International Formula 18 Catamaran Association

Official Website

Biggest Ever Event !

Picture O. Gagliani

153 teams representing twelve nations from three continents have entered the 5th Formula 18 World Championship held in Puntala (ITA), making this event the largest one our class has ever managed under the widest range of weather conditions.

As usual, the best Olympic champions have left their Tornados for a while to join the F18 family, giving this World championship the highest skill level, Darren BUNDOCK and Mitch BOOTH being here one more time in competition as they have been in a few weeks later in Athens trying to get the Gold Medal.

Six qualification races have first been completed, permitting the race organisation to determine in a fair way the final Gold and Silver fleets. With four wins in the six sailed qualification races, Darren BUNDOCK and Glen ASHBY (AUS) entered the finals scoring 7 points, closely followed by Mitch BOOTH and Herbert DERCKSEN (NED) with 9 points and Gavin COLBY/Cori CAMENISH (SUI) with 12 points.

By winning 3 of the final races and finishing two times in a second position, team Bundock/Ashby get a 14 points overall score after 12 sailed races and left no chance to any other crew to contest their supremacy over the Gold fleet, the battle being pretty close to get the remaining steps of the podium. Former World Champions Mitch and Herbert succeeded in keeping a 6 points advantage on Gavin and Cori, Jean-Christophe "Quinou" MOURNIAC and Franck CITEAU getting the worst position only 4 points behind the AUS/SUI crew.

Following, the BOULOGNE brothers, 2003 Champions, did not succeed to enter the top five even their Cirrus still showed high speed potential, due to a disastrous second racing day in gold fleet and due to an OCS in final race 5. Andy LANDENBERGER on his brand new Flyer did not miss the opportunity, and realised an excellent end of championship, winning the last sailed race, and staying in front of the two Australian Capricorn teams respectively skipped by Greg GOODALL and Mark LARUFFA (pict. O. Gagliani).

The Hobie Tiger "Dream Team" taking definitely the front row, it is yet to notice the good performance of the new designed Flyer and Capricorn, both presenting inverted bows, and to verify the presence of seven different platforms within the top twelve ranked boats.

Furthermore, it is to stress the jolly good results of three "Rookie teams" compromised of twenty year old youngsters coming from the French Youth squad, entering the top 20 overall : Thibault VAUCHEL/Jeremie LAGARRIGUE (Mattia 18, 9th), Francois MORVAN/Matthias VANDAMME (KL Phenix, 11th) & Moana VAIREAUX/Romain PETIT (Hobie Tiger, 16th), as well as the worthy performance of Phil Cotton, Secretary General of the Class and pure Corinthian, finishing together with his lovely wife Miranda 20th overall and 2nd mixed crew, scoring a superb 2nd place in final race four on their standard "out of the box" Nacra F18.

All this to assume the Formula 18 still remains a widely opened class offering to any club sailor a real opportunity to compete against the best catamaran competitors in the world on an equal basis. May the Class keep on growing that way !

Olivier Bovyn, International Formula 18 Class President

Click to enlarge the superb pictures published by courtesy of Marloes van der Haagen and Anton van de Koppel. Have a look on the full set in the Gallery

Statistics

(*Some missing datas about 3 of the 153 teams)

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Last update : 2010-02-03