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

John Casey and Dalton Tebo win the Buzzelli multihull regatta on the Falcon! Well done guys!

John Casey's write up on his blog:

Flyin’ on the Falcon

Last weekend was the Buzzelli Multihull Rendevous, a huge multihull event with classes such as the Stiletto, F-Boat Trimarans, Waves, Wetas, and of course our portsmouth A fleet, which included some F18s, F16s, Randy Smyth’s Scizzor trimaran and us. Since I sold my Nacra MK2 last week, Matt from Falcon Marine let me borrow his F16 Falcon. Thaaaank You Matt!

The regatta started on Friday with a 35-mile distance race from Sarasota up to Tampa and back. We were a little late for the start, but on the close reach in 10-20 knots of breeze, the F16 took off upwind, bouncing over the waves. I was impressed with how much power stayed in the boat during the lulls even though Dalton and I weighed in at about 330 lbs. The double trap reach was so much fun we didn’t want to turn around. In the first half of the race we passed everyone but Randy’s trimaran. After the turn mark we gained until we were almost even with 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.

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

Downwind I didn’t know what to expect. When you first look at the Falcon, since it doesn’t have much freeboard and even less bow, it looks like it might be prone to pitchpoling. Well, when we were on the boat and looked at the hulls from above it’s a whole different story. There’s plenty of volume in those little hulls. Even in the 15 knot puffs we were never close to putting the bow in, and actually the crew never went behind the rear beam on the trapeze. The volume and flat section between the bow and front crossbar worked well to keep the bow up and spray flying. We were grinning like crazy downwind! In the lulls the F18s did have a little deeper line, but when it was breeze on the Falcon was gone.

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