The F18 Worlds 2017 officially started today! After many months of preperations 124 boats entered the beautiful sailing area of Copenhagen to battle in two seperate fleets. In the Red Fleet the Swedish team Leff Dahl/Terese Antsman take the lead followed by Paschalidis Iordanis/Trigkonis Konstantinos (GRE) with the same points. In the Green Fleetthe Danish brothers Daniel & Nicolaj Bjørnholt are just in front of the Booth family (father Mitch and son Ruben). The Belgium teams are doing very well too! In both fleets they are the second runners-up in 3rd position!
Check it out: We already received this very nice coverage of todays races by Oliver Hartas!
Three races were held on the first day in medium breeze sailing condition of 10-12 knots. The Bjørnholt Brothers tell: “We hit great leeward starts throughout the 3 races of the day, and even though the wind is tricky, we managed to keep up!” The cat-specialist Mitch Booth is right behind the brothers, “but we are nervous about the Belgians (Demesmaeker/Gilles). They are the kind of competitor you can’t catch and always have 100m ahead”. The Belgians won the first two races of their group, but were disqualified from the third, punching them down the list, waiting for the discard.
The predictions for the next couple of days are medium.. Although these pretty easy conditions there was an issue with the mast of Mischa Heemskerk/Stefan Dekker. These guys had a nice first race, but in the 2nd race their mast came down. Luckely they fixed it in time to sail the 3rd race (check the video for more about this). But…. on Wednesday…. maybe… there could be some serious breeze during the afternoon! We know some of the teams are hoping for that to make a difference and could secure their Gold fleet ticket.
Alle results of todays races are available on the official F18 Worlds 2017 website, check them here.
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Screenshot: Hartas Productions