F-18 Worlds Ballyholme 2014

Results at the end of day one (one race sailed):

F18 Worlds results

what are conditions?

Two BFDs in the first race of the week. Ouch!

Mike

Twitter feed from the race course

F18 Worlds

USA Youts in second place after three races! Go Taylor and Matthew!!!

How is it that we only have ONE team over there? I know the northeast guys want to be in Newport this weekend, but seeing as this is one of our biggest classes, I would have expected at least a few more teams to make the effort.

Is this no longer considered a worthy training event for the Olympic teams?

Mike

Asked and answered.

Those are the standard answers (expense and difficulty/ timing in our season), but I still would think we'd have at least a few more teams.

And, that doesn't answer the question about the Olympic teams. Or, is it just about the cash for them too?

Mike

Mike, That's like asking what color is the sky is and when told blue you respond with... no that's too obvious it has to be more complicated than that.

As for the US Olympic teams... how many have a bonafied shot at making it onto the water in 2016? Two maybe three teams? So with that 30% of the teams are there. If you still want to know why they aren't there ask them. Asking here is not going to get you an answer even remotely correct.

The twitter feed is pretty good.

https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=f18worlds2014&src=typd

The logistics for us was just too much. Price of getting a boat there and staying for the time just wasn't worth it.

We may do 2 weeks in New Caledonia instead.

Well, really two easy answers:

1. Ireland was too expensive. It's that simple. I wanted to be there, I would love to visit Ireland, but I simply can't afford it.

2. For the Olympic hopefuls, Nacra 17 Europeans are this week, so if you're going to travel to Europe you would be there. Whoever decided scheduling those on top of each other is a complete fuckwit.

Gotcha. Thanks, see you in Newport!

Mike

Taylor and Matthew have slipped to third overall after the fourth race. But, they got a bullet in Race 3!

Mike

Four races in today, Taylor and Matthew hanging tough, still in third, one point behind Ashby...

Homepage says jury and repair-folk will be busy this evening...

Mike

Re Scheduling

First of all... ISAF does not give a damn what the rest of the cat sailing scene is doing... So... they take the position.. These are our gold cup events and we get our gold cup clubs to run the schedule we want... That leaves the classes to fit Class events into that schedule if they want... So.. they then have to find a club that will host on this schedule, has enough space and a large enough body of water etc etc not to mention Nacra's ability to support the N17 stand alone event and the proximity of the international fleet to get a decent turnout.. Given all the moving parts... I bet that they choose to not worry about the F18 event.

I bet a dollar that the F18 worlds were scheduled well ahead of the N17s... but the fact is that you have just a few slots in the summer season to run class championships.... and of course you want wind...

Bottom line... there is no idiot who scheduled the events on top of one another... it's just life... There are not enough summer weeks for F18 Worlds, F16 Words, Viper champs and the N17 euros to live with the ISAF Gold Cup events.

Mark This is no ISAF Gold Cup. This is the N17 Europeans run by the Nacra Class , of course Olympic Class, but no Multi class event.

Looking at the preregistration list for the N17 event, there's only one US team.
So, it remains unclear what the priority is for the US Olympic hopefuls looking to race against the best in the world. Are they running a clinic at Oakcliff this week?

Mike

There appears to be a few F 18 sailors that live outside the ISAF orbit, Gunnar Larson, for one. Taylor and Matthew are trading tacks with him just like in Sarasota last fall. USA stands in third place, as Mike reported, and Leondro is keeping his moves under the radar since the team is self grooming. JC and Sarah have been working on it for sure, and Robbie will play his cards well. There is a cost factor that is playing a role now as well. Ravi and Joseph Bello are the Oakcliff training winners among the youth.

I do not know for sure when their session is scheduled for.

One thing is golden though... There are quite a few teams in this quad's race for glory, and that is far different than the Lovell campaign. Patience and prayers for the USA as the depth will grow in 2015 and 2016.

My son is building up a N 17 on the beach at Pensacola Yacht Club today, in fact, for a non - Olympic sailor that prefers crossing the Atlantic in a large Benetau or Oceanis. He snagged the boat because he has not tried catamarans and only drives the best. You should see his car garage 🙂

The N 17 is not just for hopeful Oly champions.

Nacra 17 Europeans results end of day 1.

17 European results

Nacraman,

I guess the seventy + boats at the N 17 Euros is a sign of depth and speaks a bit of the boat's design & performance.

Right.. I said that.

It comes second in the Nacra 17 pecking order of events for priority ... It's behind the gold cup events in the lets find a schedule process.

Only so many weeks left to run it.. plus Find a club with enough space to handle the size fleet and it is not trivial... (just guessing about the EU scene)..

So... the last thing the N17 schedule worries about are F18s and F16s... It's not a must do event either... This gives the sponsored teams an out to go earn their money in the other cat class events. I suspect the tough logistics of the F18 worlds helped N17 turnout this year

The Boyz in 3rd!

Maybe this is a good sign for the strength of the N17 class now. Up until the very recent past, F18 major events were all but required as critical training/competition events for our cat Olympians/hopefuls.

It does seem odd to me that the majority of our forerunning US Oly reams don't seem to be at either event. Ravi did well at the F16 worlds in Newport, Taylor is doing well at the F18s in Ireland, I guess I'm looking for others?

Looks like Stephanie and Ian had a tough day...

Mike

The N17s being kept ashore by some bastard who thinks there is too much wind.

Mmmm the Le Bastard family have lots of bretheren in France and usually were pretty highly connected to the Royalty ( before the pheasants revolted and started using the guilotine on them ) and the upper crust of yesteryears society. Go into some of the large chateaux and you often see paintings of the Bastard family.

Heard those pheasants can get nasty sometimes

Calling Mel Brooks!

I take my dog out every morning to purvey his dogdom and check on his pheasants.

HE HE...

Well... that is what you expect to happen when said

Le Bastard

only sees pictures of N17s jumping out of the water...

grin!