Youth weekend Catclub Zeeland

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!

RBSC Club Championship, September 24, 2011

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.

Club Championship 2009 - September 19

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

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

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

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

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

Results can be found here.

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

Interview on the Blade F16

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