F18 Cruising Finnish Archipelago

Olli Jarvas and his friends decided to take a cruising trip though the Finnish Archipelago sailing an F18 Hobie Tiger. F18s as the French always recall were made for Raids or Long distance. But this is no racing, but pure cruising joy.

Here in Arg for those new readers we designed & built a special 3mt wide Cruiser winged version based on our first F18 platform.
These were handed to cruise Patagonian coast thus were fitted with wings, jib & main roller furler, special inspection ports and else.

But if you are not making that kind of extreme cruising, the standard F18 platform is good enough to endure coastal cruising with due structural check ,sailing skills, survival kit, comms et all.

Finnish Archipelago cruising pics and links sent by Olli jarvas, read his detailed journey at positroni.fi/2016/matkapurjehdus/en.html

Olli Jarvas Logbook in short:
– The boat: Formula 18, two-person crew, 5.5m long racing catamaran.

– Journey: 155 nautical miles through fairways, 203 nautical miles (376km) total.
– Weather: 9% downwind, 70% upwind, 21% close hauled. Mostly sunny, some rain.
– Navigational hazards:On our route over 700 rocks and 150 shallow areas we had to consider when
navigating. Over 430 relevant sea markers.
– Time: 2016-06-28 — 2016-07-02, five sailing days, 6 stops.
– Sailing: 459 tacks, 64 gybes. Sailing for 35 hours.
– Archipelago of Finland: Tens of thousands of underwater rocks, shallow areas, narrow (50m or less (150 feet)) passes between beautiful, rocky islands.