ICCCC 2013 - The Notice Of Race (NOR) has now been published

Restronguet Sailing Club

We are pleased to announce that the Organising Authority, Restronguet Sailing Club have now published the Notice Of Race for the International C Class Catamaran Championship, ICCCC 2013 which is to be held in Mylor, Falmouth UK during the week 21st-28th September.

The NOR and the International C Class Catamaran Rules can be found at the Restronguet Sailing Club website below:

ICCCC 2013 Notice Of Race (NOR)

You can also follow events leading up to and during the challenge on our ICCCC 2013 Facebook page: 

ICCCC 2013 Facebook

Team Invictus goes mobile

You can now visit the Team Invictus website from your smart phone. When using your mobile just visit our site www.teaminvictus.com and you will automatically be redirected to our mobile site.

Only ONE year to go until the International C-Class Catamaran Championship!

Things are certainly hotting up with only one year to go until the International C-Class Catamaran Challenge arrives in Falmouth, Cornwall, UK. In the 16 months since the team announced we would be hosting the UK event we've been very busy and we will be providing you with the latest updates on the event itself and our boat progress in the next coming days.

Dart 18 - World Championship 2012 - Punta Ala ITA - Title for Phipps/Boniface GBR

Congratulations to Tom Phipps and Nikki Boniface GBR who are the superior new World Champions ahead of Dave & Louise Roberts GBR, Silver Medal, and Thierry & Christine Wibaux FRA, Bronze Medal. There were 93 teams from 9 nations racing so this is a fanstic win for Tom, well done from all of us here at Team Invictus.

Invictus suffers wing damage participating in the Solent Slog

Team Invictus have continued the demolition Derby that has inflicted Steve and Fred over the last year. The Solent slog was our occasion, and what happened has been discussed and mused over, but so far with no real answers as to why the backstay really gave way. It was new(ish) rope, well treated and at the time, not even loaded at the time.

The result was "wing overboard", clipping the bow as it came down. This, and the subsequent battering by waves caused a fair degree of damage, including breaking the mast in the middle. Is it repairable? We are still looking over it and trying to decide if this changes our boat development plans. We have a choice of focusing effort onto getting this back on the water or on designing a newer better wing.

Testing times indeed. Life on a C class challenge remains an emotional roller coaster, hopefully it will start going back up again soon!

The team would like to say a special thank you to Weston Sailing Club for their fantastic hospitality and many thanks to the rib crew that helped salvage the boat and crew.

A more detailed account of events written by Gordon Kaiser can be found on Sailing Anarchy:

http://forums.sailinganarchy.com/index.php?showtopic=122434

The recovery of Invictus's wing

Press Release 20th May 2011 - Falmouth to host the 2013 International C Class Catamaran Challenge ICCCC

Please see below the press release issued today by the team at The Maritime Museum Cornwall.

Today Team Invictus are announcing the return of a premier sailing event that has not been seen in the UK since 1969. It’s title is the rather sober “International C Class Catamaran Championship” (ICCCC) but to the sailing world it has become universally known as the
“Little America’s Cup”

Team Invictus are an engineering led team based in Bristol who in August 2010 went to New York Yacht Club in Rhode Island and came a credible 3rd. This earned them the honour of organising the next championship and today they announce their choice of Mylor in Falmouth as the venue.

The dates are set as 25th August to 1st Sept 2013 with the week before for training. It promises a very high profile for Falmouth; the event attracts an international audience who will see what a beautiful area this part of Cornwall is. Team Invictus have teamed up with a consortium from Restronguet Sailing Club, Mylor Yacht Club and Windsport International to host the event in the village of Mylor at the upper reaches of Carrick Roads and look forward to creating a great event.

We are very excited by this opportunity, and we are right at the front of the resurgence of this great event. In 2010 there were 5 teams and 7 boats; already we have 10 teams and maybe up to 20 boats and this will help drive Falmouth’s economic regeneration.

The winner of last years championship, Fred Eaton said: "We are looking forward to defending the International C Class Catamaran Championship at Falmouth. I have had the pleasure of racing in Falmouth before in International 14s and will enjoy returning. The town and the area are rich with inspirational history for a sailor and the people are very welcoming. I know that it will provide a great test for both the boats and crews at our next Championship."

This event has had a cult following since it began in 1961 through the continually innovative developments that have evolved over the years. And its story began as a reversal of the 1851 America’s Cup story; the Brits went to the USA and brought the trophy back to these shores.

The events nickname came about because racing was based on a similar format to the AC races, the same course, and it was a match race series (one on one). The boats however, were very different. They chose the International C class catamaran, a development class with basically 3 simple rules, length, width and sail area, which gave designers maximum latitude for innovation.

Over the years, they evolved, and today the C class are the pinnacle of sailing technology. They are powered, not by sails, but by powerful wings with aircraft style flaps which propel these sleek craft, weighing less than their crew at two and a half times the speed of the wind.

Yesterday the Palermo based “Challenge Italia” (http://www.challengeitalia.it/) announced their challenge, headed by Roberto Grippi, and including Luna Rossa sailors Francesco Bruni and Pierluigi De Felice.

An undisclosed Swedish team will also announce their challenge on Swedish national day on the 6th of June and two French teams, one Swiss and one Australian team are also close to announcing challenges” in addition to the US and Canadians.

“The planning starts now. We want to make this a great event, we want cameras on the boats, GPS tracking and facilities to watch from the shores and on the water. We also do not want to forget, this is the end result of 3 years of hard toil for all of the teams, and so we also need to put on a good party”.

The wingsails on these boats are incredibly light, made from carbon fibre to aerospace standards, they generate as much power as a conventional sail more than twice their area. C class sailors call themselves “wingnuts” and it is the technical challenge of designing the most efficient craft that really motivates them.

But winning is a team activity; the sailors must learn how to sail these greyhounds. “C class catamarans are easy to sail, but very difficult to sail well”. To address this, the team are also announcing their latest sailing recruit: Tom Phipps.

Tom is based and grew up in Mylor and he will start to learn the ropes on the teams current boat ‘Invictus’, helped by Gordon Kaiser, crew in the 2010 LAC. Tom’s track record is impressive, including several national titles in both keelboats and catamarans.

To fund their challenge, the team have secured a number of new sponsors, including Atlantis Weathergear for clothing, ANSYS for structural and aerodynamic analysis and Advanced Composites Group for materials. The team are also in discussions with a few potential sponsors to cover both the build of 2 new boats and for the event itself.

The first of the new boats will be based on linear developments along current trends and will provide a low risk and competitive boat to compete against the current generation. The second boat will take a number of new ideas and bring these together into one boat, which the team expect will take the C class to the next level.

Team Principal, Norman Wijker says “Forget the Big America’s Cup, small is beautiful; come and see for yourself”.

End of Press Release

* Photographs are supplied curtesy of @Ricardo Rosario and Brian Phipps.

'Invictus' outside The Maritime Museum Cornwall.

Gordon and Tom putting Invictus through her paces at Mylor, Famouth

Tom Phipps our newest recruit to the team who has several national titles in both keelboats and catamarans.

Invictus sailing in Falmouth

Some team members alongside Guy English (Restronguet Sailing Club), Brian Phipps (Windsport International), Alan Ramsden (Commodore Mylor Yacht Club) and members of Falmouth Council outside The Maritime Museum Cornwall.

Do you want to join the only C class catamaran team in the UK?

Well now is your chance Team Invictus are looking to recruit new members to this rapidly changing and expanding team. We need people to join this dedicated team that came 3rd in The International C Class Catamaran Championship, ICCCC ("Little America's Cup") in 2010.

Team Invictus will be hosting the next championship in 2013 in UK waters and this is your opportunity to become a part of this new and exciting challenge.

If you are visiting this site then you probably have an interest in catamaran sailing and we are willing to consider any skills that you may be able to offer. We are at the moment particularly looking for skills in the following areas;

Website Development in HTML5
Media / Marketing experience
Sailing / Shore Crew
Composite Engineers

We will consider any experience and time you are willing to give to the project.

