The biggest cat class?

Mitch Booth and Don Findlay talk F18s with us

Despite the dropping of multihulls from the Olympic Games, cat sailing continues to be hugely popular and is growing at an impressive rate. Nowhere is this growth more evident than in the F18 class where hundreds of boats are being sold on a each year globally.

The class has been well known for its large size and popularity for some time now and is regularly cited as one of the world’s biggest dinghy classes. In fact there are so many boats competing around the World, the association has been forced to cap entries to 160 at the World Championships next summer in Spain.

Recently there has been some debate as to whether this limit is truly necessary. “I am just looking at e-mails now from one of the international jurors who will be with us in Spain [at the World Championships],” comments F18 Secretary General, Don Findlay. “He is suggesting we do what the Optimists do and divide 300 boats up into five groups, but logistically that is tough. 300 Optimists is one thing but 300 cats is quite another.” This would be a shame as having 300 odd boats at the World Championships would provide a great spectacle and go a long way to highlighting the great numbers cat sailing, and beach cat sailing in particular can pull in. However, the amount of room each boat takes up would make launching, recovering, racing and every other logistical aspect very difficult, although there are some very long beaches around the world.



It is, perhaps, no surprise that an increase in numbers has been suggested by the jury and others as the F18 fleets in various countries are said to still be growing at a phenomenal rate. Calculating how many boats are being sold is difficult as a number of F18 sailors are not planning on sailing their boats at the World Championships or similar international events and so do not register with the worldwide F18 Association. Also the nature of the class’ box rule that typically allows different types of one designs from various manufacturers to sail in the class compounds this problem. “I am trying to get hold of a lot of details from various countries, but it is not easy and it is slower than I wanted,” explains Findlay. “Hopefully when we have all of that information we will be united as a much more international class, with everyone together and everyone paying their subs to ISAF. Then we should have better notification as to how many [boats] there actually are, what they are and so on.”

Even though the association is not able to accurately count how many F18s there are internationally, it is still clear this is a class continuing to spread its reach around the world. At the moment Findlay believes around 600 to 650 new F18s are being sold each year, globally - a hugely impressive number, if it can be confirmed. Even without this the demand for places at the World Championships is staggering. “Even though the Spanish only have a small number of boats registered in their country they have still asked for 20 or so places at the World Championships. These have been granted as they are the host nation, but it just shows how many people want to sail the event,” Findlay explains.

Above: Darren Bundock and Glen Ashby in their Hobie Tiger.

With multiple manufacturers spending time on designs and few rule changes to abide by it is little wonder the class is currently so healthy. “The [F18 class] is still expanding at a rapid rate and certainly the interest from all different areas of beach cat sailing is starting to focus on it, because it is such a substantial concept,” enthuses top Tornado Olympian and F18 sailor, Mitch Booth. “I think what is promising is that the big manufacturers are really enjoying the fierce competition amongst themselves, playing the game of competing in F18s. This not only brings investment and enthusiasm from them but it also means they are here for the long term. They are focused on developing their products, rigs and sails, making them better and building them to a higher level.”

As mentioned the Class have made few rule changes in the past year or so. When we spoke to Findlay, just before the Worlds last year in Australia, the class was just about to allow the use of fully battened jibs. “The fully battened jib came in at the start of this year and the transition to that has gone very smoothly. Most of the top end racers are now using them,” he explains. Aside from this, the rules have remained much the same, allowing boats to hold their second hand value for a respectable amount of time.


Above: A Capricorn F18.

Despite the box rule, within the F18 fleet competition is very tight between each manufacturers’ designs. For a number of years the Hobie Tiger was considered to be the best F18 available, with a ‘works’ team including many top names such as Darren Bundock and Glenn Ashby. But recent boats have made significant inroads into the Hobie’s dominance.

Last year just before the Worlds got underway Hugh Styles talked to us about the Nacra Infusion, which he had only sailed a few times when we spoke. “This year I will be racing all through the year on the Nacra, doing the Worlds, the Europeans and all the high profile events like Texel and Eurocat as well as the UK nationals and maybe some of the long distance events that go on in the UK and around Europe. The plan is to race a lot of events to get the boat a good result base,” he explained to us at the time. Certainly this results base has come to fruition and the Nacra is arguably one of three big players on the F18 scene. A quick look back at the results for the last season shows four Hobies, four Capricorns and four Nacras in the top 12 at both the World and European Championships.

The closeness of these designs certainly makes for interesting racing and as most can imagine the prospect of 160 boats of different makes all vying for the top spot at the next World Championships is an exciting prospect. “I know we are turning our focus from a racing point of view more and more to the F18,” comments Booth of the place of the F18 generally within the dinghy cat world. “It is not only expanding but I think it is becoming more intense and generally a better racing circuit as well.”


Above: A Nacra Infusion

But these three builders are far from the only F18 manufacturers out there - they just happen to be the most successful. In recent years a number of smaller nations (in terms of racing and building) have been getting involved with designs popping up all over the place. Last year we reported a new F18 that had just been launched in Argentina and Findlay reports they recently sold their 20th boat, a small number in the grand scheme of things but all of these have gone to owners in South America. We also reported on an F18 being designed by the department of aeronautics at a University in Brazil. Recently the moulds have been finished for this design and boats are soon to start being produced.

The F18 has been popular with Olympic Tornado sailors for several years now, with many countries and teams selecting the class as a training tool. The relative high numbers of sailors compared with the Tornado and the similar speeds are clearly attractive to any Olympic team.

The World Championship in 2008 look set to once again attract some top names from all over the world. “The [F18] worlds will be the last possible event in Europe before we head over to China, so that really represents an excellent opportunity to go racing at a pretty intense level before we go to the Olympic Games,” Booth states. “There is really no other racing after Holland Regatta, aside from Kiel Week but I don’t think there will be that many Tornado teams there. I am sure there will be a number of top Tornado teams who will be using that as a final warm-up race before the games. In fact thinking about it I think you might see more than half of the Olympic Tornado fleet attending that championship.”

Certainly it would be difficult to imagine another non-Olympic fleet that manages to draw in so many Olympic athletes mere weeks away from the Olympic Games. Herein, perhaps lies the draw of the F18, it is such a good class that all the best cat sailors want to take part in the big events. The only question is will the F18 benefit or be hit by the Tornado being dropped from the 2012 Games? At present we will have to wait and see.