Adrian and Jesse take F16 world title on the Falcon!

Newport, Rhode Island

From June 23 to June 27 the F16 worlds were held at Newport, USA. There were 4 days of racing scheduled. 29 boats appeared on the starting line: mixed teams, youth teams, single handlers,... a mix of configurations typical for the F16 class.

Our Falcons were sailed by teams from all over the world, including Australia, Switzerland and of course the USA.  Below our report on this event.

Adrian Fawcett & Jesse Dobie, Australia: "The venue for this Worlds was fantastic. Newport is a place all sailors need to visit. Friendly people, lots to do and see and really great sailing conditions. We did lose a day due to unstable wind but Mike the PRO still managed to get in 13 races."

During the practice race the teams experienced the challenging conditions of the race course. Matt McDonald, USA says: "It was a very interesting race course, each race the course was different with changing winds and current throughout the day. Reading the course and adjusting to it was really important."

Racing started on Tuesday in challenging conditions with winds up to 20 knots. From the start it was close racing, especially between the top 4 teams. Adrian: "The Falcon definitely has a different feel to the F16 that we are used too. The helm is balanced and light, and it can be pushed extra hard without fear of pitch pole, especially interesting on the windier days like Tuesday."

Wednesday was as sunny day but the winds were a little lighter, which was to the benefit of the lighter mixed teams. Andi Lutz, Switzerland, sailed with Tim Bohan. They were 2 men so one of the heavier teams. "Wednesday the wind was a little lighter and we started to feel it. The lighter teams really accelerated and the Aussies hauled ass! On Tuesday the first racing day, there was more wind and we, the heavy guys, had great speed."

On Thursday the wind was really unstable and Mike, the PRO, decided to cancel racing for the day. Ideal to explore the area. Andi: "we took the opportunity to check out the Newport Warf. It was great to see that many yachts and racing boats! The American VOR70 Team was there and the Spindrift (former Banque Populaire V) the 140 foot trimaran."

On Friday, the last day of racing, the top 4 was well ahead of the rest of the fleet but only a couple of points apart, so the racing was really exciting! Andi: "Friday final day, we all decided to sail more races and we started earlier to sail 5 more races, to make up for the lost races on Thursday. The wind was quite good. Altough still a bit lighter with 10-14 knots."

Adrian & Jesse, leading throughout the event, kept their act together and their better boat speed enabled them to stay on top, the Aussies were crowned World Champion!

A world title for the Falcon F16, an acknowledgement for everyone who has supported us!

"This is the first World title for the Falcon, thanks to Adrian & Jesse! It is no coincidence we manage to win the world title now", says Matt, designer and builder of the Falcon F16. "After winning a couple of World titles in the early days of the class with the Blade, the class started to grow and attract new builders. But even in these challenging conditions we kept following our strategy of supporting the base, the weekend sailors and investing in them, in youth and giving them the perfect boat to mix it up with the pro-sailors sponsored by other manufacturers. And now, 5 years later, we see the strategy is paying off. Across the world Falcons are winning local races, national titles and now a first World Championship title. This attracts the more professional sailors to look at the boat and make it their preferred choice as well. Sailors like John Casey, Tripp Burd and Michael Easton, the Glasers, etc putting their effort into our boats is just great and is the cherry on the cake to refine the Falcon F16 to the refined racing machine it is today."

After taking 3 national titles end of 2013, the Falcon is on a roll in 2014 with a 2nd and 3rd at Eurocat this year and of course winning the world championship. Gill from TheBoatshop.be says: "I can't wait to sail the F16 Europeans in France this year. The Belgian youth teams have proven to mix it up very well with the European top and we will also have a European top-sailor on the Falcon for this event. More on that in the coming weeks!"

