Talk about a nail-biting finish. Club de Vela la Ballena Alegre in Girona/Costa Brava, Catalonia, Spain, hosted 123 boats totalling 246 hulls this week at the F18 World Championships.

Australia has a contingent of 17 yachts competing. With one day of racing to go, nine are still in the top 30 and six in the top 15.

14 races in total and sailing hard after their ‘U’ flag disqualification in the first qualifier, Darren Bundock and local WA sailor Conor Nicholas took home the F18 World Title.

Finishing with eight firsts and two seconds, they needed to beat their Greece counterparts by two places in the final race.

Coming first in the final race and Greece coming in 17th, the duo won by two points.

Race 10 was almost an all Australian top five.

Darren and Conor lead the charge across the line followed by Mitch and Ruben Booth, then local sailors Gavin Colby and Pete Dubbelaar in third.

Greece spoilt the party - taking fourth whilst Brett Burvill and Max Puttman and Gavin Parker and Dan Brown rounded out the Australian domination.

Similar results appear in Qualifying Race 3 and Finals Races 9 and 11. In fact there has been and Aussie on the podium in every race except Race 7 and 13. What an outstanding performance in Gold Fleet.

Silver Fleet again has local sailors, Murray and Andrew Buchan, sitting in seventh overall. That’s WA finishing in first, fifth, ninth, 15th and 20th overall. Full finals results and spectacular action shots and video at cvballena-alegre.sailti.com.
 

By Warren Erasmus; Australian Sailing - Weekend West - Around the Buoys Column

Images Twitter: Marc Gonzalez Aloma; @mgaloma