F18 French Association 20th Anniversary
All images sent by James Baeckler / AFF18. 20 Years of the French F18 Association, what a better way to celebrating than putting a Cirrus R2 Convertible at the Paris Boat Show 2018?
The Class continues its tradition but the same time innovates without affecting the floating racing status quo: A performance cat you can race from 5 to 30knots.
The French Assoc was the first and keeps leading, they were key on the Convertible & Epoxy rules implementation.
The F18 will continue to lead performance double handed racing for many years. Ono Monday will publish Goodall Design new C2 updated to Convertible plus some interesting changes.
Featured in photos aobve: Bruno Trouble & Manu Boulogne , Alain Metral, the China Sea 1990 long distance event competitor ( The original long distance event who gave us F18 few years later) , top Notch F18 platform designer Martin Fischer (3x WC Designs: Capricorn, Wildcat, Phantom) , among others.
Below comments sent by James Baeckler / AFF18 on the anniversary and the Paris boat show :
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F18 French Association 20th Anniversary – 1998/2018
The Paris boat show has been a great occasion to regroup boat owners and sailors, sailing clubs and manufacturers, the 3 pillars who are making the class to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the French class.
The Nautic week has been like if we opened a story book. We had visits from a large spectrum of visitors starting from cat pioneer who took part in China sea event in the early 90, F18 designer involved in America’s cup project, talented Flying boat sailors, IMOCA skipper and last but not least a very numerous number of club sailors who are making the class so attractive.
We took time to remember the origin of the story when a group of sailors aside event organizer taking advantage of the French sailing federation assets set up the first project of 18 feet cat box rules. After an important financial and technical support from our MNA, the handover of class management took place in 1998. The class was on track !
After 20 years of development the class in handling in the best way the expectations of 21th century cat sailors.
The platform presented generated great interest among visitors, our explanations about the convertible concept did raise positive feedback and media coverage. The change we adopted 1 year ago to have 1 boat for 2 programs, Racing F18 event whit strait dagger board aside foiling runs in optimal wind range outside class events is offering valuable opportunity to cope with sailors investment return.
The Swiss knife of the beach cats is now fully fitted to meet The Convertible concept whit 3 builders offering convertible platforms.
We wish you all a tremendous 2019 season, plenty of rides under kit whit or whit out foils to get the maximum of fun!
AFF18 –
