.001+02:00

Today was less inviting to sail then yesterday. No sun and more wind. We could already guess what the waves would look like...

Anyway, I entered some more way points into the GPS and I knew this was going to be a long day. The start was again in front of Ostend and we headed towards Nieuwpoort.

Typical for a long distance race is that you don't have normal upwind or downwind runs, most of the time you are reaching. Since we normally race buoys, we aren't that good in reaching and reaching with a 16 feet cat isn't just as easy as it is with a 18 feet version.

However, we had an exciting race at the end of the fleet with 2 other Hobie Tigers. Because we were sailing close to each other, changing positions, we had the exciting race feeling!

All buoys were in place this time so we continued sailing along the Belgian coast. After Nieuwpoort we passed Ostend again and headed for Blankenberge.

After 2 hours and 40 minutes of racing we took in the spin for the last time and gybed in front of Blankenberge, when... our spreader arm went through the jib.
Apparently the mast rotation cleat had unblocked making the mast rotate fully out, while the jib was already in the upwind position...
But there was wind enough and we continued double trapped with just the main sail. Upwind and upstream....

While taking down the jib we had lost a lot of ground on the other boats and we where last in the race, but still wanted to finish it off.

Eventually we finished after 86 kms of sailing in a time of 5 hours and 40 minutes. What a day!

As the only 16 feet boat and mixed crew participating, we'll think again before attending the next MExT regatta... :-)

MExT long distance - day 1

2008-08-16T20:19:00.001+02:00

Just back from the F16 Global Challenge and another regatta is awaiting....
Not just a regatta but a long distance event.

Saturday morning we arrived to subscribe to the event when we heard that the event was only open to Formula 18. This rule was to keep the boats close together on the water in view of safety....
After a short talk to the racing committee they agreed that also F16 boats could participate since we have almost the same handicap as the F18's.

Happy we could join, we rigged the boat and set off to the beach. The sea looked fairly flat (but nothing compared to last weeks Swansea bay) and the wind was blowing moderately (say force 4). The start was pretty close to shore with a short upwind leg. We had a good start and came about 7th at the upwind mark. After that we had to find existing buoys of which we had the GPS data.

The first buoy was on a reach and soon we had to retrieve the spinnaker since we aren't that comfortable (yet) in double trapping with the kite up. Most of the F18's kept there spin on and a fair part of the fleet overtook us.

Once arrived at the GPS marking, we couldn't find the buoy marked as first on our map. In fact there wasn't a buoy at all in the surroundings. Some teams headed out to the next way point, while others including us went looking for the first buoy...

After 45 minutes of sailing and searching, the committee boat passed by to say the 1st buoy was missing (someone had taken it overnight) but that the race was still on!! No thanks!

We sailed back and de-rigged the boat. Eventually the racing committee didn't issue any results for that day and announced free drinks for the entire evening! And to make up for their mistake today, to compensate, they announced they would add some legs to the next day's race...

GC 2008 - Day 4 – exciting and close racing

2008-08-13T19:58:00.003+02:00

Tuesday and we got 4 races done today. After yesterday’s 5 races, we managed to get a nice total of 9 races. And all those races had a variety of weather. On Monday we got lots of wind, wavey see and grey weather. Today we got sun, rain, hail, no wind, lots of wind, Southerly winds and Northerly winds. What a day!

We scored a 3, 3, 3 and 2. This gets us on 3rd place overall. We are very happy with this result. Especially with the weather we had today, we did good in both heavy and light winds. And we managed to stay upright all trough the 4 races. Even when the hail storm hit us, just after we finished the 3rd race.
Today’s racing was very close. In the first race with force 4 (gusts to 5)the three 2-up boats got the lead. Finally Paul and Ann Warren finished first after a day of non-sailing for them.

During the other three races the entire field stayed very close together and we swopped places the entire race.

This year’s event is over and we had a great time, if only the weather could cooperate a bit more next time. Next GC should be in Florida, in October or November 2009. If we can make it there, I hope no heavy tropical storms hit Gulfport at that time :-)

During the event the F16 chairman Hans Klok also announced the steadily growth of the F16 class, with members joining from all over the world. Great news, so we’re confident that also the number of competitors during coming regattas will also steadily increase.

We will post some more pictures of the 2 regatta days once we’re back home!

Cheers

GC 2008 - Day 3

2008-08-11T20:56:00.003+02:00

Day 3 – WE RACED!!!!