Help us to make this happen come join us now. All enquiries can be made at recruitment@teaminvictus.com

Team Invictus are holding a press conference on the 2013 International C Class Catamaran Championship, ICCCC (“Little America’s Cup")

On Friday, 20th May

We will be showcasing our C class catamaran ‘Invictus’ at the National Maritime Museum in Cornwall (Falmouth) where the team will be holding a press conference to highlight our plans to host the 2013 ICCCC (“Little America’s Cup”). This is the first time the event has been held in the UK since 1969.

We will also present the technical progress on our new boats in development and thank those who are providing help and support.

The conference is open to members of the press and guests from 2:00pm – 3:00pm.

Members of the public are welcome to come along from 3:30pm – 5:00pm

We look forward to seeing you there and if you have any queries about the event please contact us.

First Race of the Season: The Solent Slog

Team Invictus are pleased to annouce their first race of the season will be The Solent Slog at the Weston Sailing Club on Sunday, 5th June.

This is a long distance race which is open to catamarans and fast monohulls.

ANSYS Extreme

It is implied that any form of racing incorporates the concept of 'The Extreme' and the Little America's Cup, disputed by C-Class catamarans is no different. In December 2010, the Team Invictus Little America's Cup campaign welcomed ANSYS on board as a technical partner. Since then, Team Invictus have had access to entire ANSYS software suite, which comprises an array of meshing, Computation Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Finite Element Analysis (FEA) tools. Dr. Saïf-Deen Akanni who has been working with various ANSYS tools since the 1990s is guiding the aerodynamic and hydrodynamic studies. Tian Ye, Olivia Stodieck, Ricardo Rosario and Anthony Cal maintain the finite element structural analysis effort. Together, they will also delve into Fluid Structure Interaction (FSI) studies.

Team Invictus is making use of several meshing, CFD and FEA tools to perform fluid dynamic and structural optimisation of wing sails, hulls and appendages. The access to these different tools means that Team Invictus members can choose the most appropriate meshing, CFD or FEA approach depending on the type of problem. This will allow the design team to extract the maximum performance from the 27.9 Square Metres (300 Square Feet) surface area limit of the sail by designing the strongest and lightest carbon fibre composite structure that their imaginations can produce.

The numerical modelling will be validated by an instrumented sailing programme scheduled to begin in earnest in the Spring of 2012. With the capability that ANSYS provides, all that remains is to get time on the water and to find suitable crew to complement the very capable Paul Larsen and Gordon Kaiser who placed third out of seven entries in the last Little America's Cup competition, held in Newport, Rhode Island in August 2010.

The next Little Americas Cup will be held in the United Kingdom in 2013 and hosted by Team Invictus. A significantly larger fleet of up to 12 boats is expected to dispute Little Americas Cup 2013. The teams will hail from The United Kingdom, The United States, Canada, Australia, The Netherlands, France, Italy and Spain.

Team Invictus are intending to go two positions better and win Little Americas Cup 2013. If they manage that feat, it would be due in no small part to Team ANSYS and the support they are giving to this uniquely British effort.

RYA Volvo Dinghy Show 2011 - Invictus Prize Draw Winner

Team Invictus were offering a prize at the RYA Volvo Dinghy Show of sail on our very own C class catamaran Invictus and we are very pleased to annouce the winner drawn by the RYA as;

Sarah Hutchings from Kent

We congratulate her on this superb prize and Sarah is no stranger to the dinghy sailing world and in her own words;

" I've been sailing at Tonbridge Town Sailing Club (TTSC) since I was eight and now race most weekends of the season. Having worked four summer seasons at RYA sailing centres in Greece, I now help with training courses as an instructor in the cooler waters of Tonbridge. Going to the Dinghy Show was a birthday treat, so the birthday present became a little more exciting than expected! "

We look forward to taking Sarah out for her sailing prize and 'extra' birthday treat on Invictus later in the season. We shall keep you all posted in the coming weeks.

From all of us at Team Invictus

Our attendance at the RYA Volvo Dinghy Show - 5th-6th March 2011

The first weekend in March the team took Invictus down to the RYA Volvo Dinghy Show at Alexandra Palace, London. Just as with the London International Boat Show, Invictus generated a lot of interest; a steady stream of people, some who know about C class catamarans, others who were just awed at the sight of a 40ft wing sitting on top of a 180kg boat!

