What will the F18 class do now?

http://www.sailing.org/tools/documents/F182012INT170212-[12114].pdf If you read the document carefully you will see that all F18's are now illegal unless you have painted the hulls in the course of maintenance.... So, after many months of fighting over something as stupid as paint V's gelcoat we now have a totally messed up situation where 99% of the fleet is now illegal. If we could apply common sense i'm sure this can be solved, but that has been lacking so far... Stay tuned for more action in the coming weeks.

Where have I been and what am I doing?

So, after a long break.. Sorry!! I am back and will certainly try to keep more frequent updates happening here. During 2011 I was kind of in between projects, frustrating for someone like me who is always keen to take something on and get involved. But in every situation there are positives. I really enjoyed working with the Hobie crew and I have made some great friends over the season, F18 continues to be a very strong class around the world and although there have been some issues of late with rules and uninformed stakeholders creating storms in teacups, The class is still a great place to be. Over the months October - January I was all over the southern hemisphere, I went to NZ to check a few things for a project. It was nice to catch some of the Oracle boys and have a sneak peak at the AC45's they are building. Then I spent a few weeks in Singapore with my good friends Alice and Scott from prosail Asia. They had some Corsair Dash 750's coming in for customers so I helped out and put them together with Scott. The Dash is a really great little boat and I was really impressed with its sailing manners and performance balance for such a comfortable family fun boat.

I even travelled to the Corsair factory in Vietnam with Alice and Scott to work through some future requirements and tweaks. This was my first trip to Vietnam and it certainly wont be the last. I really loved the place and I can highly recommend it. After this job was done I headed to Perth where my girlfriend was training for the ISAF worlds in Match racing. I have done a few days with the girls before and aside from having a pretty good crash in my first ever match race on an Elliot 6 I really enjoy the program. The level of work that goes into an Olympic campaign these days is substantially higher than the good old days... but the results are also impressive. We did a week of work with various camera systems including video glasses, masthead cams, stern cams and handhelds and each day I would compile the instances of note and integrate them into the debrief. Micke the coach and the girls Mandy, Merel and Top along with the training partners Lieske, Maike and Shannen all worked their asses off to prepare for the worlds and the result of 7th was exactly what they required. They qualified the country for the 2012 games, so now the real work begins! After the Perth training session I managed to spend some time at home with the family before Xmas where Merel and I had a great time in Bali, truly fantastic little resort we found. La Joya. email me if you want info on a holiday in a peaceful, well sorted, quiet resort with a great surf beach out the front. So, onto 2012!! I had spent a lot of time last year working on an X40 project for an owner. We went quite a long way with the work and I even checked out a couple of boats to buy before we came to the conclusion that the cost/return balance with the X40 was just not reasonable for an owner, it sort of works for sponsored teams but certainly there are better ways for an owner to spend his/her money to go fast multihull sailing. So, this year I am going to realise that project. We have built a set of requirements and we are going to deliver something that is clearly missing and desired. We have a very good team assembled already and as soon as we can divulge more details I am sure we will impress with what we have planned. I will still do some F18 sailing and after testing the Phantom earlier this week in chilly Quiberon I can honestly say that it is a very impressive product. The Phantom is a race boat, well thought out, very well built and to top it off it simply looks awesome! The demand for the boat is such that I may have to wait a bit for one, but its worth it. Check out the upfucker system that works so well it is embarrassing that we all spent so much time trying to get our Nacra/Hobie/AHPC ones to work even half as good as this system does. I could adjust both board heighta whilst twin trapping, and it was easy! On the race course its details like this that make your day so much nicer.