Wouter (and all)-
Made it back- Your CD is on the way (with a whole bunch of Taipan/F16HP stuff on it also).
Had a great trip but still trying to get caught up at work and with the piled up "Honey Do's"-
It was great meeting Phill and Tony in person- got some great pictures of them lounging in a sofa on the beach- and also Daniel and Annaliese and John, and of course seeing Wouter, Geert and Gregg again. Truly an "intercontinental" get together of F16HP'ers!
Wouter's boat looks very nice as does the new Stealth but I sailed on the tried and true 4.9 with Geert. We did pretty good considering we had two skippers on the boat! I haven't crewed in a long time and if you want to appreciate your crews, just try it for one regatta! My hands were peeling for week afterwards after flying the spi on every downwind leg! Definitely not the conditions this lake sailor is used to (big swells and big current) and it seemed to be giving Geert (as well as many of the other sailors) some trouble too! We were of course heavyweights in our division so that didn't help. Daniel would be double trapped when we were hiking out trying to keep the hull up! We did quite well I felt, often finishing right in the middle of, or ahead of the Hobie FX ones, F 18's (in our start) and even some of the Inter 20's, placing in the top half of the fleet consistently on Texel handicap (despite our less than stellar sailing - see Daniel's results!). Great regatta (98 boats!!) and very friendly people with nice venue (nude beach RIGHT next to us - kept my sons entertained!) as well as getting to sail some F 16HP's. We seemed to be fairly matched with the Stealth in the conditions, Wouter's one up boat seemed to be having some difficulty staying with us consistently- best to let Tony/Phill tell that story. Boat under spi is just awesome if you can control it - I feel a flatter spi (possibly even smaller??) would have been faster in those conditions. Snuffing/launching was pretty good overall although I did blow a few - generally when trying to douse at high speed last minute coming in to the mark in the swells. I think the strategy here is to go deep (ie "overstand" the gate) and keep the speed up and the spi up and going like mad then drop and beam reach with jib through the gate and upwind. It was too easy to end up going too deep toward the end, and slow if you tried to get right on the jibe angle (for us - didn't seem to be Daniel's issue ) The current may have had a lot to do with this as it caused us to understand the weather mark multiple times (including at least once when we had to reach downwind under the entire fleet before we could cross on port!).
Anyway, gotta get home now!

Kirt Simmons
Taipan 4.9 USA 159
Flyer USA 185