Zhik F18 US Nats 2014 for Mike Easton & Tripp Burd

Images above Jasper van Staveren. Great event at Corpus Christi Yacht Club. The Class put Jasper to take pictures, they also published xresults after each race plus Live updates in the official FB page facebook.com/F182014.
But the best of the championship was seen on the water. 14 races total with two discards, and mixed conditions from 16 to 6knots racing. 40 boats gathered by the US Class and the venue was just perfect as I’ve been told directly by the Arg crews.
Left: Argies bringing the Goods to BA. Below: Sailors had fun out of the water as shown by John Casey’s pic from the Papas Pilar Party.

Only 1 race could be completed today and the racing was cancelled later due to lack of wind. Mike Easton & Tripp Burd, the Nr 1 US  crew coming to this event,  grabbed the title on their consistency on low scores, as the Argentines Cruz Gonzalez Smith & Mariano Heuser finished ahead of them in 9 out of 14 races. It was a close race at the end with only 3pts separating both crews.

Great regatta for Matt McDonald’s Falcon F18 , winning her first big one thanks to Mike & Tripp. Happy for Matt & Gina, I told you the Falcon was a fast boat inthe breeze when I had the chance to race in its debut at LA 2012.  US sailors have again a local made F18 as an alternative through Falcon Marine, and in Europe trough Gill & Kathleen from the Boatshop.be.

It was a good mix of designs though (as always in the F18) with 3 Infusions in  2nd,3rd,4th and the C2s of Daniel-Brogger and ARG Faustin-Aragones that took the now Goodall Design branded boat, to 3 bullets in the breeze.

This is the best result achieved abroad by Arg crews since we launch the Class in 2008, and it is a result of hard training and investment on their part traveling each year to the Worlds and the North Americans.

A 2nd place for Cruz & Mariano having the best US teams plus the 2014 Worlds Champs it is the highest point in our Class history and those two deserve greatly that honor on the sailing and work done for our local fleet for years now.

Juan and Nico with great a 6th overall and the satisfaction of knowing they were the fastest (?) crew in the breeze with their rented C2. They tied finally in pts with John Tomko & Jonathan Atwood, but the US team got the 7th on the Argies bullets.

US Nacra 17 campaigner John Casey showed his helm skills are still intact and put on a fight for the podium ending in 3rd place overall.

Next year F18 Worlds 2015 will be held at Kiel, Germany and in 2016 we will have the event in Buenos Aires.

US F18 Class website https://usf18.com/events/2014-nationals/
Full Results at https://www.regattanetwork.com/clubmgmt/applet_regatta_results.php?regatta_id=8448&show_crew=1