F18 Worlds 2024 Costa Brava : Pablo Volker & Federico Polimeni crowned Champs

by Editor · Published July 5, 2024 · Updated July 6, 2024

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F18 Worlds 2024 Final Day

Argentine sailors sailing under Esp Pablo Volker & Federico Polimeni were crowned today as 2024 Formula 18 World Champs, sailing a rocket fast GoodalDesign Akurra F18.

Second place for Brett Burvill-Max Puttman (Edge/Nxt Gen) , the Aussie high wind aces had a match this week, but they pushed hard as always to get a Vice Champ title.
Third overall for locals Tony Rivas & Jordi Sanchez (Akurra). The spanish team started slow but a consistent drive put them in the podium.

Aussies Charlie Gargett & Beau White (Akurra) , continued their high charge scoring 1,1 & 5 for the final day. Pity they had two DNF in the qualys and only one could be discarded from that initial stage.

Great regatta in the end at Ballena Alegre, Costa Brava. A literal tough one on the harsh wind and waves conditions they had the entire week. See pics more from last day here

+130 boats registered, an excellent number and good sign of the Class health. Plenty of photos provided by the org via Marc Graupera Aloma, and also the key ingredient to follow from home: The Tracking Metasail app, best next thing to being there on the spot.

2025 Worlds to be held in Netherlands and 2026 in Perth.

Second F18 World Title for Argentina

This title for Volker & Polimeni comes after a close call last 2023 Worlds at Travemunde, were they contended vs Emil Jarudd and Colby-Colman. After that regatta they both planned ahead for 2024.
Being Pablo in Arg and Fede in Spain was impossible to train together, but Polimeni flew to Mar del Plata sailing week this past summer and they also had a two month training period in Europe before Costa Brava. In the process winning 3 regattas in a row (including French and Spanish Nats) filled with bullets.

Coming to this 2024 Worlds we labeled them as ¨Nr 1 Candidates´ in our preview last week.

Volker landed on the F18 ARG from the youth 420, Class where he also became World Champ. First F18 regatta he sailed along another talented kids from his generation, Mateo Majdalani (Now representing ARG in Paris 2024 Nacra 17).

Once in our fleet he started crewing. In 2016 he won as helm the F18 Worlds we organized in Buenos Aires along Tigre Benitez. From then on he travelled abroad to race Worlds, Europeans and St Barts. Later spent some time in the Moth Class, but he returned to the F18 two years ago.

Federico Polimeni is an Argie living in Spain now, working as coach and sailing related projects. Seeing the good performance of the Arg F18 fleet in Europe he went to invest and buy one himself. He got a race ready Akurra from Tony Rivas and in 2023 invited Pablo to race Travemunde 2023 Worlds with him.

Today they completed one of the most dominant performance seen lately on an F18 Worlds. A tough week at Costa Brava average 20-25knots races every day, carnage included Day 2.

We are happy for them and all the hard work / planning they´ve done to achieve this great title.

As a testament of the Argentine fleet works, Pablo is currently promoting the F18 among 420 and 29er kids here in Arg and he already managed to get some teams onboard. Giving back the legacy elder F18 members did with him when he started racing with us.

More pics by Marc Graupera Aloma here

Live Tracking + Races replay by Metasail here

In terms of design, the GoodallDesign Akurra grabs its first Title and also filled the Top Ten Platforms: