Flying Fifteens at the Ovington Inlands at Grafham Water Sailing Club

Flying Fifteens at the Ovington Inlands © Thom Touw / www.thomtouw.com

Flying Fifteens at the Ovington Inlands © Thom Touw / www.thomtouw.com

For the second year running the FF15's were invited to race as part of the Ovington Inlands. This event is sponsored generously by Ovington Boats and sailed by boats that they build. It is very much an end of season party event and non Ovington built FF15's are welcome to enter. This year saw an increase in attendance with some top sailors visiting to give the locals some hot racing. The 15's raced a trapezoid, outer loop track which kept them well clear of the 29er sailors, sailing on an inner loop. The excellent course management of Commodore Peter Saxton and his team provided great racing throughout the weekend which was close at all levels of the fleet.

Four short back to back races were successfully run on Saturday in force 3 winds with the occasional larger gust. Race 1 saw Class National Champions Simon Kneller and Dave Lucas take the first bullet followed by Robert Hogben and Glyn Morgan. The long first beat was clearly to Simon's liking as he won the next two races with locals Graham Thomas and Mark Longstaff taking second in Race 2 and other local Richard Ledger and Terry Parker 2nd in Race 3. Simon and Dave clearly lost their touch in Race 4, finishing 10th, which left the door open for Alan Bax and James Grant to win ahead of Richard and Terry.

In the evening there was a spectacular firework display to round off a great days racing.

The Sunday forecast was for less than 4mph but after a short postponement racing got underway in a sunny force 2 and for the most part the wind held steady to enable a further three races to be completed.

Race 5 was comfortably won by Alan Bax, starting to put some pressure on the overnight leaders Simon and Dave, with Graham Thomas taking second place. Race 6 mixed up the fleet yet again but returned Simon to winning form with Dave and Jenny Philpott just pipping Robert Hogden for second place. Robert got his revenge in the last race with a comfortable win but Simon and David, having posted a second, were confirmed as overall winners.

The short race, quick turnaround format provided close exciting racing which everyone that attended thoroughly enjoyed. Many thanks to Grafham and Ovington Boats for organising the weekend and we hope more will come and enjoy this new event in the FF15 Calendar next year.

Overall Results: