Record setting World Championship

Imagine a line of the fastest single-handed racing catamarans stretching over a kilometre in length if placed end to end. This is the size of fleet that will assemble at the 2024 A-Class Cat World Championships to be held September 9-13 in Punta Ala, Italy.

At 18-feet in length, that’s over half an acre of boat area alone in what looks like being the year’s biggest single class cat party takes place on the lovely blue waters of the Mediterranean, on the Golfo Di Follonica off the Tuscan coast, to the East of Elba.

With 184 boats from 20 nations registered, this breaks the previous record of 155 coincidentally set at the 2015 Worlds which were held in… Punta Ala. The fleet is nearly split in half for its two class categories – Open Foiling and Classic non-foiling – which are essentially the same other than their allowed foil shapes and operation.

It was also at the 2015 Worlds when Glenn Ashby won the 9th of his 10 class World titles, and it was the first time a foiling cat had been seen in anger at any championships.

For this development class which had been non-foiling, Ashby and Dutch sailor Mischa Heemskerk totally dominated the races using J shaped foils which were tricky, hard to master, and somewhat unstable, leading to spectacular landings and crashes.

It was also at that 2015 event that the landmark vote took place on abolition, or not, of the class rule which required daggerboards to be inserted from the top, and was preventing further foiling development.

It was voted to be retained by a mere 0.3% majority in favour of the retention the rule, based on the Class rules sensibly requiring a two-thirds majority for any rule change.

This decision had a significant effect upon stabilising the class future, and ultimately led to the class becoming the twin fleet seen today with the Open (Foiling) and Classic (Non Foiling) categories now officially designated by World Sailing.

The reigning Classic World Champ Scott Anderson (AUS) and Open World Champ Kuba Surowiec (POL) will seek to defend their titles

Event information – Race details – Entry list

Source: Gordon Upton