F18 Australian Nats 2019: Brett Burvill & Max Puttman crowned Champs

All images courtesy of Canvas Sails from Day 1. No official images available.
Another Australian title for Brett Burvill & Max Putnam. In 2018 Max won with James Clark and Brett in 2016 with Ryan Duffield. These three titles (’16,’18,’19) were obtained by crews sailing Windrush Edge. To complete the list, in 2017 the title went to the van Kerckhoff brothers on a C2.

For 2018 Burvill & Putman joined forces to attack the Europeans & F18 Worlds. Winning the 2019 Australian Nast and adding their second place in the Euros and a top 5 at Sarasota close a great season for both which marks the start towards the 2019 racing schedule, being the Costa Brava Worlds in July the pinnacle of the F18 racing program.

Second place overall at the 2019 Aus Nats went to long time Hobie 16 & Tornado sailor Gavin Colby sailing (Exploder Scorpion / Brewin DS) with Jayden Dalton and third place for James Mc Donald & Adam Coe (Goodall C2 2019 version)

Check below comments from Gavin and Brett Burvill on their Aus Nats experience:
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Gavin Colby: “Aussie F18 Nationals. Great turn out. Adelaide sailing club did a very good job. Unfortunately leading up the the event a few storms went through and this disturbed the sea grass (weed). So we had to constantly stop and lift all the boards and rudders of weed. Some patches were better than others so it made the tactical sailing very hard.
Not only looking for wind but areas of less weed. We had a lot of issues with the weed going right up in the centreboard case. First race we were 2nd at top mark last time to finish eighth.

We thought we were clearing it. But we discovered later it was actually cleating itself on the trailing edge of the plate in the wet box. Not ideal. After that we used different methods of clearing the weed. Also the quicker retractable rudder systems had an advantage. All the boats at the front had pretty much the same pace. I had issues dealing with the weed not only on the boat but in my head!

Brett and Max just dealt with that all better and it showed in the result. Hans from Holland said the only place with so much weed in Europe is Amsterdam. 😉 

Brett Burvill:  “A really nice event for the Australian championship the last days in Adelaide. Extreme heat one day 2 with 47 degC or 116F causing organizers to cancel racing as the wind was forecast to die to nothing and late in the day it was difficult to determine where the sea stopped and the sky began .

Very strong and fair competition with a great mix of manufacturers. 4 different boat builders and sail suppliers in the first 4 positions shows the strength of the class rules.
Max and myself were able to achieve a solid win with a race to spare and are very proud that both the boat and sails were all produced with our own hands in our factory in O’Connor where Windrush build the Edge and Next Gen all the sails.

Our equipment was 100% standard Edge/Next Gen set up and the boat assembled for the first time on measuring day . One feature of the regatta was the closeness of the racing and general improvement of the fleet as a whole finishing much closer from first to last than in previous years . Hans Van Dam , 4th place in Sarasota recently, from the Netherlands was also in Australia after competing in the Sydney to Hobart yacht race over the Christmas , new year period and able to borrow an Edge from a Victorian sailor who could not compete due to work commitments.

He also enjoyed the friendly competition and new experiences on a different platform and sail combination to his usual set up. Hams Finished the event in 7th overall .Final placings saw Burvill -Puttman on the Edge overall victors with the exploder of Gavin COLBY -Jayden Dalton finish strongly in second with Victorian team of James McDonald and Adam Coe on a C2 coming in third. 4th place was the Cirus of Chris Boag and Tom Salt and 5th Glenn Randall and Keiran Webb on their Edge .

The Australian fleet is now preparing to travel to Spain for the upcoming worlds with 2 containers sponsored by Maersk meaning as many as 15-20 boats with quite low individual costs for transport for the other side of the globe. Thanks again to Maersk for their generous contribution to allow this level of participation.

The event was sailed from the Adelaide sailing club with Generally light winds and occasional double trapezing conditions with quite choppy water and strands of sea grass over much of the course meaning a big workload for crews raising and lowering boards and rudders to clear the weed sometimes finishing one round of cleaning only to do it again and then again !
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Top ten below, full results available here.