F18 (& F16) Belgian Nats 2015: Northrop-O’Brien Champs

All images by Catacare.be – Simon Northrop & Josh O’Brien are on a winning streak, they won F18 UK Nats 2015 some days ago and now the travelled to Belguim to win over the top locals like Patrick Demesmaeker-Gilles Tas who recently won the F18 Dutch Nats 2015.  Thus we can affirm the British crew are the top notch F18 sailors at home and in the ‘LowLand’ area right now. Looking at their shirt it seems they also won in the F16s..?
Another win for Simon’s Hide Sails Kent, which provided Northrop with the performance needed to win several events during 2015 as reported in the UK Nats post linked above.

With this win plus Saxton & Groves also taking this weekend Nacra 17 Europeans. the British sailors are putting on the water what England left on the field in current Rugby World Cup at home.
That was painful & hard to see even for an Argie! (But well I leave angry blind fanaticism for politicians & ignorants, if only people could learn from Veterans…)
Again quite happy for Simon, and I agree with you mate: 2015 is going to be difficult to top. But you have a once in a lifetime chance to win the F18 Worlds in …. Buenos Aires , Argentina! That would be quite an accomplishment, don´t you think? But is not going to be that easy eh! The local Argie fleet is on a Mission  for 2016! Official 2016 Worlds web at www.f18worlds2016.org.ar/
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Additional Info & pics of the F18 & F16 Belgian Nats sent by Laurent Verbeek/Catacare.be:
“Past weekend we have had our Belgian F16 and F18 Nationals. We had very light weather forecast and on Saturday this only allowed us to have one race. From the beginning Simon and Josh from the UK took the lead in the F18 class. On Sunday we were much more lucky and could sail 4 races with wind between 5 and 12 knots, flat water and sun!

After 5 races Simon and Josh were still leading the ranking in the F18 class followed by Wim Deca and Koen Cleeren who are the first Belgian crew. In the F16 class, Henri Demesmaeker and Alec Bague showed they are well deserved European Champions and they took the first place.

You can find a report on the weekend on the international F18 website page: f18-international.org

Pictures of the event can be found on Belgian Multihull Association Facebook
Movie of the event here: youtube.com/watch?v=LrRUJMsYQmQ

Full results F16 here: www.osrc.be/files/Result%20F16.pdf
And results F18 here: www.osrc.be/files/Result%20F18.pdf

More images below…