Account of this years "Tornado Camp" held in Stockholm, Sweden in conjunction with a mixed fleet multihull regatta known as "Liding Rundt". Story by Rolf Nilson, pictures by Stefan Boman

Eight Tornados attended, 5 from Sweden, list member Heine Foss from Denmark, two times (?) Tornado Olympian Hannu Jarvela from Finland and one boat from Norway (us). The plan was to do some training on friday, participate on the major regatta "Liding Rundt" on saturday, and another training session on saturday. Monday was a holiday in Norway, and this suited us nicely as we had 900km to drive home from Stockholm.

Friday started with a briefing and intro session held by Martin Strandberg (sailed T's both in Sydney and Athens, I think he also participated earlier with Mats Nyberg..). He shared quite a bit of information in compressed form, so all were listening with ears perked. Then we went on the water, and the weather gods blessed us with sun and around 8m/s of wind. Launching at "Ranangen" boatclub was 'interesting' as the ramp was framed by all kinds of obstacles (buyous, rocks, weed, piers etc). But everybody handled the advanced launching routines without to much drama. My crew fell between the bows, and hit the bowsprit full on with his forehead. Thank god the bowsprit wasn't damaged, but he sailed the rest of the day with a blistering headache. We did some initial speed training, with Martin trying to keep up with the T's in a coach boat, before we did some start procedures and one lap races. Obviously, Hannu knew how to make a T fly under those conditions.

The 2005 Hobie 16 North American Championship gets underway in Ventura, California on Wednesday July 20.

2005 marks the championships return to a supplied boat, round robin format thanks to the support of the Hobie Cat Company. Hobie Cat has generously supplied 35 brand new Hobie 16s for the regatta. (http://www.hobiecat.com)

Over a week and a half of racing the Hobie Class Association of North America will determine the 2005 Hobie 16 Youth, Women's and Open Champions.

The regatta will start off with racing for the Hobie 16 Youth and Women's North American Championship on July 20, 21 and 22. Over the weekend of July 23 and 24
the qualification round will take place for the Open Championship. The qualification round allows teams that have not pre-qualified through the North American ranking system to qualify for the Hobie 16 Open Championships. Over 500 teams appeared on the Hobie 16 rankings last year but only 50 pre-qualified spots areavailable for the regatta. In total 70 teams will qualify for the Open event.

The Open Hobie 16 North Americans will start on Monday July 25 and run through Friday July 29.

Who To Watch

The Hobie 16 Youth North Amercians will likely be a battle between defending champions Mike Siau and Trey James from Manlius, NY and Jason and Charles Hess, the top ranked team from Guatemala.

Reynolds Sailing and SailMax headline live web cast for Formula 18 North Americans and then some during The F18 North Americans at Buckroe Beach, Hampton, Virginia from August 8th through the 12th, 2005.

If watching some of the top Formula 18 catamaran sailors compete for the North American title isn’t enough to fulfill your need for fast thrills, then how about a duo of high-performance, spinnaker donning, 33 foot catamarans tearing it up on the race course?

That’s exactly what it’s in store when R33.com and SailMax host a seven day Reynolds 33 land and water exhibition to surpass all expectations.

On-line sailing enthusiast will be able to follow the action of the 2005 Formula 18 North Americans when they log on to www.F18NAOnline.com Live updates, frequent video clips of on and off the water action, sailor interviews and more are all courtesy of R33.com and SailMax.

I arrived on the beach Wednesday morning at around eleven, once there I noticed that quite a few people had already setup their boats to compete in the Texel Dutch Open (6 round-the-cans races) which would start at twelve. A beautiful day with sunshine, no surf, and light winds. After setting up the boat I went for a sail to see if I hadn't forgotten anything, apart from a few minor details everything was ready for action. After sailing I met up my fellow club members which had already setup their tents on a nice camping close to the beach.

On Thursday we went for a sail (The "Horstocht") to the south of the island for free fish and drinks, it gives you a good opportunity to scout the south of the island for the race on Saturday. Its a tricky place with shoals, sandbanks, currents and tides. As always people try to go as far outside the channel markers as possible which makes for the usual capsizes and groundings. Since there were no more than 8-10kts of wind there where no serious problems.

Friday was a cold day (12C/53F), to cold for me anyway! This gave me a good opportunity to take pictures and follow the racing. First stop was the Pit Lane's Hobie Europe stand with the very cool looking Hobie Fox Extreme, this all-carbon beast was built to take line honors and maybe more. Interesting was the "Made by Hobie Europe" sticker on the hulls, obviously they now have facilities to build carbon hulls. Also the rudder system was not standard Hobie style, ironically they didn't use carbon boards and rudders but standard GRPs. Opposite the Hobie Europe stand where the F18-Capricorns, a relative newcomer that seems to perform very well within the F18 field.

Saturday morning, race day. I set the alarm at 6am, had some breakfast, headed to the beach where everyone was preparing their boats for the start at 10am.

It appears that rumors of a new, possibly experimental, carbon Hobie are true. The boat appears to be based on the Hobie Fox and is manufactured by Hobie Europe. The first example was at the Texel race but, (like over half the participants) wasn't able to make it out through the surf. We'll have to wait for another event to see what the black boat can do. Pictures of the Carbon Hobie Cat

Thanks to Tony Mels, we have these first pictures of the new boat.