Firefly Open at South Staffordshire Sailing Club
by K Macaulay 16 Nov 2017 21:42 GMT
11 November 2017
South Staffs Firefly Open © J Croxford
South Staffs Sailing Club has the fantastic asset of six identical Fireflys, which were available for our open meeting on 11th November. The challenge was to come up with a format that would entertain 12 teams with experience ranging from newcomers to the sport up to competitors who race at the top end of national fleets. Ages ranged from under 10 to some who have been retired for a while!
The Firefly is an ideal dinghy for this diverse group, it can be sailed successfully with a wide range of crew sizes, is easy to handle but rewards good boat handling.
Using the club's boats allowed sailors who don't own Fireflys to join the fun, and since all the boats were identical the results were down to which sailors performed best on the day.
The format was to have 6 boat gold and silver fleets, with the last 2 from a gold race dropped to silver and the top 2 from silver promoted to gold after each race. The races were only 10 minutes long so mistakes were costly and no one was ever far from the action. We had all the excitement of team racing without the aggression. The pressure was on right through both fleets to avoid the drop or gain promotion.
The racing was so close that everyone had a spell in silver and most got into gold at some point.
On the water umpiring kept everyone honest and ensured no one took unfair advantage of the firefly's legendary ability to roll tack.
By 3.30 we had sailed 7 races each and finished the day with tea & cakes.
Overall Results: (7 races, 2 discards)
1st Mike Senior & Fin Morgan, 9 points
2nd John & Sue Billington, 10 points
3rd Keith Macaulay & Kamila Czartolomna, 12 points
Thanks to Paul Goodhead and his team for running the event, Bill Bradburn for umpiring, Julie Macaulay for providing lunch and all the competitors for making it a great day's racing.