Hereby an update of how the event went. 

On Friday July 16 the first measurements/checks were performed, with continuation on Saturday and a possibility on Sunday morning before the start of the practice race. On Friday evening there was a positive surprise for all the sailors, an event was sailed at the club next to AVAL-CDV and all F16’s where invited to join in this regatta without costs and a good price giving afterwards with food and drinks. This meant that we had a series of 5 races extra. Great. Thijs Visser won this small pre Europeans. Well done Thijs!

The official beginning of the F16 Europeans on Monday July 19 started with a short skippers meeting explaining the course and some practical details. One advantage of this venue is that wind only kicks in as from 1PM, so every racer had a relaxed morning and every day boats only started to go out at 12 o’clock to then have a daily start of the races at 1PM. Everyday there were 3 races scheduled, with each 3 laps.
The course was a classic triangle (upwind – spreader – gate) course.

Monday all 16 boats (11 sloop rigged and 5 cat rigged) were timely out to the racing area under perfect conditions (30° C and 12 to 14 knots). The race committee had put a 1 mile course, per race we had between 55 minutes to 1h15 sailing and when everybody came back ashore at 5 PM everybody was smiling ear to ear. And what’s more: the AVAL-CDV club had organized a pasta meal for everyone and some drinks so war stories could be told. This was a great means to get everyone together after the races and to have some nice talk and feedback and learnings from that day racing.

Tuesday conditions were similar to Monday, but only with some more wind (30° C and 18 to 20 knots). Again the F16’s were send out around 12 o’clock to be at the racing area on time. The scheduled start time was 1 PM and this was never a problem. The only thing changed today was the spare time to have after the first finishers. This was increased from 15 to 30 minutes, to not put at a disadvantage on the solo sailors.
Wednesday and Thursday we had again the same conditions (it is getting boring I know) and we did see only people smiling after these days of sailing, the race course was perfect, the race committee was perfect and the club AVAL-CDV is a great and active club with a lot of friendly people. Gravedona is truly an amazing spot to sail and the F16 Europeans had a great time with perfect weather conditions up to now.

Friday we had the first (and only) bad day with thunderstorms, rain and a lot of wind, so sailing was not possible at all. The final day of racing was cancelled (good for some while other racers really wanted to go out again to maybe increase their rankings). It was tight racing for the entire week. The top 5 was very close together, sometimes only one point separated each from another. Also top 7 – 10 was having their own race within the race with also only minimal differences between one another. And then there was the battle between the solo sailors. They were all 5 also very eager to come over the line as 1^st single handler. So no dull racing at all, this is how it should be! Jason Waterhouse and crew Lisa where the best during the whole series and were therefore crowned the new and first European champions F16 at 5 PM at the price giving (with again some nice Italian food and drinks!).

We can say that the AVAL-CDV did a great job and we thank them and all the volunteers and the sponsor Ferrari champagne who made this possible and we cannot wait until the next big F16 event. We’ll keep you posted on that!

It was nice to see a mix of nationalities and boat brands at this event. We had represented: Australia, Belgium, France, Italy, New Zealand, The Netherlands and the UK. Almost all type of F16's were also present: AquaRaptor, Blade, Falcon, Stealth and Viper.

Full results of 12 races sailed (2 discards) can be found in the post below.