F18 Worlds 2023, Change of Guard: Emil Jarudd & Rasmus Rosengren crowned Champs

F18 Worlds 2023 came to an end this Friday

Winds never consolidated, forcing a no racing day which left overall rankings as published yesterday.

Winners

Emil Jarudd & Rasmus Rosengren, a young team from Sweden displayed impressive solid consistence performance through the qualys & Finals race to prevail over some big teams like Colby-Colman, Burvill-Puttman, Patrik-Tas and the other surprise team of this regatta Volker-Polimeni.

Emil & Rasmus started sailing F18 together in June! Seem they got along pretty well as on the water they scored eight top three results! including bullets in the qualys & finals. Thank kind of performance is Title material, and that’s what they got delivered at the prize ceremony!

They sailed a non factory provided 2017 Scorpion which was sailed by Dany & Kostas (who also provide some key tuning tips to the Swedes ) at ’19 Worlds Costa Brava. This boat then was owned by Frederik Karlsson who finished top ten in 2021 sailing with Rasmus as crew.
Rasmus also sailed Opti, 29er (Worlds Silver) and even fought Emil on the Nacra 17 arena.

Emil is rather new to the F18 Class, he made good path with Optis (8th Worlds 2012) later 29er (Worlds 5th) and later too helped the 49fx teams. Aside of these floating classes he sails Moths and Nacra 17 campaign.

With Rasmus having the key F18 hours on board, these young swede sailors managed to build up a super solid team as shown at Travemunde. They also got support from Panka & Marton Balazs /1D Loft. Nice move from them supporting new teams, a bet that payed plenty today.

Last year we saw Ravi & Severin taking the Title, after a consecutive streak of experienced & legends sailors like Heemskerk-Dekker, Paschalidis-Trigonis, Bundock-Conor and Booth-Booth in 2022. Such a lineup that one of the last 5 World Title holders.

2023 called for a fight between two generations, Emil & Rasmus had to excel to grab this crown, no walk in the park, on the contrary, this envet was one of the most competitive major regattas we’ve seen.

Old Guard still here

Since 2000 we’ve seen many changes and evolution in the F18 Class. The Hobie Tiger era, the Infusion one, the Phantom and C2 , and from 2017 the Scorpion era arrived. Plenty of Olympic sailors has gone through this Class over the years, many venues and different countries visited, dozen of new Associations born, new equipment as the main sail Deck Sweeper and several more aspects had changed or evolved.

But one thing only remains unchanged on the water since the first Worlds in 2000, and that’s Gavin Colby on the top ranked or the Podium itself! Pushing forward this great Class he helped to build. He returned to Worlds events back in 2019 and later teaming with Kai Colman they have established as the top contenders last two editions.

They finished Vice Champs behind Ravin & Severin in 2022 and now another 2nd at Travemunde. Of course these Aussies wanted the #1, we know. Gavin will return a bit annoyed to Down Under but sure they will keep sending it as Mischa did to finally get his deserved one.
Meanwhile Kai is already in the Americas Cup realm, and Colby will keep piloting those jets for a living.

Aussie Builders Team

Brett Burvill has plenty of racing experience, Tornado builder too, and even pioneered the Moth flighting mode, he is a true legend in the Multhull scene. But he is rather new in the F18 Worlds contention realm, with his own built Windrush Edge has now become a de facto contender each year, along mate & sail builder Maxx Puttman they are the reigning high breeze Kings. To reach podium and fight for the title you need nail the overall range too, as if you couldn’t high perform the entire 3 to 25 knots realm, you were done at Travemunde extremely variable conditions.

The Windrush Edge F18 equipped with Maxx Puttman’s Nxt Gen Sails is a winning machine in any good sailors hand as their mates Bliston and Parker also showed in the qualys this week.

Brett is also there to give a hand if needed, and yesterday he re built Volker’s Akurra transom (One of Brett’s title contender competitors) after a long day on the water. Class act by the Aussies. From the distance a big thanks to him and all who helped.
After the Worlds were officially done, along with the Argies the Aussies offered a free beer fest for all competitors.
South Equator sailors deliver on the water and Land alike!

Choose your Weapon

In the F18 you can choose your weapon of choice among many different designs & brands. Any of them is capable to deliver. 2023 was no exception with 4 different platforms fighting for the title and filling the top ten: Edge / Nxt Gen, Goodall Akurra , Nacra Evo and Scorpion / 1D

You can also eqquipe those platforms with different lofts as Lindstadt or the comeback of Landenberger. We’ve been working with Felix Egner and some teams in Arg, including Volker.
Plenty of racing and tests done here vs proven combo got us got us confident on the Scorpion/Landy DS performance. Our mates Juan Pablo Sucic & Juan Cruz ‘Cuco’ Benitez haven’t travelled abroad since 2013. They gathered again as a team recently and decided to attend to this 2023 Worlds along some heavy experienced teams like Cruz & Mariano (3 podiums previous last 3 Worlds) and Krevisky-Juan Martin Benitez.

Long story short after plenty hours of recent racing & training in Arg, Sucic & Cuco managed to be top 11 upto R12 in this Worlds, a good reward for their time and dedication invested and confirming our Landy DS development was on track after the good results in Arg. Now with this tough regatta abroad they will target higher in 2024 Worlds at Costa Brava.

Volker-Polimeni and the Akurra

Aside the young Swede winner who stomped this 2023 regatta, the other stars of this Worlds Qualy were Arg sailors Pablo Volker & Federico Polimeni. Volker is a 420 & BA 2016 F18 World Champ, he was one of the youth the old Argie guard brought to the Class, he crewed for our mate Ian Rodger at Grossetto 2013 and later started looking forward to Arg 2016 Worlds he finally won as helm.

Fede Polimeni is an Arg living in Spain and working as coach, he is new to the F18 and has invested in buying the fast Akurra used by Tony Rivas in 2022 (we labeled him in that event top 3 fastest boat). Fede invited Pablo to race together this Worlds, and prepared accordingly, and took camp van and trailer from Spain to Ger for them to race. Imagine they didn’t sail together before this regatta, so its a massive achievement having the chance to win this Worlds and the display of performance shown.

The rest off the Akurra Teams wen ballistic too Demesmaeker-Tas, Van Dams and Sach-Sach finished all in the top ten.

French Chargers
Finally another team went full charge in the finals, Cedric Bader & Yves Peters, sailing a Nacra Evo, the French team decided they will give themselves to win the thing. Under tricky and shifting conditions of the last 4 races, Cedric & Yves looked turbo powered in the tracking gps and scored 2,2,1,3,7 plus a bfd that left them out of the podium by 1pt!

Read above, in the F18 you choose you weapon and just go for it!

Scorpion x5
5th Title for the Scorpion project, the beauty of this one is having young sailors like Emil & Rasmus sending it on a 6yrs boat (2017 built). We are happy to see this platform first built by Jakub / Exploder in 2015 continue to excel and we hope it will deliver for many years to come!

Travemunde Worlds 2023 will be a Worlds to remember no doubt, 100 F18s sailing on the tough & tricky weather conditions coupled with super tight racing.

For daily reports check previous post, no racing activity last day. Later we’ll try to get some more pics, pretty scarce sadly this time around.

Next Worlds will be Costa Brava, a Classic by now and one of the best venues the F18 Class sailors have attended.
The idea is to target +120 boats, so start to prepare for a proper sailing fest.

Live replays here

Top 15 results, complete list here