Okay. Let me clarify that. You are a US sailor. Your national association boast 20 members. Let me put that in perspective: Carnac next week is going to have around 400 cats on the water. Two third of those F18. My old sailing club, near Toulon has 36 F18 on the parking. Most of them sailed weekly during the summer. No other class is coming close in terms of numbers, the F18 is the king of the cat. F18 class is the class where the top cat sailors are. All the big names in cat sailing are racing F18, Ellen McArthur, Laurent Bourgnon, Franck Cammas and more.

The sailors are nice generally. I have good friends who are F18 sailors. I'd probably be a F18 sailor if I could find a regular crew/helm. But the on water competition is fierce.

In order to be competitive they have to know the rules. So they carry protest forms in their sailbag, store their rulebooks under their pillow and play subliminal tapes of rule interpretations while they sleep.

The screaming and shouting at the marks is legendary. Grafham last year was my first race sharing a course with F18 and I was shocked by the agressivity around the mark. This was repeated three weeks ago at the open they did at my club, we shared the water with them again. The level of testosterone was high. The race committee had to start them under black flag 4 times out of 6 because of general recalls. We never had anybody over the line in our fleet.

So when you are not used to this level of competition you know you have to be careful. They will not be lenient with you. They will never wave you across. They are sailing on the edge, for a win.

I'm not saying that they are there to get me. It's just that they are there to WIN. I'm not *that* competitive, and I'd rather avoid problems. So I douse my spi earlier so I can maneuver when one of those guys cut me off around the mark. I look around me and try to keep away from them.

So in that particular situation Gilo was in the F18 would expect him to know the rules, because he is always sailing with people who know the rules. As such he is not expecting him to tack in front of him. If you do, you will surprise him and that's dangerous. End of the story.

It's not just the F18. Dart 18 are a competitive bunch as well. Other cat fleets are generally not that aggressive. Spitfires, F16, Hurricane or Shearwater are a quieter bunch, there for a day on the water, not to pick a fight to WIN!

Don't get me wrong either. I enjoyed those races. There is bad apples in every bunch (like the bastard who ramed Mark P last year and then protested him. Nice going) but overall it raised my game. I loved it.