Yes finally we got out on the water and got our hulls wet. The day started early, first race was scheduled to start at 10.30 and before we were invited to have breakfast at the Mumbles Yacht Club. When we got at the club everyone noticed it was still quite windy, but everybody was dying to get out, so we decided to give it a try. Getting out of the bay was very calm and it took us a while to get to the racing area in the middle of the bay. But once we were out hell struck. What a difference. It was very very windy and shifty, so being concentrated was the key.

We managed to get 5 races in today. We however only finished 3 of them. In the 2nd race we flipped the boat during a gybe and Gill’s bungee cord snapped. So we got up and sailed back to shore to replace the bungee. We missed 2 races that way.

Final results for us: a 2, a 4 and another 4. So quit happy with this. Too bad we have two 14’s as DNF. Tomorrow we should be able to get another 4 races in and then we can drop 2 of our worst scores, probably these DNF I would guess.

It was a very exciting race. We had 4 of the same boats battling for first places (John Pierce, Hans Klok, Geert and Joanna and Gill and I). It was an equal battle between two 1-ups and two 2-ups so the boxrule works :-)

Heavy weather and lots of flipping boats in the beginning but no real damage, but the Viper is the worst of. They flipped and broke their diamond spreader. No replacement so unfortunately no more racing for Chris Sproat tomorrow. We wish him all the luck on this week’s Spitfire European Championship.

We are happy tired sailors and of to the AGM now.

Later,
Kathleen & Gill

Sorry Hans... :-)

GC 2008 - Day 2

2008-08-10T20:11:00.004+02:00

Sunday and too much wind again. Bugger like the English say so well.
The only good thing about today was that we almost did not have any rain. We took a bike/walk down to a beautiful bay (Layland Bay) and saw enormous waves.

Wind was the same as yesterday (22 knots with gusts to 30) and the waves were a bit bigger because of a changed wind direction.

Prediction for tomorrow looks better on Windguru. Although on the pressure charts we see different lows coming close to us again, so we hope the wind will indeed calm down for the next 2 days.

Tonight we are going to eat Thai Curry, njammie :-)

I'll try to upload some more pictures of yesterday evening and today. All pictures can be found on picasaweb.

Ta,
Kathleen

GC 2008 - Video

2008-08-09T17:29:00.003+02:00

Here some little video to show the wind and waves on a piece of inland water (right by the Pier).

GC 2008 - Pictures from a walk to the pier

2008-08-09T17:12:00.003+02:00

GC 2008 - Pictures

2008-08-09T16:57:00.005+02:00

Enjoy!

The bar.

View from the bar.

Gill's parents waiting for the rain to stop.

View from the bar on the boats.

Waiting.

GC 2008 - Day 1

2008-08-09T16:53:00.001+02:00

4PM - race is canceled for today. First start was scheduled for 12 o'clock, but we were measuring too much wind (over 22 knots steady and gusts of close to 30 knots). We got a postponement to 2PM. At 2PM it was even worse unfortunately. There were 3 windsurfers out (experienced) and they said it was horrible out on the bay. It was like a fan switching on and off they told us. So decision was made that races for today are canceled.

I'll post some pictures we made today in the next post.

GC - Guys at work!

2008-08-09T12:35:00.004+02:00

Look at these guys... :-)

Geert and Hans, having a chat underneath Geert's boat.

Gill, sewing the trampoline (little hole in it).

GC 2008 - Practice Race

2008-08-09T12:32:00.002+02:00

Practice race was great.

We had good wind (10 knots), flat water and sunny weather. We enjoyed ourselves very much and got to know the Mumbles bay water. We managed 3 races. At first only 3 boats participated. The last race we got 6 boats in. We did very well and were happy with the boat speed. If we could get these conditions for the next days it would be a fantastic sailing event.

Cross your fingers for us!

GC 2008 - Kick off!

2008-08-08T12:13:00.002+02:00

So this is our first day of racing, practice race. Wind prediction is 10 knots, good for both the one-ups and two-ups I guess.

We'll keep you updated on the results of this day. Rumours have it that we will have Chris Sproat sailing the Viper as from tomorrow. We haven't seen him yet, but looking forward to his sailing skills! He does very well on the Spitfire, so what will he think about the Viper?

More news later on,
Kathleen

GC 2008 - T minus 1 day

2008-08-07T18:01:00.002+02:00

T minus 1 day - 6 am

Yep we are awake already!

