Within some hours we end 2018. It is nice to sit down and look back a little as a lot of things happened.
A huge amount of work and as in the rules, it gave the results.
In this year we were focusing mainly on the F18, F16, and Acat.
We have continued the F18 development we have started in 2017, now it got more focused as Dany and Kostas set up the clinic, so was able to check the sails with different level of sailors and parallel comparing them on a boat to boat line-up.
The first half of the year was about these sails, we have gone through many ideas, as the big head- small head question on F18 decksweaper sails.
For the European Championships were held at Costa Brava, the new sails showed their potential as Dany and Kostas won the event and Mitch Booth and his son, Ruben got the third place. The other very important result of this regatta is the amount of 1D Sails in the fleet. 24% of the fleet used at least one of our sails.
We have reworked the sails after the Europeans, and Fredrik and Niklas won the Archipelago Raid straight away.
Continuing on the devels, we ended up for the 2019 shapes for the World Championships. The result came in, as Dany and Kostas were crowned as champions.
During November, what the Greeks and the Argentinians made in St Barth Cata Cup, is awesome. Everyone was pretty close to each other and to the first place, ( Dany and Kostas lead the regatta, just made a bouy rounding mistake in the last race and they retired) and the whole podium was ruled by Scorpion/1D setup.
The mainsail got an update, a new jib came alive which fit much better to the decksweaper main, and a new gennaker as well.
Together with this devel, we started our premium line, which means the same upgraded construction and shape that Dany and Kostas were using.
The F16 development was a little bit easier, as we have a pretty proven shape, we have just updated the perimeters a little. These sails won the European Championships as well with Manu and Theo, and Erik and Thomas Proust got the second place. On this regatta, even more boats were using our sails.
We have made a new, class legal decksweaper sail as well for Viper, Bimare and Falcon F16s as well.
On the Acat side, I started to work with Iago from Spain last December, and Kostas from our F18 team member joined early this year. This was a pretty interesting adventure, went through many shapes, many ideas and many clothes.
Kostas won the Campione Univela Trophy, while Iago took some podiums from Spain and an 8th place from the Worlds.
Brett Burwill the awesome boatbuilder from Perth, got second place on the Tornado Worlds this year with Max as his crew. Now they are preparing for the 2019 Worlds, will be held in January in New Zealand.
We have some other interesting projects this year.
A new, upgraded Flying Phantom decksweaper mainsail from a radial technora material, which proves their speed in Argentina, that beat the other FPs and Nacra 20s upwind with a couple of hundred meters on the upwind leg.
Also, we have updated the iFly mainsails from membrane to a more handleable lighter material with a radial cut.
We have worked on the redesign of an AC45 catamaran, it arrived to Lake Balaton from Oracle. We have built some giant sails to this boat, which won the Ezustszalag and the Feherszalag at Lake Balaton.
A new line arrived into our life, we have started our new brand, M8 Windfoiling, which labels our sails for windfoiling. You can visit its website here.
Altogether we had an awesome year. A really good team came together for all the classes, for all the developments.
We have a lot of work for 2019, hopefully, we will move into our new loft finally, will extend our production capability, and of course to defend the titles from the previous years. Of course, fighting for new titles and there are much much more goals to reach.
Thank you very much to all of the team members for the hard work and great results!
Have a Happy, Succesful, Healthy, New Year! Have fair winds!
Cheers,
Panka, Marton
