And we want a full report on the Nations Cup in UK

Results and photos here: www.mumblesyachtclub.co.uk....

The Gower coast is a stunning area of beauty, add into the pot a friendly race orientated club, sun and varying breeze of between 5 and 15 knots, 12 F16's and 12 races over 3 days and you have a superb weekend of racing. Without doubt this inaugural event was a great success and our hope is that this will be the start of many such events to come.

Saturday was a late 2.00 start allowing for all those travelling in and those already there to ooh and aah about the wide variation and permutations of the Stealth’s and the 2 Blades. 4 races then straight off with about 7 knots in the first race building to about 12 in the last. John Pierce showed his class with consistent wins on a borrowed boat but with many others all vying for that important 2nd to 5th position. Down the fleet the not so fast were having the same battles all swapping places. Day 1 then, great sailing together with the sun and the roof top bar overlooking the bay, really was just the icing on the cake.

Day 2 Sunday was just more of the same, 12.30 start with freshening breeze building up to about 15 knots by the end, maybe a little more at times, certainly enough for the F16’s to strut there stuff. John P decided to really swap about on the boats giving the scorer a real headache but enough to reduce his holeshots to effect the overall outcome at the end. Lots of spills and a few wet feet but no real damage apart from 1 dagger board which hit a small bouy at speed. No real winners again today as the 2 handers came into play in the higher winds and the solos winning in the first races. A great bar feast with Warren the DJ doing his entertainment bit, a mega good curry to finish and lots of tired bunnies all going home to bed thinking it just can’t get much better than this. Pierce, Jalani, Warren and Presdee were all pretty equal on points at this stage

Day 3 was just more of the same, 4 races, 5 knots building to about 12 or so in the last race, early 11.30 start which a few of the boats missed, great low wind race to start with building up to the “ medal “ race at the end in a fresh 15 knots. So much fun was being had that we all went around 5 laps instead of 4 in the medal race and all because we couldn’t count our laps. Good exciting racing was had by all with everyone having there own personal battles against other equal boats and crew.

As to boats, here was the first real head to head battle of the new kid on the block, the Blade, and the older more experienced hand the Stealth, with an added bonus of 3 very current A Class boats starting 5 minutes behind. Well at the end of the day we can still say pretty categorically that the best sailor will win, so close are the boats. The event was won by the oldest design there including narrow beams, with a new fat head sail. The skippers consistency won the event and not the boat. From a personal observation point of view, the Blade single handed in very light air is very fast, in heavy air even twin wired it was the only boat to have a pitch pole in the 3 days ( interestingly with John P on as crew ) , my guess is its optimum wind range is probably 3 – 4 knots lower than the Stealth which when you look at the hull design, one being a little more traditional and the other a planning hull, is probably correct. The 3 A Class boats all took us by surprise on Day 1 comprehensively stuffing the F16’s but on day 2 when the wind was a little higher the F16’s stuffed the A’s by an even bigger margin, again wind strength holds the key there.

At the end of the day this was a stunning event and I’ sure will be well remembered by all those attending, a particular thanks to the Mumbles Yacht Club for hosting the event in the manner they did.

Go to :

http://www.mumblesyachtclub.co.uk./home_photos.php?gallery=2006_06_f16_nations_cup_and_a_open

Wouter

Did you say that there was a video file as well ?

Wouter

Yes, but I need to convert them to streaming video - they are huge; it'll take me a day or two to sort out.

There are some great photos there, Colin. Thanks again to you and everyone at Mumbles who helped run the event. It was a great weekend.

I noticed that there was someone with a camera on the committee boat on Sunday - do you know who it was and if those photos are available? Ann wants to see some photos of her on the boat...

Paul

Hi Paul, yeah, I had a ball this weekend; great to meet all you guys - I'll try and find out about Sunday and get them onto the site for preview. Sue P has some video footage of all three days, so that's another route...

Hi all,

well done sounds like a great regatta, love the photo's of so many F16's all together. The Blades looked good, were the blue spinnakers the fastest. <img src=

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Regards Gary. <img src=

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A picture of the Nations Cup champion :

Mark Presdee, Stealth F16 GBR-516 with new Landenberger mainsail : It was anything but a

little feat

you pulled off

Congratulations Mark

Wouter

I wasn't there and despite the fact that I couldn't go even if I wanted to, I still regret not going. From all sides it looks, feels and sounds like a fantastic event. Mumbles looks like a very good place to have more events in the future. The body of water looks sheltered and therefor garantees succesful racing. This is always the problem with the Dutch coast line, you always have to keep your fingers crossed that the surf is not to high.

I'm following Wayne Marlow in his appreciation that the skipper won the event and not the boat. Sure enough he had a new landenberger mainsail on his otherwise most senior Stealth but this proofs that the formula setup works and that by replacing some key parts every few years you can stay very competitive. No matter what newest and hottest design is entered in the race as well. So gradual upgrading works; it certainly did this time.

Also fun to see the comparison between the modern A's and the F16's. In the lighter winds the A's had the edge and in the larger winds the F16's had it. Again this is completely as was to be expected and it shows that the F16's are still part of the fastest cat designs around despite having compromised some in order to stay attractively priced and to allow both doublehanding and singlehandig while using the same hardware. Exactly as we intended the F16 class to be.

I also find it quite comforting to see that the doublehanders again raced quite well with the singlehanders. I hope they forgive me for this but Geert and Bart together will weight over 160 kg's combined. Actually I put them closer to 170 kg then 160 kg's. That is alot of weight for racing an F16 in 7 to 12 knots of wind, but they did quite well against the singlehandes.

Additionally I see that the F16 formula again worked quite well. At the Gulfport invitational in the USA we saw the upgraded Taipans remain very competitive to the Blades and so again now. The Stealths and Blades proved very equal again. And these are only two examples of this year, many more can be named of earlier years. I think it is beyond a doubt now that the F16 formula works very well in equalizing the around-the-course performance over a wide spectrum of conditions irrespectable of makes.

So indeed my utmost appreciation of this first of many Nations Cups !

A big thank you to all involved volunteers.

Wouter

For those with BB the raw Windows .avi video files can be downloaded here:-

www.sailwave.com/stuff/mcp_drop.avi 60Mb
www.sailwave.com/stuff/dscf3309.avi 40Mb
www.sailwave.com/stuff/r11start.avi 60Mb
www.sailwave.com/stuff/r12lap4.avi 40Mb
www.sailwave.com/stuff/r12start.avi 80Mb
www.sailwave.com/stuff/r12finish.avi 110Mb

I'll sort out the streaming later...

Guys, look at the r12finish.avi video file.

In it you can see a head to head under spinnaker between Mark Presdee (Stealth with red spi) and Paul Warren (Blade with blue spi). They are so close and fully matching eachother speed.

Brilliant !

You have to look at the video to see who wins this little match

Wouter

The report from Wayne plus three pictures are now on the Yachts and yachting site. I took the liberty of adding the results and submitting the whole lot to increase the coverage of the class!

http://www.yachtsandyachting.com/news/?article=21966