A-Cat first rides at BA

This weekend I had the first rides on the DNAs that arrived to BA. So after years of publishing F18s in our muddy river waters you will now start seeing the A in the same environment. 

6-9knots flat, excellent conditions for a first sail. The DNA felt Super responsive, powerful and features a quite rigid platform.
I liked specially the downwind runs , quickly grabbing pace and accelerating where I felt I was near to push for some little air.  But I didn´t had straps and preferred to wait till next time thanking Juan Faustin for letting me his black ‘Stealth’  ARG 44.

With a little more wind Juan and Sergio went playing around, they have some hours already from Punta del Este, and started going for high lift , they achieved some jumps but it was clear they needed more wind.
I windsurf  quite often and liked how the A reacted to body/leg trim. You can push the A in a similar way you work your Formula board / FW big sail.

Dario Valenza in his Carbonicboat blog describes the technique to get current boats airborne, interesting how he insert the technical aspects of the dynamic/kinetic trim, but for the majority of sailors it is just grabbing the pace & feeling of the boat and reacting accordingly to get more speed , just like Windsurfing.

That was the major aspect I can differentiate from an F18, those 180kg against the 75kg of the allows you to push the boat around, and seeing the foiling videos from Nathan at Takapuna is clear that current flying mode requires sailors ability  which I think should remain key whichever direction the class decides to follow as for ie having active trims like wands, shouldn´t be allowed in my view.

Whichever the case I had a great sailing and floating ride! Still need to sail the boat in more breeze though but it was a pleasure to sail in that wind range.
I pushed the guys for some years now to get these weapons and last September they went for them. Having PJ providing a semi production line it was possible to buy 7 boats at once on reasonable delivery times.
All now extremely happy and enjoying the rides, and this will continue with or without racing air time.

More boats might be coming to, maybe some Exploders that are being negotiated right now. Guys are asking me for info and getting budgets all over the place.
What I can say is that many equipment and prices options are available today. In fact, in Europe you can get a top performer A-Cat for less than an F18, and that should be taken in account by many.