Autumn Cup @Hellecat: F18s racing against latest Tech

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All Images Danny Broersen / Hellecat.nl – Excellent Full gallery at Hellecat FB – This year at the Eurocat, I reported live that the F18s were giving the FP a run for her money in test sails and in long distance competition in upwind mode. This even+ performance for the F18s was upwind and non flying downwind conditions for the FP. Once foiling downwind the FP was gone for good in the long distance Eurocat racing.

Now in Netherlands the Nacras 20FCS are starting to compete along the F18s.
Next year will be an interesting one as the Nacras and FPs are being delivered in numbers, and I will report first hand here in BA about mixed course racing among F18s  , Nacras & FP. I also intend to travel again to the Eurocat.

Hellecat Autumn Cup (Texel Rating score) report by Jorden Veenman & Frank de Waard from F18 Team Compass:

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“We raced against the F20fcs from Peter Vink and Xander Pols during the Autumn cup in the Netherlands. Also against the normal F20 carbon, Nacra17, A-class and 16 with curved boards. 

We think it’s great development in those classes, but in the past year there was a lot of discussion here and at the F18 Worlds going on about where to go with the F18. Suggestions such as foiling or lighter build boats came trough.

The Autumn Cup contains 4 Sundays of sailing. We had all types of conditions from 5 knots up to 30. It is for sure is true that the foiling boats are very fast and spectacular to watch, but the competition we had with the F18’s kept us busy with ourselves pushing the boat as fast as possible every race.

In the end it turned out that the F18’s beat the foiling boats almost every race, as well as the light wind races as the heavy wind races were we even finished in front of the F20 FCS with 30 knots, not only on handicap.

We realised the F18 is still a very competitive boat against the foilers, and I think the most ideal boat to sail in the biggest range of windspeed. As you can see in the top 8 results below the F18 did very well out of 45 boats.

We decided to go on next year in the F18 as we think it’s still the most fun, competitive and spectacular class to race.

1 Rik Duinmeijer/Corstiaan Alessie F18
2 Jorden Veenman/Frank de Waard F18
3 Xander Pols/Stefan Dubbeldam F20FCS
4 Remco Remeijer/Maxime Hillen F18
5 Arjan Baas/Roderick Gort F18
6 Walter Minderman/Gardi Minderman F16
7 David van Nispen/Emma van Welij F18
8 Peter Vink/Mischa de Munck F20FCS

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