F18: Windrush Edge European Tour

We’ve had very little time on the water with the EGDE and we were very busy working in the workshop with many projects ranging from revolutionary wind turbines to 7000hp Drag racing cars. (!?!)

After our return from the Aus National F18 titles where we surprised even ourselves with the competitiveness of the boat, we have lent it to other crews that have been sailing other F18s and they have asked us for trade ins already.

Ryan and I were busy preparing for the Tornado Nationals in March. But Ryan was unable to get the time out of work at the last minute so I asked Josh Fugill, my production manager at Windrush, to pull the strings on the front of the Tornado for me.
We were able to defend the title I won last year with Ryan even though our combined crew weight was big (175kg) .

Since the end of the Tornado titles we had only a few weeks to get things ready to send to Europe for the summer there.
Our container is now on the way and although we had hoped to have a few other EDGE’s in there for sale we have not had the time to get it all together.

The original idea was to build a few Edge’s to start the project and continue an ongoing development as the big builders also do, we had faith on the boat and now it is already a success.

Now we are currently developing a new mast, we started with an ahpc wing mast recomended by Andrew Landenberger that has been a really good help supplying excellent sails and giving advice on the set up, but now we have designed a new one, we’ve done a lot of computer generated stress analysis of the sections to come up with a mast that we believe will give us an edge in aero and sail performance for the same weight.

We hope Landy will be able to sail one of our boats. There is an overlap of the A Class worlds and the F18 worlds but several competitors are doing both so we have our fingers crossed that he will find a way to make it happen, he is such a great sailor and I have known him since the Moth sailing days back in the mid-late 80’s.

You don’t get to the Olympics and earn medals being slow, so we are looking forward for him to race an EDGE with us in Erquy.

We have designed new beams also, end caps etc and are doing a complete new rudder system to replace the 1st set that we have been using so far.

We are using this trip to have a full test on the water against Europe’s best boats and riders, also to get a better feel for the F18s as I come from the Tornado Class.

Regards,
Brett Burvill
Windrush Yachts
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