The RYA were great hosts, and we pass on our appreciation and thanks to them for inviting us to attend their 60th show. Invictus was on central display in the Palm Court entrance hall.

We met many people, and it was great to be able to be part of the revival of the event, bringing the class up to date with the dinghy sailing public. We also met witht he current owner of Emma Hamilton (sailing from Calshot), a Bristish winner back in the 60's, though she now sports a 50ft mast and a huge increase in sail area. There was also rumours of Ocelot, and I think that Steve Clark had knowledge of Helcat II, so it got me wondering where all those old cats have ended up.

A special visitor to our stand was Alain Thebault, from the Hydroptere project. He is joining Jérémie Lagarrigue who sailed Patient Lady 6 at the 2010 Little Americas Cup in Newport, RI. They have stated their intention to bring a new boat to the next championships here in the UK which would be great for the event; Alain was very much drawn to the Corinthian spirit of the event which we wholly support.

Plenty of people were asking when we would be on the water next, so its clear we need to get our itinery defined. Keep watching this space and we will bring news of this!

Norman Wijker ~ 10th March 2011

Team Invictus Sponsors

RYA Volvo Dinghy Show 2011

Visitors at the Invictus stand

@Team Invictus Ltd 2011

See Invictus at London Boat Show !

The boat is at the London boat show (7-16th Jan). Looking forward to talking to you there!

PUTTING THE “C” IN THE WESTON CAT OPEN 2010

           PUTTING THE “C” IN THE WESTON CAT OPEN 2010

Last weekend, we finally got to line our C-class INVICTUS up against perhaps the fastest beach cats in the world at the Weston Catamaran Open.

For us it was a chance to do some good racing, show the boat to an enthusiastic audience and get a measure of her performance against the state of the art of the soft sailed competition. We had a mixed bag of results for one reason or another but overall we came away pretty happy with what had been achieved. Weston did a great job and the event was a pleasure to attend.

We had a few little jobs to attend to before the racing began such as fitting one of our old 2004 dagger boards to make up for the one we lost in Newport RI during the last LAC. We rigged up the boat on Friday with a very bleak forecast suggesting winds of over 30 knots during the day. It didn’t look too bad out on Southampton water but there was a sense that there was wind out ‘there’ somewhere. We held back a bit not really wanting to test our luck... but still got as close to sailing as we could before making the final decision. We watched a small but quality fleet go out to race which included Will Sunnucks on his Texel winning Marstrom  M20 which has been souped up with a wider than normal beam and a bigger rig. Also out there were some F-18’s, Tornado Sports and even Phil Cotton’s Seacart 30 which had been invited to play. We watched them do the first race and decided that despite the forecast we hadn’t seen anything that we shouldn’t be able to handle... so we should have some confidence in a boat that had recently proven herself to be very reliable. We pulled on the drysuits and went out to play. The start was just in front of the club-house and we joined the fleet on their second lap around a short windward-leeward course. Instantly Invictus shot to windward at a pretty high angle and began putting distance on all the boats. We took a little while to get comfortable as there were some fruity gusts coming through. We eased into our top-mark rounding’s pulling out all the camber to turn off the power. We made gains by not having to hoist or drop kites at the marks and had plenty of grunt to do decent angles down-wind... so much so that we often underestimated our down-wind angles and came in to the leeward gates very hot. In these instances we would just pull the camber off again and try and make it a bit more manageable. Some of the gusts sure were punchy and we had one big 'stuff' where we thanked our stars for those two big, funky, retro bows. Invictus shook it all off and were around the leeward mark and into the next beat. The angles she does up wind really is rude compared to a soft sail... and it just seems to get better with the breeze. She just keeps climbing out. Gordon and I got more confident as the cobwebs rubbed off with every mark rounding. We began to undo the lap we were down on the fleet. Unfortunately Will had an issue and was back on the shore so we didn’t get to line up against the M20. We had one more good hard stuff down-wind and decided enough was enough. We were happy with the boat and the performance she gave, but the wind did feel like it was building beyond ‘C’ class territory so we took her home. In the end it was a good decision to go sailing... and a good decision to put her away. We had a whole weekend ahead of us and we didn’t want to blow it. Apparently we had posted the fastest lap times of all the boats for the day. That was interesting as we really were just going for a good shake-down sail. We took the rear flaps off the wing and just laid the wing forward in the dinghy park for the night.

