F18 Arg Nats Day 1 + DS Retrofit/Handling

Stadandard sail re cut to a Decksweeper. In short and as remarked last week on St Barth results,  equipment wont do much for you if you lack the training hours or do not race the course properly enough.

Less will help crew efficiently, not in the handling itself ( today I felt the DS it might be even more smooth to handle in transitions than standard straight boom ones) but on nailing timing or getting your act together!

Today I realized I’m almost half a century old. Crewing on those tricky changing conditions was a tough experience! Gets you appreciating the hard work by F18 or any double handed racing cat crews.
We have light tricky winds to double trap in the last race, but lots of shifts , so it was  a real challenging day.

We finished last  all 3 races, but I felt nice speed upwind and managed to get good moments in the first race which was the lightest of the day. It was my friend’s first race at the helm, and he is still learning to handle the F18 or a cat for the matter, but we were back mostly on my poor crew work…! It was shameless haha.

Re cut DS felt quick , I really liked to crew with that sail aside my limitations.
Tacks were done in front of mast, gybes no issues on the 1mt foot lenght.
Taking aside monofilm diff + a bit used cloth, on the water not many realized it was a re cut sail.
So, go for it if you want to try it, but remember it wont win races itself for you.
I went 750mm head, 1000mm foot.
Visibility no issues with full monofilm radials.

-Edit: Got some comments from James Baeckler, the broken mast at St Barth was assigned to a poor mast rotation of a boom DS.
In fact I had to check mast rotation several times today.
James recommends an over rotation device as mandatory , more in hard sheeting situations like double trap with spi. (the case at St Barth)

First race was won by Cruz & Mariano (Infusion / Boomless DS 1D) , second race by an Infusion / Standard Sail, and last race for Volker /Mehl ( Scorpion / Mischa DS)  . The the factory DS, (1D with boom) scored 6,3,5.

No one dominated & the three top riders using DS needed to learn an adapt to the new rig.
Krevisky & Lopez Segura lead (Phantom / Standard Main)

Tomorrow 3 more races scheduled. Top 5 below, full results here