F18 Worlds 2023, Day 4: Pandemonium!

F18 Worlds 2023, Day 4 Recap

What a Day. The guys at Travemunde started early, around 10AM already racing, I woke up here in BA at 6:00am, normal hour for taking kids to school, we have winter vacations right now though, thus I went directly to my ntbk, opened Firefox -> Catsailingnews -> Meta Sail links -> Race Gold 9 and course map opened just for the start.

First thing I noticed, half fleet was not tacking, bummer. Worst? Half leaders neither (Jarudd, Colby, Burvill). But well we followed action the same and by the available “leaders” we guessed the rest.

Seeing Bader, Demesmaker, Sach, and Volker in a group ahead was a signal of top ten.
Luckily enough today’s at manage2Sail results were updated pretty quick. Imagine surprise after published, we saw R9 winner: Chevrier-Cosse? I’m getting old and cannot keep pace of all new teams!

The “Phantom” top riders not shown scored within 1-10 range positions, overall rankings kept being consistent, little change.

R10 came rather smooth in terms of completion with same visible top leading teams & ghost riders alike in the Meta sail app.
Bader-Peters won that one, so it actually matched what we all saw online. Jarudd-Rosengren second, Sachs 3rd.

Races above had some wind shifts, but were nothing compared to what came later.

Race 11 was hell, two times cancelled, big shifts making teams go directly to windward, later no wind, lulls, gusts in other areas, you see the picture.
Well cancelled in two occasions, while also served plenty to Volker-Polimeni bad placements in both non completed attempts.

Still the Argies were keeping an incredible pace (4th & 5th in R9 & R10) under the highest pressure possible.
Scoring a 33rd on the first Finals race after dominatng the qualys, the Arg sailors under ESP sail had no margin for error. Thus those cancelled R11s were key.

Finally this 11th race could be completed, the Edge-Nxt Gen Team put pedal to the metal. Burvill-Puttman got a key bullet to aim for the title.

Jarudd-Rosengren maintained the overall lead with an 8th, Colby-Colman and Demesmaeker-Tas making the best of the messy conditions with top tens scores for second and third overall respectively. “ArgEsp” with a solid 6th, and going for the lead in R12 discard.

As usual I had an excel sheet at hand, calculating beforehand this next coming second discard.

In that virtual situation, Volker-Polimeni were leading with the Swedes closing the gap to 2pts. In the actual scoring sheet second discard would apply only in next race, R12.

For this last race of the day, the tracking showed the usual app selected suspects at the top once more, the mighty Son & Father team, Hans & Marius van Dam were going ballistic to the right along Cruz & Mariano.

Focus on the screen then went to Volker-Polimnei….Nooo, they got caught at the start!
A +20 in this race was a heavy range for them, their current discard was a 33rd.
Into the first downwind leg, we identified a strange tracking line from them, Volker-Polimemi were at gate layline when they started to abruptly bear-away, sudden stop, heading next and course retake. It was strange, I commented to a friend following the races online. Of course no other boat was shown in this strange action.

Next wind dropped for this ongoing R12 and the winding gps track of ESP 42 virtual boat was now sailing 1 knot speed at the second windward mark, rest of teams continued to the finish in light winds. Trouble.

Long mins later we saw the actual mark ‘dragging’ them to shore. Later we were told they hit another boat in that strange tracking episode above, them in port tack… it was a DNF , and boat repair time (thanks to Manu Boulogne, Brett Burvill and those who help putting the boat ready to race tomorrow) , along leaving the overall lead just when the key second discard entered the game.

Van Dams won this final race for the day. The super consistent Swede team placed another sweet second in the results sheet, Demesmaeker-Tas 3rd and Colby-Colman a 14th, losing some critical points at this stage compared to their competitors.

Overall positions after R12 were Jarudd-Rosengren, Demesmaeker-Tas , Colby-Colman , Burvill-Puttman.

Digesting the bad news of our good friend Pablo Volker, we got an alert that Patrik was DSQ later on, another close boat crossing but with no collision this time around.

The race committee put hard work under the given climate conditions, 9hs on the water for the Gold fleet. A virtual leader almost sink, another title contender like the Belgians losing big points on the protest room, and many troubled teams on the messy tricky confusing and harsh shifting wind conditions.

Racing today was a literal Pandemonium on the water as few times seen! This is the F18, a super competitive Class, where you cannot blink, cause you will pass from easy leader to struggling times due to the amount of talented teams going for the win.

Tracking is such a vital engagement tool, again, we repeat: It should be top promotional requirement along pics for every Worlds (where are them? will check later if some available from today).

The forced four races were a good call b by the RC, as tomorrow super light winds are expected.

Partial fleet Gold Fleet tracking replays here

Below top 15 after protests, complete results here.