 T vs C vs Sea... big, bigger, biggest...

If you look hard up in the left hand corner...

                             Seacart versus C class

The dinghy park at Weston Yacht Club was a hive of activity in the morning as everyone else had turned up for the weekend. Besides Will’s M20, we now had Peter Vink on the much hyped (and deservedly so) new NACRA F20c, and the mighty TEK KAT 23 to deal with along with a host of Tornado Sports and current F-18’s. Overall, the event had managed to get a pretty high quality fleet of boats and it was great to see a big winged ‘C’ sitting amongst all the ‘T’ s, ‘N’s, ‘V’s and ‘H’s. The mornings wind really crapped out come race time. I don’t think there was much trapezing up the first beat and we came around the top mark hard on the heels of the TEK KAT with the F-20 another five boat lengths out front. Down-wind we just got crucified by the kite boats. We had some real issues with the amount of force it took to hold the full camber in the wing. We didn’t have the system onboard which we had used to good effect in Newport and we paid the price. The wind was down around 4-5 knots and dropping. Our angles were terrible whilst the kite boats could still make a decent VMG. I know we can do much better than this so it was quite frustrating not to be able to find our ‘Mojo’. In the end the wind crapped out completely... but our race was effectively over half way along that down-wind leg. It was both frustrating but equally illuminating of an area we need to focus a lot more on. That afternoon the breeze came in a little so I gave the helm over to Will Sunnucks and let him take INVICTUS for a blast. I showed him how it all works upwind and downwind and generally let him absorb the pleasure of gliding along in a big, smooth winged wonder. There was just enough wind for the boat to begin to power up and, well, I’ll simply say that I’m pretty sure that Will’s smile said it all.

Weston yacht club put on a great and well attended social night complete with a fantastic fire-works display. I had the opportunity to give a talk about our program and the C-class in general along with some speed sailing stuff. Fortunately I was preaching to the converted because if there are two things I can talk about... it’s the aforementioned. Helena always laughs when people ask if I would like to do a talk! It was another nice night, perfect for fireworks. It was so calm in fact that we just lowered the whole wing forward behind the yacht club fully rigged ready for hoisting the next morning.

               What's not to like about this scene?

Thankfully there was a bit more breeze the following day. It was a cool and patchy, Northerly which varied between 5-15 knots. I got down there early and simply pulled the wing up, clipped on the trapezes and threaded the mainsheet. She was ready to go and I had promised to take another keen cat sailor in Jon Worthington out for a blast. It’s a pleasure to share the boat with such appreciative and enthusiastic sailors. I’m pretty used to the scale of the boat... but I’m sure it blows away someone who is still coming to grips with an F-18. These guys are all pretty sharp sailors so it’s no worries to hand over the helm straight away. In this case, Jon got a great sail in. He also got a sense of the rapid transition you have on these boats from graceful hull flying to “oh-shit” teetering on the edge of cliff of shame if you get too cocky. Respect the wing Jon... respect the wing! Great stuff. A C-class is a pretty exotic boat and getting to take one for a blast is something to be savoured. It still gives me a huge buzz.

When the racing started, I think we had some issues on the first start where we got stuck in irons spinning before the gun (sound familiar)? We were left behind effectively starting over a minute late. Despite this we still came around the top mark up at the sharp end of the 20 foot plus fleet. Once again we struggled down-wind. I was trying to sail a bit hotter down-wind with more weight to windward. My theory being that it was quite patchy and we might be able to stay hooked up with apparent wind for longer. When we were hooked up, we weren’t that far off the pace. The trouble was we were mostly not in the groove... or all over the place chasing it. The boat didn’t feel as slick down-wind as she was in Newport. We got hit by a gust whilst heading for the leeward gate and did stuff but the big bows saved us again. Whilst rounding up around the leeward mark, I heard a noise I knew meant trouble. Our new/old 2004 dagger board had snapped. We still had enough down to be effective upwind so we pushed on. We had lost about %50 of our area. It wasn’t so bad as long as we ‘footed’ off and kept boat speed. In the fresher breeze, Ol’ INVICTUS began to flex her ‘C’ class guns and do that cool upwind thing where she just goes substantially higher and faster than anything else. We would get left behind downwind... and find ourselves coming back into the top mark with the front runners.

