The F16 Governing Council received an official request from the Gulfport Yacht Club and the city of Gulfport to organise the 2009 Global Challenge . The F16GC is very happy with this request and did accept this request. We thank the whole team of Gulfport who made this possible.

The event will be hosted by the Gulfport Yacht Club and the City of Gulfport. The venue date is from 9th till 14th November 2009.

The 9th will be used as a practive / fun race and the official Global Challenge starts at the 10th with the last day at the 14th. Racing schedule will follow.

More information will be available as soon as possible.

 With friendly regards,

Hans Klok. 

Chairman F16 Governing Council 

The F16 PR team have created a PDF flyer with information about the F16 class.  Please feel free to download this flyer and print it (A4 folded to A5) and put it at your sailing club. The flyer can be downloaded here.

We congratulate John Pierce with first place in the GC2008. The GC2008 proved to be a windy event with all the drama hard winds bring. John sailed a consistent series with a fourth and third place as his drop races. Great performance!

In second place Joanna Lienti and Geert Ruesink also sailed a very consistent series, also with a fourth and third as their drop races.  In the end just one point differed between first and second! Pretty amazing considering how little time they had to train together before the event. Joanna flew in from the USA just a couple of days before the first race.

Third place was won by Kathleen and Gill from Belgium, our PR committee members. Hopefully we will get som videos and photos from them later on. Full results can be found on http://www.mumblesyachtclub.co.uk/results/2008/f16worlds.htm

 The event was troubled with too much wind, just like last year in Zandvoort. Only two out of the planned four racing days was safe for sailing, and even then there was some breakages. One boat reportedly broke a spreader after the start of race one, but managed to save the rig. Well done! 

The depth of skills in the class is growing, considering the winner of the GC2006 finished in fifth and the 2007 champion finished in eight position on the scoreboard (to be fair, the 2007 champion had to leave early and lost the three last races).

Monday evening there was a meeting where the president, secretary and treasurer reported on the status of the class and the close future. Look for an announcement from the Governing Council to all members on this soon.

We have not recieved reports on the social activites and who did best at the bar, but we expect some war stories both from the bar and from the sailing on our forum presently.

Day three offered rought conditions for the competitiors but the RC and sailors managed to pull off no less than five races. Here are the results and the short but somewhat ironic story from our correspondent.

Well what a fantastic sail.....

Strong winds gusting to 30knots and beyond made for no racing on day two. Here is the short from our correspondents.

One hour postponement; very similar to yesterday.
Rescue boat is going out to check the wind conditions at 11:30 and then a decision will be made.
On the up side, it is not raining (at the moment).

Few people have been out on Ribs and they all say it's totally unraceable. Gusts to 33kts earlier! 

Paul (Alani) went out on borrowed kit Tim. Bic raceboard with a 5.6m sail. Support RIB clocked him at 25kts plus several times before he crashed and burned!

When he got ashore he reckoned the gusts were probably somewher near 2x windspeed and it was just impossible to hold onto the sail as it powered up too quickly to react! 

Todays racing is cancelled. Strong winds makes racing impossible. Here is the report from our correspondent at Mumbles

Rescue boat went out; average wind was around 22-24 over the course; max gust was 34kts!

No sailing today; plan to race from 11am tomorrow; however the forcast for tomorrow is similar!!!!

A day with string winds at the coast of Wales. Here is the take from our reporter at the scene at 1200 hours:

2 hrs postponement.  Forcast is bad 23kts gusting to 30; rescue boat has been out and over 2 minute period; average 21kts, gusting 29 -

It seems like the race committee is keen to have some races today as they have postponed for just two hours. Fortunately Mumbles Yacht club have a bar and other facilities where the competitors can rest while waiting. We all hope this will not be a repeat of last years GC blowout.

The Formula 16 Global Challenge begins tomorrow. Organizers are the the GBR class association and Mumbles Yacht Club.

We have been promised daily updates from participants and several video kits and GPS units are at the venue. Here is a small report from our reporter Simon Longstaff who also participates in the event on F16 GBR 553.

Today has been a day of bimbling, and sailing. I did the first practice race and then decided I need to change some settings and so went in as Hans came out; Overall Mark P ran 3 or 4 races round decent sized W/L courses. Some were going fast up wind, some were going fast down wind.

The wind was a shift F2-3. Tomorrow's forecast looks a bit dicey (22-30 kts) so people are tieing boats to anything heavy they can find.

Mumbles Yacht Club on the internet can be found here: http://mumblesyachtclub.co.uk/f16worlds2008/

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