Formula 18 catamarans line up off the coast of Long Beach. Photo courtesy of 2012 F18 World Championships’ Facebook.

Multi-hull boats might have been eliminated from the 2012 Olympic Games, but this week, more than 100 Formula 18 catamarans will be competing off the coast of Long Beach in the class’ first-ever U.S.-hosted competition.

The GLOBALTECH Formula 18 World Championship—which began registration and inspection on September 7 and will have daily racing Tuesday September 11 through September 15—is being hosted by the Alamitos Bay Yacht Club and will feature some of the best multi-hull sailors from more than a dozen countries.

The Formula 18 class of catamaran was created in 1994 and became so popular that the International Sailing Federation granted it Recognized Status only 18 months later. Mainly European in the beginning, the F18s are now a common multi-hull category in Australia, New Zealand and North America with several Americans positioned to place well at this week’s competition.

Headliners will include defending champion Darren Bundock of Australia (who won a silver medal in Beijing), past silver medalists Pease and Jay Glaser from the host club as well as the team of Matt Struble and Damon LaCasella—who won first place in the Southern California Yachting Association Midwinter Regatta’s F18 races, held in the same Long Beach waters earlier this year. 

With a mostly reliable southwesterly sea breeze sweeping down the San Pedro Channel, Long Beach is a special attraction for catamarans, which spend much of their races with least one hull flying out of the water. Though this is the first time that Southern California has hosted an F18 championship, multi-hull racing first thrived in SoCal waters in the 1970s and Long Beach even played host to the third ever multi-hull Olympic event when the Games were in Los Angeles in 1984.

“Southern California was always the hotbed of multihull activity,” Jay Glaser told the Daily Snail, an online boating blog. “We go to different places in the world and think, ‘Why do we leave Long Beach?’ It has some of the best sailing in the world, for sure.”

Keep up with the 2012 F18 World Championships with the competition’s official Facebook page. All races will also be tracked in real time on Kattack.com.