Formula 18 Clinic 2nd attempt from Daniel DeLave on Vimeo.

I’m sitting here very grateful for the new addition to our family and excited to be the father of a brand new baby boy.  At the same time I’m thinking how we could have timed it a bit better so we could be in long beach right now learning from some of the best F-18 sailors in the world!  The nationals this year are probably as close as they’ll ever get to Utah with the Alamitos Bay Yacht Club in Long Beach California hosting this year’s event.  This is the same place that Coty and I travelled to last summer to compete in the western area F-18 championship.  We had a great time getting to know some of the sailors out there and were very thankful for their sailing tips and hospitality.  I debated heading out there again this year, but after leaving Erin and the new baby for only two days for our annual Le Beau’s grand prix 20, I realized that there was NO way this would be possible.  So here I am, following the results and cheering on our Long Beach friends from 700 miles away.  I was happy to see that Dan Delave, a long time Hobie Tiger sailor, and former NAF-18 chairman is now sailing a Nacra Infusion.  He has been doing very well and is now in 13th place over all as of the end of day 3.  Ian Sammis who was kind enough to let us stay at his place when we were there is performing very strongly as well on his custom Infusion with a current position of 7th.  The local favorite to win the race out there is Pete Melvin, the very one who designed the Nacra F-18 Infusion.  He and his son James (14-15 years old I think) are sailing a custom baby blue Infusion with a purple spinny and are currently in 3rd place only trailing behind Coen de Koning, 2 time F-18 world champ, and Gunnar Larsen of Nacra Europe, both from the Netherlands.  Just behind these top 3 Nacra Infusions are Greg Thomas and Jacques Bernier on their new Hobie Wildcat.  So at least half of the top 10 right now are sailing Infusions, with a couple Capricorns, and Hobies taking the other spots.  We send our best wishes to our southern california friends!  Check out the cool video above that these guys made recently of some great F-18 sailing in Long Beach!  Also check out the results here.

For those of you that are interested in distance racing, tomorrow is the last of a 6 day, 550 mile catamaran race up the coast of Florida and Georgia. The Tybee 500 is now one of the most popular distance races in the world of catamaran sailing and has pretty much taken over for the Worrell 1000 that not longer exists. This year was a very unique year for the race in that there were more than double the usual 10 or so teams that compete every year with 24 boats. Also unique this year is the number of Formula 18s competing (7 total, looks like 3 Hobie Tigers and 4 Nacra Infusions). » Read more after the jump →

So we went for it!  Coty and I hauled the Nacra F-18 Infusion out to Long Beach to compete in the Western Area Formula 18 Championship.  I figured that this is my last summer off before the hospital owns me for 80+ hours/week so I might as well do it while I can!  We had an awesome two days of racing with 7 races total.  We learned a lot about making out boat go faster especially on the spinnaker run.  The championship was hosted well by the Alamitos Bay Yacht Club the North American Formula 18 Association Chairman Dan Delave.  We would like to extend a special thanks to Ian Sammis who let us crash at his pad while there in Long Beach.  Check out a few photos we took while there including pics of the custom Nacra Infusion that took 1st place.  Click on the link below to see our GPS tracks of the day 1 races.
» Read more after the jump →