Dear sailor friends,
In an article published early December on Class website, we informed you of the possible introduction of new fabrics in the F18 Cloth List, to address two issues both sailors and sailmakers were recently facing:
- Availability of Pentex cloths
- Cases of ripped mainsails
For this reason, we started in December 2023 an investigation by sailcloth producers and sailmakers for possibly adding some new fabrics into the Official Cloth List, not giving up our basic principles, aiming to provide sailors with the best quality in terms of performance and durability, at the lowest possible cost.
Following, we decided to run a testing programme. Additionally, World Council decided during last our Annual Meeting, held on 13th December 2024 to postpone implementation of the allowance of two different plies/materials in jibs and mainsails by at least one year. The original decisions were taken by the 2023 Annual Meeting for implementation by 1 January 2025 (proposals #8 and #9). See relevant proposal and rationale on website.
A few sail sets of sails have been built for most popular class designs, and testing is now under progress.
Instruction has been given to use these test sets as much as possible, in order to get reliable information about durability, which remains the main criteria for the Class.
As luck would have it, Pentex cloths are now readily available, although at a higher cost, consequently the class is no longer under pressure to approve a new cloth list.
We will keep you posted of testing progress by end of September/early October, and we will keep on investigating the mainsail ripping issue.
Important note: whatever the testing results, no change, if any, will be made prior 2026 Worlds in Australia.
With my very best regards,
On behalf of IF18CA Executive Committee,
Olivier BOVYN