F16 Worlds 2013 – Travemünde

This year the F16 Worlds were held in Northern Germany, during the Travemünde Woche. This is a very big sailing event, with a lot of boats and sailors present. Not only the F16 were sailing, also the F18, Tornado, Hobie 16 and many monohull classes. Since our first baby daughter Marie was born on May 25 we knew we wouldn’t sail this event. But as an European dealer for Falcon we decided to be there to provide service, support and spare parts to all the Falcon sailors. We had 8 teams ready to race, learn and get to know each other during the social parts of the event. The teams were a great mixture of youth, mixed crews, 2 men sailing and Geert was also there sailing one-up. Countries represented: Belgium, Germany, Luxemburg and the Netherlands. In total the event had 32 contestants registered. All F16 brands were represented: AquaRaptor, Bimare, Cirrus, Falcon, Nacra and Viper.

We travelled to Germany a few days before the event. We towed a RIB for the RBSC and we used this RIB to give a training session to the Falcon sailors on the Saturday before the racing started. Also on the Friday evening we had a small informal coaching on racing preparation (wind direction, start procedure, racing rules) and boat preparation.

For us it was a bit weird to be on the other side of the racing scene. Being at such a lovely event with super weather conditions (always sunny, hot and enough wind) but not racing ourselves felt awkward. But it was also for us a nice experience. We had a great time with Marie (8 weeks old), walking along the promenade, watching the sailing from atop a cliff, being there when the sailors got back in the evening and going out to diner all together. 

 There was also a lot of work to do sometimes for us. Since we were the only dealer there with a trailer with parts we had a lot of inquiries on spare parts from all the sailors (not only Falcon) and also some repair work. So sometimes I had some mother/daughter time while Gill was fixing things J

Racing started on Monday with very light wind conditions. 2 teams dominated the fleet: BEL666 (our boat!) with Aurélie and Morgan crewing and SUI001 (Andi and KC!). They took respectively silver and gold that day. Very happy faces on shore that evening! The Travemünde Woche TV interviewed them both and they would be closely watched the next day during the SAP media course. 

This was a very cool way to make sailing more a spectator sport. On Tuesday the F16 could sail the SAP media course, this was a course in front of the beach and all boats got trackers on them and on the beach there was a special SAP area where you could watch the races on a big screen with live commentary from sailing journalists. Normally there was also on board footage (1 video kit on BEL666 and one on our other Youth Team (BEL111)) but unfortunately there were technical problems and the on board filming didn’t work. It was windier this day and Andi and Aurélie were falling down a bit in the ranking. 

Falcon youth team BEL333 (at that time 5^th in ranking) was performing very well. We were rooting for them! But then they capsized and helmswoman Marie-Laure dislocated her shoulder L She was immediately brought to shore and luckily one of the dads of another youth team is a doctor and he could put her shoulder back into position. To be sure she needed to go to hospital tough for an x-ray. Gill stayed at the boat park while I drove with Marie and Filip (crew of Marie-Laure) to Lübeck to check on Marie-Laure and to bring her back as soon as possible. We had to endure some patience tough, it was very hectic and chaotic on the ER of this University Hospital and we only could get her released at 6 PM… 

Luckily all was good, no other injuries and no more pain. No more sailing tough for her for the rest of the week. This was a pity, as they were really on fire and high in the ranking at that time. It’s also really sad to drive such a distance and then to be able to sail only 1 day. 

The next day Marie-Laure and Filip joined us for a day watching the racing on top of the cliff.

Filip was very lucky tough to find Emilie, the sister of another youth team and she was willing to crew for him for the next days! And they did very well. In the end they ended on a 19^th place, but with a whole day not sailed (there was only 1 discard at this event, with 18 races sailed, so consistency was even more important, every mistake now was really punished).

Hereby an overview of the full results:

Falcon scored a great result at this Formula 16 worlds. Aurélie and Morgan, on BEL 666, took the silver medal home, making them Vice World Champions F16! Well done to both. They were really sailing top notch. At this young age, make sure you watch their future sailing events! They are an RBSC mixed youth team and sailing their first event together. Ruling the fleet in the light to medium wind and just a little less consistent in the higher winds as Aurélie never sailed an F16 before. Both have a lot of monohull experience and this shows. Awesome result!

When we took the initiative together with the sponsors to setup an F16 youth team last year we could have never guessed the results the youths have sailed on this F16 worlds. We started with 3 Falcon F16's and had to convince quite some people this was the way to go, one year later there are more than 10 youth teams competing from Belgium and Holland in the worlds and sailing for top positions, great to see!

