Firefly Open at South Staffordshire Sailing Club
by K Macaulay 2 Oct 2018 07:21 BST
15 September 2018
South Staffs Sailing Club's six identical Fireflys were used once again for our Open Meeting on 15th September. Using the club's boats allowed sailors who don't own Fireflys to join in, and since all the boats were identical the results were down to which sailors performed best on the day.
The entry was limited to twelve to give everyone a good day's sailing. We had a great range of entries; from youngsters in their first event through to sailors with many years experience.
The format was separate Gold and Silver fleet races, with the last two from a Gold race dropped to Silver and the top two from Silver promoted to Gold after every race. The races were only 10 minutes long so mistakes were costly, places changed frequently and no one was ever far from the action.
The forecast was for a consistent 12 knots all day, unfortunately at lunch the wind turned off and some rapid reorganising was carried out by Race Officer James Croxford. He and his team still managed to get 12 races completed to give us all plenty of sailing.
The racing was so close that almost everyone had a spell in Silver and Gold at some point.
John & Sue Billington showed great consistency, never dropping out of the top 4, but with 2 discards allowed were equal on points with Keith Macaulay and Clare Waymont. The overall prize went to Keith & Clare after their win in the last race. Third and fourth were also tied on points with Alistair and Elizabeth Macaulay claiming third over Samuel Bailey and Mya Peterson.
Tom Temple showed the biggest improvement from last year, going from 12th to 6th.
Overall Results:
1st Keith Macaulay & Clare Waymont
2nd John & Sue Billington
3rd Alistair & Elizabeth Macaulay
4th Samuel Bailey & Mya Peterson
Thanks to James Croxford and his team for running the event, Julie Macaulay for providing lunch and all the competitors for making it a great day's racing.