Hyde Sails dominate in F18 fleet throughout the 2015 season
by Jo Roberts 12 Oct 2015 01:47 PDT
12 October 2015
The Hyde Sails F18 team Simon Northrop & Josh O'Brien © catacare.be
Hyde Sails team Simon Northrop and Josh O'Brien have had an outstanding season on the water dominating the F18 class. Simon has been working closely with Hyde Sails Head Designer Richard Lovering on developing the sails to increase speed and performance on the water and its clearly paying off! Below is a report from Simon and includes the latest title to add to his collection: Open Belgium Champions 2015!
Belgium F18 Nationals Race Report and F18 Season Wrap Up
After our recent success at the UK Nationals we travelled to Oostende in Belgium to compete against the Top European Teams from Belgium, Holland and France in the Belgian Open National Championship. As part of our F18 sail development we were using a new design for the jib and a slightly modified design for the mainsail with a stock kite.
The conditions were very light on Saturday but Sunday proved much nicer with a fresher breeze and some welcome Sun and with our new sails working really well and giving us great boat speed we dominated the 5 race event with 3 race wins and a large margin over second place boat to secure our second National Championship in two weeks!
This is the team's last 'major' event of the season although they plan to attend the F18 Inlands at Grafham in October to finish up the UK calendar.
The boys have been almost unbeatable this year and here's a summary of their successes in 2015 – let's hope 2016 will be even better for the Hyde Sails Kent team.
- UK National Champions
- Belgium National Champions
- Texel Dutch Open Champions
- Piers Race Winners
- Forts Race Winners
- Worlds Race Wins x 2
- TT Event wins x 2
- F18 National Rankings Winners
www.hydesails.co.uk/Multihull-racing-sails.html