We are of course extremely happy with the Falcon performance as well. Winning Belgian, US and Italian titles last year, finishing 2nd, 7th and 8th on the worlds is a great confirmation of what we can achieve.

The 8 Falcon teams sailed 18 races over the 5 days. A great mix of low, medium and high wind conditions over the week ensured the teams with the best overall performance stood out.

Different countries were represented with a different mix of crew weights and configurations: LUX 001 (men - 31st), NED 237 (single handed - 27th), GER 002 (men - 24th), BEL 246 (mixed - 20th), BEL 333 (mixed youth - 19th), SUI 001 (men - 8th), BEL 111 (men youth - 7th), BEL 666 (mixed youth - 2nd).

Read an article on the F16 Worlds at CatsailingNews: http://www.catsailingnews.com/2013/07/formula-16-worlds-2013-travemunde.html

Also some great video footage of this event: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNyP06jkO4c

Pictures of this World Championship on our Facebook page: Action pics F16 Worlds

Next events: Belgian and Dutch Nationals! And also of course the Diamond Cup. The first race Gill and I will sail this year, wow! Very excited about that. We'll keep you up to date...

Kathleen

Happy new year, highlights 2012 & Falcon F18 launched...

We wish you a fantastic new year, good health and lots of sunshine and great sailing!

The start of a new year is a great moment to look back to the past year. For us it was a great sailing season with lots of racing and great results for the Falcon F16.

Some of the highlights

The start of the season traditionally is Carnac, France. At the buoyracing the first Falcon finished 4th in tough conditions. The last day the raid was sailed, there youth team Hendrickx/Bols finished 3rd overall!

At the Open Belgian Championships at Oostduinkerke there were 3 days of racing to decide on the Belgian Champion long distance and buoy racing. Also there we were topranked with gold and bronze in the buoy racing and a first place for us in the raid!

Not only in Belgium we had great achievements. In Switzerland and Italy Falcons won the Bol d'Or and took 2nd place at the Italian championship F16. In Florida Falcon youth sailors Jeremy & Sam qualified for ISAF youth worlds. Also there was the battle for the US F16 Nationals. Matt & Gina McDonald took second place and Sarah Newberry and John Casey convincinly took 1st! They are now training for their 2016 Olympic campaign. Support them here:  http://www.usamultihull2016.com

 Canadian Olympic team training on the Falcon

The season in Belgium was closed with the Belgian Youth nationals, with 42 participants a succesful edition! In the F16 class Falcons took 1, 2, 4 and 5.

Launch of the new Falcon F18

Ofcourse we are looking forward to the next season when the newest in the Falcon family will be introduced in Europe: the Falcon F18. Matt McDonald inroduced with the Falcon the only US built F18 and clearly sets a new benchmark in quality for the F18 class. The US debute was in California were 2 Falcon F18's raced in the F18 worlds in Long Beach. Everyone was impressed with both the new features and the built quality! In sneak preview below already some pictures of the F18 in action! More information to come second half of January on our new website!

Want to see more of the F18? Check our Facebook page

Winter promotions at TheBoatShop.be

Eventhough we are not sailing in Belgium, we're full force preparing the new sailing season. If you place your order for a new boat before end of January 2013 you take advantage of our special winter promotions for both the F16 and the F18! Call or mail us for more information!

Raid West VVW Heist

Each season our club organises 2 raids (long distance sailing with a night on the beach included). The first one is Cat Raid East, direction The Netherlands and the second one is Cat Raid West, direction France.

We didn't join in on the first one and for the 2nd one we only had the time free on Saturday so we decided to do half of the Raid. We started on Saturday around noon and we sailed until lunch time at around 2 PM. We had a lovely lunch break on the beach of Wenduine together with another 13 boats!

Me steering :-)

 After lunch 11cats sailed on towards France. We sailed back to Heist, together with 2 other Falcons. Anton and Mathieu sailed with  BEL 777, recently bought, so new to the boat, Simon and Filip (one of our Youth Teams) sailed BEL 333 and Gill and I sailed our BEL 666.

