Foilers And Thinkers

From a relatively small and eclectic base just four short years ago, The Foiling Week is fast becoming one of the key events in the sport.

- Martina Orsini

The format for the Foiling Week is more or less unique, consisting of a range of races for foiling craft of many types, supplemented by talks from some of the sport’s top thinkers in foiling design and development.

The event has been held in Lake Garda every year since its inception – though a sister event took place in Newport, Rhode Island USA last year for the first time. The appeal is self-evident with racing in the afternoon on the famous waters of Lake Garda coupled with the opportunity to share ideas and innovations with other like-minded folk.

ON THE WATER 

Once again this year saw a wide variety of classes assembled, including established designs and a host of prototypes. All the classes took part in organised racing as part of the Foiling Week regatta series whilst a varied selection of foiling craft were also made available for trial sailing.

The International Moths – one of the earliest and most popular foilers – were there in larger than usual numbers thanks to their world championship due later in the month – see our report on pages 10-11. Of particular interest to those in Garda for test sails were the ‘people’s foilers’, the Waszp, S9, F101, iFly15 and Whisper.

Jerry Hill from the F101 was particularly pleased with trials: “We had a number of people trying the boat for the first time on day one and these were guys who sail Lasers, Dragons and other boats but had never foiled before. We managed to give all of them about 15 minutes in the boat and out of nine people on the boat, eight of them successfully foiled. This included a disabled sailor. All came in with a massive grin on their face saying it was phenomenal! So I think we put that down as a good day.”