Windrush F18 @Carnac & European Season 2018: Brett Burvill’s Report

Photos: Eurocat 2018 / YCCARNAC & still from one of this year Eurocat videos. Brett Burvill is one of the best sailors in Australia, along being the builder of one of the top performers F18s,  the Windrush Edge (Aus Nats Champ 2018 design)  he also builds the Windrush Tornado.

Like last year Brett also sent months ago a container of Edges to Europe , and this time he took the chance to race also. Below his  report sent describing his experience at Carnac 2018 past week plus F18 Euros attendance plans and sail devels for the 2018 European season. Will be nice to have Brett & Max Putmann (2018 Aus Nats Champ) racing with the Edge at the coming F18s Europeans in July.

Check Widrush Edge web at www.windrushyachts.com.au
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Brett Burvill’s 2018 European Trip report:
We just got back from the quick trip to the UK and France to deliver 4 new Edges and sail in Carnac due to the fortunate and almost coincidental timing . It was only about 3 weeks ago when walking the dog with my wife on a Sunday morning that I remembered I had seen an advertisement for the Eurocat event on the F18 web site. On returning home that morning and looking it up on the web site it turned out that it was on the weekend after the container was due to arrive.

Unfortunately the competition was not very strong this year at Eurocat with just 17 x F18’s racing but
we had a good time and really enjoyed the distance race in challenging conditions. I had hoped to be able to return to Europe and come to sail at the Rondje Texel this year as it will be 30 years since I did the race last in 1988. In 2010 we did do the TDO but the main Texel race was cancelled as the wind was too strong on the Saturday with big onshore conditions and no option to race on the Sunday but I just can’t make it back and spend that amount of time away from home this year so the Raid in Carnac will have to do for this year and my Raid callender.

We are heading back to sail in the F18 Europeans and our plan is to return a few days before the event in Spain and drive down from the UK as it’s only about 1600 km away after we land in Heathrow and collect the boat. This distance would only get us just past half way to the nearest capital city in Australia so for us it’s not very far at all.

We are hoping to make a good result in Costa Brava and then the following week we are lucky that the Tornado worlds are to be held in Le Grande Motte so we get 2 regattas for 1 trip across the world and very close in time and geographic locations. Unfortunately it looks unlikely we will make it to the USA for the F18 worlds late this year but there is a good chance there will be a strong team coming from Australia for the worlds in Italy next year so lock up your daughters Italy as there are several single Aussie sailors coming to play.

After the recent good results for the Windrush Edge in the AUS titles and the launch of our controversial new spinnaker chute and associated bridle wire and safety ropes we were looking forward to some good racing in France.

We were not going to use the new chute but have just dropped the rope safety line from above it as we did for the Australian championships after the F18 association made a ruling and have been using it with a standard jib and pole set up so its all really simple and neat, works great in terms of crew safety that for sure.

The water in Carnac was so cold , well at least for an Aussie team where the coldest the water gets in winter is still about 18 deg C but there was some sun occasionally to make it seem warmer just the maximum temps didn’t get above 13 and was around 9 deg C for the day of the raid with a bit of rain to top it off . Even with dry suits we were frozen after the races and needed a few Jack Daniels and beers to warm up each day.

We had done a lot of work with Marton from 1D sails over our summer testing various ideas and D/S sail shapes for him and now after that program he has a real great D/S sail set available and is busy making and dispatching them all over the globe so I hope this work was a success for him, we enjoyed the trialing of ideas and making feedback both positive and negative to help improve the 1D product and I hope were able to help him hone in on a really good set of shapes and profiles.

As a crew for these adventures I now have Max Puttman the current Aus champion crew on the front as my regular crew Ryan Duffield has just had an addition to his family in the way of a little boy so he may be off the water for a while adjusting to a 4 person family, Max and I get along really well and have had a lot of fun travelling together

Max is a sailmaker who has his loft above my workshop at Windrush Yachts and he sailed with me last year at the Tornado Worlds where we were also using the 1D sails and along with Marton from1D whilst on site at that event we all worked together to make the best adjustments we could of the sails he had delivered to us to get the most out of them.

Now that Marton is so busy delivering new F18 sails around the world and we still have some ideas we would like to try on the F18 and with his time is a little limited currently with many big projects also running in parallel like the AC 45 rig etc so Max has made a set of his own brand Net Gen sails for the boat working with his designer “Bugs” from Avalon sails in Mandurah.

We are sailing currently with these sails and we used them in Carnac where they seemed pretty good. His Next Gen spinnakers are already very fast and were used by several top crews at the recent AUS titles including the winners and also several state title winning teams around Australia this season.

We only decided to sail in Carnac a few weeks before he event as we had a container with 4 new Edges being delivered in the UK and the timing just worked out that they were going to arrive just a few days before Carnac , Max was keen to come and sail so we took the opportunity to try the new direct flight from Perth to London in 17.5 hrs to do the races hoping to get some good testing in and see what the current Euro trends were. Unfortunately the event was not well attended this year so we did not learn alot but had fun anyway dominating on the Edge with wins in all fleet races and the raid in various conditions with the only constant being the cold!!.

Hope to see you all in Costa Brava soon , and wishing for a lottery win so I might make it to the USA worlds too but the odds are low unfortunately.

Regards ,
Brett Burvill , Windrush Edge AUS 524
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