Like always (boys and their toys) everything has to be a competition. So we picked some buoys we had to round on the way back and we made it a race! It was super sailing. Great conditions, Southerly (offshore) winds, so flat water, enough wind to double trap upwind and to trap with the kite up. And the sun was out most of the time. Truely great! We enjoyed this afternoon of sailing. Right before we had to cross the harbour of Zeebrugge (large port with lots of freight traffic, big container boats!), we ended the competion and waited to cross the harbour together.

What do you think of our new spray tops? (Thanks Gina!!!)

Once the harbour crossed, Gill and I decided to switch places and I steered the rest of the way home. A very cool upwind track, cunningham (downhaul) full on, Gill sheeting and the pink girl (thanks Matt & Gina!!) holding the stick :-) Awesome! I loved it. It was sooo easy. You really feel when the boat is trimmed correctly. The rudder felt so light, I could hold it with 1 finger. Very important for a girl ;-)

Texel Dutch Open 2012

This was the 2nd year we decided to travel to Texel, The Netherlands to race the Texel Dutch Open and to try to sail Round Texel, a classic big long distance race around the Isle of Texel. Unfortunately this year this race was sheduled very early in the month of June and therefore none of our Youth Teams could participate. Their school results are ofcourse equally important (altough they sometimes don't think so ;-)).


To reduce the costs and to have more fun we decided to travel together with one other Belgian team, Wim Deca, one of our loyal readers (hello Wim!!!) and Gilles Tas, sailing a Nacra Infusion. We rented a holiday house (with a jacuzzi!! (never used it)) and more importantly, free WIFI.


When we arrived on Monday it was really blowing hard, again. What is it with this season and alot of wind? We rigged our boats and watched some boats trying to get out. One of our friends also went out, but had bad luck, a wave caught them on the side, they capsized in the breakers, they tried to right their boat quickly, but the force of the waves was just too much and their mast broke :-(. This was really painfull to watch from ashore. Our hearts broke in sympathy with our friends, not a good start of the week. We all rushed to help them and with joined efforts the boat was quickly out of the water, the crew shaken but OK, and we all helped them back to their trailer. And then they got some well deserved beers, to recuperate a bit...


The next day Gill and I went out together with Wim & Gilles to have a short training session out on the Texel water. A great day, sun, not too much wind (yeah) and great practicing tacks and gybes. I did get a bit sea sick of constantly looking at my watch to tack every 2 minutes :-)

Wednesday was the first day of the Texel Dutch Open. There were 2 starts, one separate start for the Nacra Infusion Worlds and then one start 5 minutes later for the C1 class. So a bit a devided field, but nevertheless great racing. Last year we did very well during the TDO, this year tough we felt a bit dissappointed with our result. Our upwind speed was very good, but downwind we lost places. I didn't feel too comfortable with the waves, it was really a skill to surf of the waves and gain speed. We got 3 races in that day, with varying conditions, not so easy sailing!





Surfing down the waves


That evening we went out with some of the other Falcon sailors (Geert & Raymond from The Netherlands, Andi & Katrin from Switzerland and Sandro & Johannes also from Switzerland/Germany). A very fun night, that reminded us of the good times we had last year at the F16 Worlds in Bordeaux!



On Thursday it was immediately very clear that there would be no racing that day. Very high winds, stormy weather. We had to tighten everything very well and some sailors forgot to do that, so there was some carnage...





Instead we wanted to go Carting, but unlike in Carnac, there was no decent Carting Track. So instead we did some site seeing (big tractors!) and we went back to our house and had a nice elaborate barbeque :-)








Gill, Gilles and Wim enjoying the barbeque!


Friday, 3rd and last day of racing and we got an awesome day of sailing. Sun, wind, flat water, tight racing, we felt great. A bit too great in fact, because our 2nd start of that day got us a Black Flag Disqualification, ouch, we pushed it a bit too hard.





Awesome!





Yiha :-)


By Friday night we already knew that there would be no Round Texel Race on Saturday because - again - of the predictions of too much wind. That night there was a party in the big tent and we had a "dance off" with Chris & Georgina and Raphael & Marcela, Sandro & Katrin,... We really laughed alot, great fun!


