Oops over a year since the last blog post, I hate sites that don't get regularly updated but due to an immensely busy working and sailing year I have fallen foul of that here so anyone still lurking sorry and I will do my best to rectify that for the coming season !
Our f18 2011 review -
Highs-
Texel week - as ever, great event windy as hell and we had a great start in the TDO actually leading the regatta for the first day after posting a 3rd and 1st against the worlds best.
The main race we survived basically as it was up there as the hardest one I've done and coupled with the fact we finished 11th overall from 500odd starters not too shabby a result either !
Nacra Mk1 world champion on a borrowed boat (thanks Nacra uk) with Charles who normally helms was another highlight of our week.
Ecpr -
Back on the shocker and again performing well in the light stuff, main race lead boat for most of the way out and lead F18 most of the way back until bradwell.
Her indoors winning the colne point race in her Dart 15, absolutely stunning well done sandy !!!
Grafham-
Winning 2 races back to back on the new boat straight out of the box.
f18 euros in gran canaria
The tracking, awesome for reviewing all those decisions - http://www.tractrac.com/index.php?page=eventpage&id=190
Leading the fleet for 90% of race 3 and although dropping to 3rd at the line a great race again against the worlds best.
Surfing the rollers downwind at the event was great fun and it helps having a proper surfing crew on the boat , Tom was basically sailing it himself and we were absolutely smoking !
Lows-
Texel-
After leading on day 1 having a nightmare on day 2 after some stupid errors and a lot of swimming!
Ecpr-
The end of the race for us just after bradwell, after making numerous correct calls all the way out and back 1 wrong decision lost us the race.
Grafham -
Not sailing related but some twats vandalised club property again and ruined it for everyone next year as the event for fast cats has been canned.
Gran canaria-
After posting "that" 3rd getting ashore to find we had been black flagged doh !!!!!
Race 6 another bfd after finishing 8th, why are the black flags always on good races.
We had a challenging year with the shockwave and while we were super competitive in the light stuff the Achilles heel came back to bite us when the breeze was up and after much contemplation we moved on to a new nacra mk2 , the choice as to what new boat was challenging in itself, the f18 class is constantly developing and there are always new boats coming out (cirrus r, phantom) or existing ones being updated (Nacra mk2, Ahpc C2, wildcat), we looked at all the options and felt we needed an all rounder as our results just need to be consistent which is why the choice fell to Nacra early impressions are good but 2012 will prove the test.