We had great starts on the third and fourth races and gave everyone a good look at how a wing-sailed catamaran can go to weather... even with only half a dagger-board. Towards the end of the third race I began to move further to leeward down-wind and trade speed for depth. It worked a lot better and when in the groove we could almost... but not quite hang on to the good guys. Whenever we lost it we would get rolled by anything with a kite including the Spitfires from time to time. I bet they liked that. We can really screw some boats up as we do big dial ups in search of apparent and force everyone above us up... way up. Sorry guys/girls... that’s what we need to do. The more we sailed the sharper we got. Equally we became aware of the performance killing issues that we were carrying. The broken board contributed to a couple of blown tacks which cost us around 30-40 seconds each time (feels like an hour when it happens), the slot was a total mess as the controlling fingers had opened up and in the end we even got one of the fingers stuck in our second element. This final piece was the equivalent of getting a jib batten stuck on the mast and not blowing through (for those of you who have sailed on Hobie 16’s a bit). We had to carry that for all of the fourth race. I tried to take one more joy-rider in Ferdinand Van West out but the wind had died and I realised the damage that the jammed finger could do when cambering the wing on one side. It could only be remedied by dropping the wing. We took INVICTUS back to shore and began packing her away in her trailer for the tow back to Bristol. I owe you a proper ride Ferdinand.

CONCLUSION

What a fantastic weekend. It was so much more fun to be out there sailing with friends old and new than playing around by ourselves down in Weymouth... and 10 times more valuable. Nothing improves the breed like racing. You can’t hide from your weak points and god knows we have some. We had some glaring issues but then many of them can be resolved. I think it was easy to see where we could gain big chunks around the course with more practice and tuning. It was fantastic to line up against the cream of the modern beach cats. We got to see firsthand just how quick the NACRA F-20, ‘Sunnucks special’ M20 and TEK KAT could be when they hit their stride. Equally they got glimpses of what a ‘C’ could do in its stride. Knowing our own issues, what I had recently seen of the best ‘C’ classes in the Little Americas Cup and what I saw on the week-end, my gut feeling is that a good crew on the latest tweaked ‘C’ i.e. Fred and Magnus on Canaan... would come out on top.

Some people took a cheeky shot at our downwind performance but then you have to respect the ‘C’ class rule. Sure, we could put a kite on our boat and have the same advantage down-wind as we do upwind but that (well, let’s be honest... that would make for one very cool and wickedly fast boat... as we will soon see in its 45 foot form)... where was I? Oh yeah, that... would not be a ‘C’ class. The fact is that we could put a kite on a C and go fast down-wind... but there is nothing so simple you could put on any of the other boats to go so fast upwind... except a wing of course. The challenge of a C is to design and build 300 square feet of sail area which flies upwind and gives power beyond its area limitation down-wind. It forces you to sail extremely efficiently and quite often in a unique ‘C’ specific manner. They are great boats and the more we can go and play in fleets like this, the better we will become. Funny enough, both the F-20 and the TEK KAT had to retire at the end of the day due to broken kite poles! Hmmmm;)

THE FUTURE

Well, one way or another, the UK and hopefully the continental catamaran fleets will see more and more of the C-class. It’s up to us to develop ourselves up to the point where we can do the business up the sharp end and release the full potential of the C. We simply have to go racing. The weekend showed us that the new boats are damned quick (with a lot less cost and hassle) and if we make any slips then they will just eat us up and spit us out, but if we string it together on a new hot boat...like I said, I reckon the ‘C’ could still be king. I could be wrong but either way, it will be great fun finding out. It’s up to us to prove it and we sure have some work to do. It would be great to see Fred and Steve Clark come over and do some of the other big events before the next Little Americas Cup in Weymouth in 2013. We should aim to tie it in. The C-class can only do itself favours by sailing in mixed events.