And this is the view from our caravan! (At the moment the day looks very promising, but I guess you never know in Wales….).

We will go out for a sail today around 11 with Geert and Joanna! From in our caravan I think wind tactics will be very important as from here you can see that windspots move all the time….

Anyway, we are off to sail!
Gill

Looking forward to the global challenge!

2008-07-31T20:54:00.003+02:00

The final countdown to our Mumbles trip has started. Within 6 days we will be there, enjoying the Swansea bay.

Kathleen and I have really been looking forward to this event. First of all to see a lot of friends again and also because sailing on elapsed time is the most exciting thing there is!

We hope to be able to report on the event from time to time on our blog, but the results will be updated daily on the official F16 Global Challenge website.

Below you can find a short video of some practising we have been doing the last month!

Enjoy and see you soon!

Gill

Race report Zwin Race July 21

2008-07-22T11:21:00.005+02:00

This should have been a great report on a great race.
Because: this really is one of the best races in our nearby club (RBSC Duinbergen).

More info: the race takes the boats to the nature reserve "Het Zwin" (one of the last areas of completely untouched nature at the Belgian coast. The sandy plain is flooded every day by the sea and forms a mudflat with typical salt-loving vegetation. This lets you see particular vegetation and numerous species of birds) were we lunch on the beach (grill or oriental food) and then head back to finish before the club of Duinbergen.

This isn't a great report on a great race.
Because: the wind was blowing like crazy on Monday.

More info: when we woke up it was 5BFT. When we arrived at the beach at 9.30AM, it was already blowing 6BFT and the sea really looked rough, with lots of waves, and a breaker surf. I was starting to feel very nervous and was loosing my appetite to go out. We headed to the briefing were we immediately heard the race was canceled. The predictions were for 7BFT later that afternoon. So no chance of going out at all. Too bad. Now we had to go back home and work on our renovation project...

For those interested, follow this link for some more info on "Het Zwin". And some images to introduce you to "Het Zwin".

We're published !

2008-07-19T10:29:00.007+02:00

In this months Voiles magazine (French sailing magazine) there is a report on the Blade F16. Ours!

I hope we still receive some pictures to show you! If you can't wait, check out the magazine!

Gill

One up cup - my experience

2008-07-19T10:29:00.004+02:00

After a little rest, hereby my experience! Already looking forward to our next race on the 21st of July.

Because it also was the Belgian A-class championship 12 A-cats showed up. British, Dutch, a Swiss and ofcourse Belgian sailors showed up.
Next to the A’s 13 other single handed cat’s where present (FX One, Cirrus evolution, a Bim X16 and I on the F16 Blade).
All together a nice mix of non-spin and various types of spin boats.
The race course was a classic course. Windward buoy, spreader, gate, windward buoy, spreader, gate and finish.

The first day started very windy (up to force 6) and the races were cancelled.
The second day we were more lucky and had, in my opinion, nice one up weather. Since it was only the 4th time I sailed the Blade alone I was happy to see force 3 to 4 predicted.
Because we didn’t sail on Saturday, the race committee announced to sail as much races as possible on Sunday. We sailed 4 in total.

The first start was given at 11 and we went off in about 6 knots. Ofcourse the A’s were faster upwind and I also had troubles getting away from the heavier FX One and Cirrus cats. On the downwind leg I managed to catch up with the second group of A’s, the first 5 A’s were still ahead of me at the gate and stayed in front till the finish. With this little wind I felt I couldn’t get speed in the Blade…

The second race the wind started to pick up to I guess 8 knots. Myself, the A’s and the Bim could trap and formed a group in front.

The other cats already lost quite a lot on the upwind. I guess 5 to 6 A’s were in front of me at the windward mark. I’m guessing 3 to 4 minutes. After a short spreader run I could hoist the spin and started to pick up speed immediately. The Blade flew a hull the entire time and I was sailing a lot faster and deeper then the A’s! By the time I was at the gate I catched up with the first A’s.
Along the race all my spin hoists and retrieves went very well and I almost didn’t lose any time at the gate compared to the A-cats.
In the upwind leg I lost a little again but was closer then I was the first time. On the downwind the Blade flew again. I was well ahead of the first A and didn’t take the risk to leave the spin on, the last 200 meters between the gate and finish. Eventually I finished 15 seconds ahead of the second finisher, enough to get a 1 on calculated time (F16= 0,982, A= 0,986).

