F18 Arg, August 2022 Winter Racing & DS Sail Devel

Winter racing in Arg this weekend. Saturday saw a pretty harsh day with high offshore South West, super cold and 27knots gusts. Only 2 races held.
Sunday a more southerly wind, around 22 knots decreasing with extenuating 5 races completed for the day.

My crew couldn’t come from Rosario, so on Sunday I lent my Scorpion to a good local crew that were not sailing for a while. We hoist the Landenberger DS to be raced for the first time, boat has around 4 days of sailing tops. Still no upfucker and many other details pending. Jib we put a pretty used Phantom F18 one, as Landy one need some small cut.

The idea was also to make a final sail test 1 to 1 platform. Among the the fleet of Phantoms, Infusion, C2s etc, the other Scorpions were our top guys (#2 & #3 2021 Worlds) with super proven 1D, the current standard and 2018, 2019 & 2021 World Champion sails.

So it was a challenge to have same exact platform and the devel DS we’ve been working with Felix Egner for a while and my friend and local rider Esteban Blando. We tested a first version we re cut here back in Jan 2021, sail can be seen in this video.

Later I lent that same sail to Pablo Volker (2016 WChamp) to fit an also lent Wildcat for the 2021 Arg Nats. He finished 3rd so we had a really good first feedback test for the Landy DS.
Later we ordered a new DS from Felix, new cut from factory, that Pablo fit in his Phantom F18 while racing at Mar del Plata with another 3rd overall.

Then we ordered more same exact sails from Felix, including mine, but couldn’t race it still. More testing done though,
past weekend Pablo had no boat, as he was painting his Phantom hulls, and he still had some doubts on the Landy DS perf, mainly as he was competing vs the Scorpions with 1D.
So to close the discussion I told him to grab my Scorpion and to use his Landy, which he did and went of along the other 3 Scorpions / 1D to have a match 1 o 1 in platforms.

Perfect 12 knots conditions were enough to have a good definitive test, even with a new crew Pablo came back from the water telling me “I’ll buy your boat”… ha, but the reality was that his Landy was doing just perfectly good enough and that he needed to fine tune the Phantom F18, a design still as fast or faster than the Scorpion.

Racing 1 to 1 was pending vs the top local Scorpion/1D teams until Juan P Sucic & Juan Cruz Benitez grabbed my Scorpion / Landy DS yesterday on the conditions reported above.

Long day on the water for the local fleet, so we had to wait till 5pm aprox until they came back.

Smile in their faces, Juan & ‘Cuco’ had a blast scoring 1,2,3,5 & 1 for an impressive performance after a year or so of not competing. Volker scored another bullet on his Phantom.

Thus 4 out of 5 for the Landenberger DS. Was the final racing confirmation needed to be at ease with this Landy DS R&D performance.

So the good news is that we have yet another proven DS for the Class. Many alternatives like the 3x World Champ 1Ds by Marton Balazs, Vink’s Nacra Performance Sails (ask Ravi Parent..) , Maxx Puttman’s Nxt Gen and Goodall Design sails (see Europeans 2022 Results) , along many other like Oxxo, Northtrop etc.

But as we always inform and promote all brands and project, sometimes we also like to spread the news of our own ones. For more info on this Landy DS Contact Felix Egner at landenberger-onedesign.com .