F18 Argentine Nats: Cruz Smith & Mariano Heuser 1st

Finally, the 3rd was the one for Cruz Gonzalez Smith, one of the founders of the class that bought the 1st series of Racecats that formed the local F18 fleet, and currently our best sailor with an excellent 23rd overall at Erquy.
Cruz lost the 1st Argentine to a Hobie Tiger by 3 points only riding a handicaped Racecat, in the 2nd Arg Nats, he had some bad luck with a new boat, and this 3rd was almost deja vu today when they dropped the mast in the 9th regatta! It was all over… but they managed to get to the Club and repair the chainplate fix on time for the last race, and with a 2nd they clinched the 3rd Argentine National in spectacular form. Hat off to Cruz and Mariano for a truly deserved win, they were the best.

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Note aside for a bad moment the class had, as one of the guys was protested for changing boat, the owner alleged a spin pole breakage while going to the course race and asked for a redress to the Race Comittee before the race, but things got hard afterwards with a non acceptable situation , not called for and out of place at the prize giving.
We should have prevented this kind of issues, a really sad moment for me too, as I wasn´t informed at the moment before the race, and later I couldn´t stop the bad vibes. Things should and could have been managed differently. Like we realized afterwards with some similar experiences on the 49er at Beijing with changes of boats due to breakage that defined the Gold medal for ie. Nevertheless some bad reactions only hurts the entire class and must be avoided at all cost–

On my racing part I sucked all 3 days, betting on a radical sail change replacing the main (Thanks to James Ogilvie for the tips though!) racing in it for the 1st time on an Infusion (nothing to lose, lot to gain without a fixed crew to train/race and a borrowed boat) that I couldn´t handle on the course, besides my own bad sailing, not attending two races on crew missing and having two different frontmen for the championship without much hours on the class , I literally could not make the boat go forward , brakes were on , awful feeling never expirienced, in changing 6-7knots and some little chop , that was only fixed in part today with some smooth moments of good speed with me crewing and after changing several settings on the morning, but it was a good challenge. And now I’m prepared for the next regatta…
Photos in days to come.