On the 3rd race the wind picked up a little more and the FX One and Cirrus started to trap also. And against to what I thought I gained even more terrain on them upwind. I could also keep up with most of the A’s, meaning I was well ahead of them at the gate and eventually at the finish! Another 1.

The last race would be deciding on who would end first overall… This was quite an unusual feeling for me so I honestly got a little nervous….
I wanted to have the best start of the day and parked myself next to the committee boat 2 minutes before the start. But…. due to the current I was almost being pushed over the start. On the start signal they pulled the individual call back flag… Because having OCS is worse than restarting I decided to take no risk… (as seen from the race results 4 other boats started to soon, so I made the right choice).
Ofcourse this stressed me out even more. For the first time in the race I saw other cats then A’s in front of me!
The wind had dropped a little also and I couldn’t keep the boat up speed upwind… I lost the final battle….

Well overall 2nd still made me the happiest sailor on earth!

Regards,
Gill

And the official results One Up Cup

2008-07-14T16:52:00.003+02:00

Les voilàs :-)

One up cup 2008 (One up cup and Belgian a-cat championship single handed multihulls)

2008-07-14T11:08:00.002+02:00

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…

And some more cool pics from our last race

2008-06-23T10:21:00.007+02:00

Footage from the Gulfport regatta we did in Florida!

2008-06-22T22:31:00.004+02:00

A little bit of video from Gulfport.

The sequence of Matt and Gina is from the 2nd day when the winds finally picked up to 8-10, everything filmed by The Chuck.

Thanks to Travis Edwards for putting the video online.

Pictures

2008-06-16T13:04:00.002+02:00

Gambler's long distance report

2008-06-16T13:03:00.001+02:00

Last Saturday we sailed the first Gambler's long distance race (open for F18 and F16 only). A fun race with an unusual rating system. In fact you had to rate your own sailing skills.

At the briefing (12:00) the course was given, together with the finishing time: 16:00.

Then we had one hour to estimate the length of the course (17 miles) and how long we would sail on it (taking decreasing wind and current into mind).

By 13:00 we had given up our starting time and the times of the other crews were also revealed.

If you finished before 16:00 you kept your original starting time. For every 5 minutes you finished after 16:00 you were deducted 10 minutes of your starting time. The overall winner was the boat with the latest starting time after deduction of any penalty minutes.

1st: Nacra Infusion
2nd: Cirrus (same starting time as us but sailed 1 minute less on the course)
3rd: Blade 2-up
4th: Infusion, 5nd: Nacra F18, 6th: Nacra Inter18, 7th: Mattia F18

We entered with an estimated 1h35min of sailing and had our beach start together with a Cirrus F18 at 14:25. In the mean time the Inter18 and Mattia had already taken off.
5 minutes after us the 2 infusions started and another 5 minutes later the Nacra F18 started in last position. All of the starting positions were kept, only the Infusion (who won the race) did catch up with us and even passed us! In real time they sailed 7 minutes less on the course.

We started off with 7 knots of wind I guess, 30 minutes upwind to the first mark (the marks were 4 weather stations). We had a bad beach start, not because of Kathleen’s running skills but because apparently I didn’t attach the port rudder properly to the transom, meaning we lost 2 minutes on the water getting the rudders ok….

By the time we were at the upwind mark we almost catched up with the Cirrus. They were double trapping but sailing a lot deeper than we did. I could only trap myself but we could steer much higher.

Then down to the second mark (downwind leg). The wind was a little gusty, between 5 and 10/12 knts I would have guessed. On the first leg we went past the Cirrus and were really going fast. Then we made the mistake to go too far to the beach where it was much gustier, making it difficult for us to keep the boatspeed up. By the time we were at the 2nd mark, the Infustion overtook us and we were again a couple of seconds behind the Cirrus.

At that time we were already racing 55 minutes and only half way the course. I thought we would never make it on time.
The leg to the last mark was a half wind one and from the last mark back to the sailing club also half wind. Meanwhile the wind had picked up and was blowing 10 to 12. The waves started picking up forcing us to stand way back in trapeze.
Because of the gusty wind and the bigger waves we had to head up once in a while causing us to end to high at the last mark. We were right behind the Cirrus but had to sail straight downwind to round the mark. There we lost valuable minutes again….

Apparently we sailed quite fast on the last 2 legs, cause we finished close to 16:00… Only 3 minutes late!

Tonight the pic report...

It's been a while...

