F18 Worlds 2013 @Marina di Grosseto: 184 Entries

The biggest Catamaran race in the World after the Texel, is about to begin (July 5). 184 Formula 18 boats are ready to participate. Event website is 2013.f18worlds.com . Reviewing the entry list these are the candidates:
Besson-Lagarrigue ,  Bissaro-Cesari ,  Heemskerk-Tentij ,  Styles-Mason & for being on a mission plus a World Champ crew , Vendee Globe winner Francoise Gabart with Matthew Vandame.  Mitch Booth will be racing with his son Jordi and they will surely be up there,  although it is almost sure we will have a new World Champ. (Mitch doesn´t need more!)

2012 Dark Horses , 2nd at LA & 2013 Texel winners and a priori the top candidates for Italy are not racing together this time, Oskar Zeekant will race with Sanne van Hek and Charlie Begemman will not be there along Coen de Koning, Thij Visser, Tim Shuwalow and others training for next Nacra 17 Worlds in July 26. For those campaigning N17 Jason Waterhouse will be helming for Brett Goodall , look for them at the top 10.

This year Dark Horses are future first US World Champs Taylor Reiss & Matthew Whitehead. In ‘contrast’ the experienced and ex World Champs, the Sach brothers will be pushing the kids showing you can race competitively F18 for decades! They just wiped out the GER fleet at Kiel Week.

Check entry list at https://www.eventivelamaremma.it/registration/entry-list/

The Arg team had to buy some boats only to race, two Phantoms are now being sold after the event so you can a good deal on them. Send me a mail and I’ll forward directly.

Photo above: Two young Argentines crews, Pablo Volker (420 World Champ & member of the Youth Arg AC45 squad) & Gara Armesto that will be crewing for his father. Double Arg Nat Champ Nico Aragones (also Arg AC45) and Juan Cruz Benitez will also be crewing to complete 4 youths crews as half of our 8 boat fleet, and you can add a 9th binational with Uruguay’s helm Christopher Schewe  that always race with us. Chile sent 2 crews this time, 5 at LA.

Needless to say Argentina has the biggest fleet outside Europe, huge effort in time and money for all of them, we were 11 at LA. All hardcore fanatics of our F18 fleet founded only 5 years ago.

Some news coming asap on the F18 Open Project, thanks to the support of Anne and Manu, from Boulogne Conception Marine, builders of the Cirrus R F18,  I have now available a set of beams and mast from them, the best of the market and I’m working to decide to leave them in Europe to be used to build a first boat there instead of bringing them to Arg.

The idea is to gather a fund raise group to be managed by someone in  Europe that will be responsible to manage the project with a local builder that has already quote some interesting costs to build hulls & foils from scratch. More info later on this.