So on Saturday indeed no Round Texel and a one-of, for the first time in it's 35 year history the Round was postponed untill Sunday. Unfortunately we did not foresee this in our agenda and we had to be back on Monday for work, so we decided to travel back to Belgium on Saturday, meaning we missed Round Texel again. Gill immediately told me: "this only means we will be back next year, because one day I definately want to sail the Round!" :-D





Round Texel: see you next year!

Eurocat Carnac 2012

Eurocat is the first big event in Europe and is not to be missed. Unfortunately this year we really did not have any luck with the weather conditions. Of the 4 possible days of racing, only 2 days went trough. On Saturday the C1 class sailed 3 races and on Tuesday the long distance raid was scheduled.

We arrived early to practice and train together with the youth teams. Next to the 3 Belgian teams there was also a Swiss and French team competing.

 Friday
First day of sailing was on Friday and was a training day with Sebbe Godefroid. Focus was on practising starts as in a 60 boat fleet getting a good start is extremely important. While training we found out that winter had not done us any good :-)!















By the end of the day we did some small races in nice and sunny conditions.

 Saturday

Saturday we went out at 13h to go racing around the buoys. It took the race committee some time to get the (difficult) course into place, but eventually we were able to sail 3 races in great conditions. Wind built from 15 knots to about 20 knots for the last race. Little to no waves made for some very fast and cool spinnaker runs regularly reaching 18 knots of speed.

Race 1 can be considered a practice race for us... :-). Bad start and trying to find our way around the inner/outer loop course. Our first race didn't seem to end, especially because we had to finish 3 times to do it right! Shame on us!

Race 2 and 3 was a lot better, with an 8th place on 60 boats in the last race! Good starts and great speed both up- and downwind. The last race we even beat Darren Bundock upwind and stayed ahead the whole time. Just before the finish he managed to pull one of his many tricks out of his sleeve and got ahead! Well done Bundy ;-)

Also for the youths and Swiss it was a great day! One team finishing continuously in the top 10, the other youth team and Swiss finishing within the first 16 boats.

3 Falcons in persuit of Falcon 111 battling with the top 5

Overtaking the F20

Hot at the top mark!

Sunday and Monday
Heavy winds made Sunday and Monday a day for 'tuning' by the Falcon teams. Some visiting of the surroundings and kart racing filled the day.

Tuesday
Finally some racing again. The race committee decided to to a short version of the raid instead of a second day of buoy racing.

I switched Kathleen for Maarten who crewed with me on the raid. Conditions about 15 knots with some lulls towards the end of the race.
At 10h30 we took off for a bit over 2 hours of racing with 300 other boats.

We got lost in the middle of the pack at the start giving us no opportunity to sail in clean air. After some 5 or 10 minutes we managed to get clear and could start catching up.
Maarten did the mainsheet and I needed to get used to this. Especially in the reaching parts (about a third of the race was 2 sail reaching) I needed to grow confidence in Maarten doing the main while I beared away in the gusts to gain speed and sail deeper. But it paid. Having 2 hands on the main in these reaching parts is definately faster.

One of the reaching parts. Team 111 clearly ahead of the pack

Next to the reaching parts the first part of the race served us with a long upwind leg. We got the boat in the groove sailing faster and higher then most of the boats around us. We have been working on mast settings lately and copied this to the other Falcons racing. All of them had the same experience the boat was sailing high and fast! Great improvement.

The second part of the race was a downwind with some reaching to finish off with. On the spinnaker run the wind started to go down a bit and we didn't anticipate fast enough to this. Some of the boats we passed on the upwind overtook us, luckily only a couple and not all of them :-) !

BEL 666 in 'raid configuration' :-)

Again great results with the first Falcon team finishing 3rd F16 after 2 Olympic level teams!

Tuesday - 16h
Late, but we decided to drive back yesterday instead of today. Mainly to be able to write this lovely report, but also because we like our bed more than the one at the hotel!

Next up are some races at the West Coast with the Belgian Championship as most important one!

Bye!