2008-06-13T12:05:00.001+02:00

We haven't been sailing much recently. Or there was too much wind, or too much rain or no wind at all. So not the conditions we expected for the beginning of June.
We are hoping the summer will start soon.

This weekend we have a new race scheduled. It's called "the gambler's long distance route". We don't know yet what this race will bring. But we will have to guess how long we will sail and the ones who have guessed correct will win... Very new kind of race, but should be fun. We'll beach start; I hope that will go ok, it is the first time we will do something like this. Ahh the nerves are already starting to build up :-)

Forecast for tomorrow: 12 knots at 14.00, afterwards declining to 9 knots. Air temp: 16°C and apparently no rain. Let's hope so!

Afterwards we'll get back to you on how the race went, what we had to do and hopefully some funny pictures too!

Eurocat Carnac - Day 4 (04/05/2008)

2008-05-08T12:05:00.003+02:00

Today we didn’t race, no wind.

We finished 17th out of 41 contestants. Not bad, but we aimed for a top 10 place. So we’ll have to practice some more. Especially flying the kite needs some more training. Not so much for Gill, but for me, because I tend to get scared whenever he’s flying the hull too high with the kite up. I think this is because I have had so many bruises and pain due to stuffing the boat in a wave, while flying the kite. I shouldn’t worry too much, because when we get the hull out of the water, there is way less chance of stuffing it. So the more I do it, the more I – hopefully – will get over this fear…

Hereby a link to the end results. End Results C1

These are not yet totally correct. Hans got 2 DNS (1rst and 3rd race). He protested and they posted his results (19 & 16) but apparently they didn't add them to the end results. So overall he should be 14th we think (and first F16).

There were also 5 Mattia Esses sailing I think and the first overall was a Mattia.

It was fun and a good meeting place for the beginning of the sailing season. It was nice to see the other F16 sailors again! Up to the next event…

Eurocat Carnac - Day 3 (03/05/2008)

2008-05-08T12:04:00.006+02:00

On Saturday there were only two races, as the decent breeze seen in the first race died very suddenly half way through the second race. Paul missed the start of the first race due to a series of objects forgotten on the beach. This did mean that he had an excellent spectator seat for the end of the first race which saw Hans finish second on the water, beating three of the four Tornados. A very impressive result in conditions that weren't obviously favourable to a 1-up F16 - the Ts were twin wiring upwind, and the course included a couple of reaching legs.

Eurocat Carnac - Day 2 (02/05/2008)

2008-05-08T12:04:00.004+02:00

The long distance! We made it! We were on the water for 6.5 hours. That is very long. The first part went ok, we still had some wind. There wasn’t enough to trap, so we got to sit a lot. After we rounded the rock, the long kite run began. But then the wind slowly decreased and we were only moving very very slow. Finally we finished at 6.30PM and we managed to get back to the beach safely. What an experience! It was a beautiful day, we ate our lunch on board and we got to see some lovely scenery. We did screw up somewhere and only finished 148th.

Eurocat Carnac - Day 1 (01/05/2008)

2008-05-08T12:02:00.003+02:00

Today started windy, but it calmed down in the late afternoon. We raced in the C1 class (all boats with rating lower than 107). I think there were about 30 boats in our fleet (correction: it turns out there are 41 participating boats in our class). A lot of Mattia Esse’s, some Tornado’s and 2 FX One’s (don’t know if it’s the Extreme version or not).

We are with 5 F16’s present. John Alani, Hans Klok, Paul Warren and MarkP all sailed one-up. There were 3 races done. We went very fast upwind, but downwind we always lost some places. I think we finished overall in the middle of the fleet.

We raced from 3 o’clock until 7 o’clock, all I want to do know is eat and sleep.

This morning we also had an interview with a journalist from the French sailing magazine “Voile et voiliers”. She went with Gill on the Blade, crewed and steered. After that I got on board and she made a lot of pictures as seen from a Zodiac. So we will have some very nice pictures of us sailing. We sailed together with a Spitfire for this shoot. They were also a mixed team. The Spitfires are well presented here, and they have their own start on the same rounds as us. The F18 class is the largest class here. They are divided in 4 groups and are moving between groups.

Tomorrow we have the long distance raid scheduled. This is a very long (100 km) run and I am still doubting if I’ll go or not. It will depend on the conditions tomorrow and the social pressure, I guess. I hear it’s a beautiful run, with lovely scenery. After that we have Saturday and Sunday left for racing, but predictions are there will be less and less wind.