THANKS

Gordon and I, on behalf of the INVICTUS Team would like to thank everyone at Weston Yacht Club, Stuart, Carl and Grant for pushing/inviting us to come down and to the ladies and club in general for making us feel so welcome. The pleasure was ours and we will be back. Thanks also to everyone who helped us rig up and generally put up with our space hungry beast in the boat park and on the water. The club put on a great regatta. It was fantastic to see such an enthusiastic and high quality cat fleet... in November.  At the end of the day it doesn’t really matter what you are on... it’s just fun getting out there and going for it... I’ve missed this scene.

Cheers, Paul.

All pictures by H. Darvelid.

We're in Weston

Come and see us, we'll be racing again tomorrow morning!
Team Invictus

Location:SO31 5FB

Thanks for a great event!

Now that the event is over, we would just like to thank all of those who supported our effort, either with kind words, cheers from the shoreline or through the various sponsorships.

We would also like to thank our hosts, the New York Yacht Club who seemed genuinely pleased to support their very first multihull event, and how fitting this was that it was the LITTLE Americas Cup.

Thanks also to Sail Newport who gave us use of their Mule Barn and beach for the run-up trials, we never got a chance to say goodbye as we packed in a hurry to avoid a sudden squall.

Finally, thanks to Fred and Steve who shared the transport costs of getting the boat there. I suspect that they were glad they didnt offer to pay for the "hoards of Englishmen" (actually, we had South African, Czech, Irish, French, German, Spanish and half a Dutchman there as well as a handful of English!).

Overall it was an amazing experience for all of us, and staggered that we were centre of so much attention, perhaps mainly thanks to the interest in Americas Cup AC34, however, I hope people can now see that our event is way cooler. The "spirit of C class" is hard to beat - fierce competition on the water, all pulling together off the water, this event is truly unique.

We have agreed with Steve and Fred that Team Invictus will host the next event in 2013 in the UK, the exact venue will be announced when we have done our research, we need to ensure that we put on as good a show as NYYC did this year.

The beauty of this event is the blend of technical stuff and sailing, the boffins get to go first, and so the race to be first over that line in 2013 starts NOW, pencils at the ready!

Thanks for watching NW

2010 event is complete

The LAC 2010 was completed on Saturday 28th August, Canaan coming first in the match races against Alpha (3-1) and Invictus leading in the second round of fleet racing, followed by Patient Lady VI and Orion (7-9-10pts respectively).


Full results under : 
http://nyyc.org/gui/nyyc1/sailingevents/230/C%20Class%20Champs%20Final%20Results.pdf

All in all, this was a very successful event for the team and we're all happy Invictus performed so well. It was an invaluable experience to see all the cats on the water, to be able to compare performances and also (maybe most importantly) meet and exchange ideas with all the teams after the races.
Rumours are the next event in 2013 might be in the UK ....  

Big thanks to the NYYC and everybody else involved for making this event possible. Also many thanks to our sponsors and to everyone who supported the team before and during the event. We couldn't have made it without you!

The trailer is packed and ready to get shipped. The team is on it's way back to good old England ...    

Invictus Youtube link.

Link to Video: Invictus in Newport R.I. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezb2hQJe6j8)

First day Match Racing

We got our first win today! The first race was cancelled due to light wind. The sea breeze came in and the course was adjusted. Orion headed home due to boat damage. The race was then between Invictus and Patient Lady VI - good breeze. Invictus lead from the start, Patient Lady catching up towards the end. We were across the line when PL VI shroud line snapped and the wing collapsed. They made the finish though. Further racing was abandoned. As always, repairs are performed over night and five boats should be at the start tomorrow. But, all in all, a very good day for the team. Barbeque tonight at Team Invictus HQ - all invited! (Food&Drink are gone - bring your own!)

Team Invictus

Full race report: http://www.thedailysail.com/dinghy/10/56456/0/little-americas-cup-day-four-report
Live coverage: www.sailinganarchy.com