Formula 18 1st South Americans – BA Week 2011: Final Day

Photo: Jorge Cousillas / www.elojonautico.com – Cruz Gonzalez Smith-Mariano Heuser 1st

Photo: Jorge Cousillas / www.elojonautico.com – Martin Vanzulli-Esteban Blando 2nd

Photo: Jorge Cousillas / www.elojonautico.com – Agustín Krevisky-Mariano Conte 3rd
All photos Jorge cousillas www.elojonautico.com
Great event for the growth of the Formula 18 Class world wide. Having 20 boats on the lineup was a blast and we did a show on the 5 days of the Buenos Aires Week (500 boats in all classes) , organized by the Yacht Club Argentino (YCA).
The 1st official South Americans were won by Cruz Gonzalez Smith and Mariano Heuser, with 6 bullets on 11 races. As said already, a step ahead on the rest of the fleet on their consistency at the top.
The 2nd place had a tought fight between us, Krevisky, Mehl and Rodger.
We entered the final day with 1 point lead over Agustín, and with calm winds it was again his game so we needed to excell… but it was a total fail at the beggining, with our worst day (7,6,8) , Krevisky had 2,2,13.

Almost side capsize downwind on an overpowered gust on the 3rd but I think the Wildcat save our souls in that one! Not a good feeling losing all the hard work of 5 days of racing, plus blowing a secure lead on the 1st race of the day, but we stayed focused, and gave our best for the last race.
No margin at all as we were already out of the podium on the two events at that moment. Raced the last like always (we had lots of speed but tactical and handling errors kept us from winning) but this time we covered a little more, with a huge lead already at the 1st windward mark we cruised all the way to the finish line controlling our comfortable lead on Cruz and Mariano.

Perfect finish, we won that final race of the two events (finally obtaining the bullet) and we secured the 2nd overall on the South Americans and 3rd on the BA Week.
It was kill or die, and we delivered.
Thanks to Esteban for trusting me the helm of his Machine, he has invested a lot of time and $ on it so it was a huge responsability for me. He will now helm the Wildcat for the Arg Nats in November. I had enough for this year and also some pending cat building work due but I’ll check the possibilities to participate too.
After five years of the F18 Racecat project that I started with my cousin Nadal Solari, this successful event highly supported by the YCA and all the F18 sailors, is a final cicle closure.
My job is Done.
Now I will dedicate time to my family and their future, and also improving this website that seems to have a good response on the catsailing community.

Great to have Uruguay and Chilean crews present, nice to spread the word to other countries.
Thanks to all that pushed hard for this project, mainly the local class members (all already mentioned in the several posts on the local class) that had also invested time and money to make this incredible class a reality in Argentina.
The Formula 18 International Class Association.

Equipment:
1st MKII
2nd Wildcat
3rd Capricorn
4th C2
5th C2
6th Wildcat
7th Capricorn
8th Infusion
9th Infusion – longboards
10th MKIIPhoto: Jorge Cousillas / www.elojonautico.com – Sergio Mehl-Nico Aragonés 2nd BA Week 2011 – 5th South American

Full Results BA Week 2011 https://www.semanadebuenosaires.org.ar/Popup.aspx?Id=1181
Full Results South Americans https://www.semanadebuenosaires.org.ar/Popup.aspx?Id=1278
Top Ten South Americans (20 Boats)