Tom
So... here we sit... Tiger one design sailing in Upstate New York and the Pacific Northwest. F18 sailing in the South and Southwest, growing in New England N20's going down and F18's going up .. and doing well on the Pacific coast existing with Tiger one design sailing. Oh.. and over time the CRAM sailors... moved on to nacra 17's along with an F18. CRAW has similar numbers of F18's and 20's.
The big hope is that the F18 worlds will really kick the class up a notch or so... Your stock Tiger is fully F18 compliant and perhaps the Wildcat gets some love from Hobie sailors as well to balance the number of Cap and Infusion fans.
The PNW has 4 major events that are F18 events (including a PNW championship at NOODs) and we are now even beginning two weekly series that have F18 starts one in BC and one in Seattle. Combined we have 25+ Tigers and NACRAs.
With regard to the post about Yacht Clubs - All PNW F18 events are sailed in conjunction with Yacht Clubs as to not overlap or be held to Hobie Class event rules. The Yacht Clubs that are supporitng PNW F18 are Seattle Yacht Club, Corinthian Yacht Club of Seattle, Royal Vancouver Yacht Club, and Bellingham Bay Yacht Club. None of these yacht clubs have ever had an issue with the F18 participating in any of the scheduled events, the fleet just has had to be proactive in communicating what we need for support and for courses. Getting into YC events has not been an issue for us. It does help to have a angel for the initial contact, fortunately our teams have been very well connected to the YC execs and they have in turn all but rolled out the red carpet - they loved the 12 F18s at the NOODs and the F18s were focal points both for SW and local press at the PNW champs. The editior of Sailing World was even scheduled to sail in our fleet but we got scrubbed for wind on day 1. The belief that we are not welcome is just plain wrong, you just need to sell the fleet and follow up with a good show.
With regard to sailing Tiger as F18 - we sail at 330lbs all year (having lost 40lbs combined) and have done well in both Tiger (308 min crew weight) and F18 (330 min crew weight) events across all wind conditions, the only thing we do differently for F18 is to change to a set of Glaser Sails - but both the Glasers and Hobie sails are F18 legal (and Max size legal).
Paul Andrepont
F18TeamBlur
