F18 Worlds 2021 @Gaeta: Cirrus Camp Report

Photo by Gianluca di Fazio. Report sent by Matthieu Marfaing.

Cirrus 901 F18 – F18 Worlds 2021

.”Nice finish for Emmanuel Boulogne and Matthieu Marfaing on the New Cirrus 901!
With a 4th place at the last race of the F18 worlds championship in Italy , they finally showed the potential of this new design.

Emmanuel Boulogne: “ It was really interesting and necessary to be present during the most important race of the year with our new boat. We known the best sailor were going to be there and that it would be the best way to work on the rigging tuning.”
Matthieu Marfaing: “ Today we can leave this event knowing that we would be able to fight soon with the best teams in the world using this amazing Formula 18. It was incredible the last day to see how fast and fun was the boat when we finally understood what we were doing wrong with the mast rigging!”
Congratulations and thank you to the Argentinian teams!

With 3 teams in the top 10, and 2 on the podium (2nd and 3rd), they integrated our team to their team, letting them do many speed test with their group of 5 boats, and it was always nice they were able to debrief together on the different impressions.

Gonzalez Smith Cruz and Heuser Mariano: ” When we started sailing in the F18 class, nobody wanted to let us do some speed test with them. Now that we have a good squad, we are happy to help sailors like you to develop new project like the Cirrus 901.”
Every evening , after a long day on the water, Manu and Matt were comparing the data’s tracker (from the races) videos, pictures, comments from the competitors and team members who where assisting them from a chase boat.

After 5 days of training and 5 days of racing, the team understood that they did different mistake.
1 – We didn’t listen to our sailmaker who told us to chose another mainsail we designed and tested before the event. However, when you chose a sail, you have to keep it until the last day of the event or you would be disqualified.
2 – We realized that our mast cables length where not the same we were using on our first boat. This may look stupid, but when you are sailing on a completely new design, they are many things that you want to focus on and sometimes you miss the most important.
3 – They were not racing with the head out of the boat. When you are not looking at the race course, the wind, your competitors, when racing, there is a big chance that you would not be doing good. Matt admitted that he was more looking at the boat than the race.

Finally, now they know what to do to make the boat going fast.
The good news is that it would only be about small changes on the rigging and won’t require any changes on the platform.

The next big event for the team on the Cirrus 901 will be in California in September for the American championship and we already know that the boat would be much faster than it was during the last event.

Thanks to our amazing Partners:
Integral PROPERTY TAX SERVICES
EB Concept
Glaser Sails
Zhik