Gul Fireball Inlands at Draycote Water Sailing Club

Gul Fireball Inlands at Draycote Water © Malcolm Lewin / www.malcolmlewinphotography.zenfolio.com/sail

Draycote Water hosted the Fireball 2019 Gul Inland Championships over the weekend of 2nd and 3rd November. Most of the fleet arrived early to watch the Rugby World Cup final, which didn't quite deliver the result that everyone was hoping for. However, once the game was over attention was drawn to what was going on out on the water. Fruity is properly the best word to describe it.

The fleet was kept ashore as a massive storm front came through with gusts hitting 45 knots, but eventually launched after an hour's delay. By the time the first race started the wind had dropped dramatically to around 12 knots.

Dave Hall was to have a pretty successful day leading both races of the day from start to finish to be overnight leader, with Isaac Marsh and Oliver Davenport lying second and Chips Howarth, making a cameo appearance after a four year sabbatical from sailing, lying third with his erstwhile crew, Vyv Townend.

Gul Fireball Inlands at Draycote Water - photo © Malcolm Lewin / www.malcolmlewinphotography.zenfolio.com/sail

Sunday dawned with very different conditions. With a shifty and patchy 5-8 knot South Westerly breeze, it was to be a day of snakes and ladders, with the trick being to avoid the biggest snakes rather than necessarily finding the longest ladders.

In the first race of the day, it was Hall who was to land on the biggest snake to find himself buried in the pack and unable to find a suitable ladder to get him out of trouble. The second beat, however, brought a major re-shuffle of the fleet as boats took their respective snakes and ladders. David Sayce and Nick Rees and Paul Cullen and Simon Forbes had great beats to round the windward mark in first and second respectively. In their excitement, however, they missed out the spacer mark at the top of the run and by the time they realised their mistake they had to beat some way back to the mark. Their loss was Howarth's gain and he took the race win with Dave Wade and Richard Pepperdine second and Dan Johnson and Ben Latham third.

Hall's bad luck was to continue in the second race of the day when he was pulled on the black flag start meaning he was going to have to count his 13th from the previous race. Marsh was the boat to find the biggest ladders and took the race win from Howarth and Sayce, remembering to sail the full course, taking third.

Gul Fireball Inlands at Draycote Water - photo © Malcolm Lewin / www.malcolmlewinphotography.zenfolio.com/sail

In the third race, Cullen led for much of the race but was to remind everyone why his nickname is Spanner by inexplicably gybing off on the last run into a lovely hole, thus snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and gifting the win to Wade. John Haynes and Joel James, who were slotting in some solid results after missing the first day took second, with Cullen/Spanner managing to hold onto third.

Going into the last race only Howarth and Wade could win the meeting, but both had appalling first beats and found themselves buried. Hall meanwhile had rediscovered his mojo from Saturday and rounded the first mark in the lead. On the second lap, Howarth once again found a lovely shift and breeze to pull himself up to fifth at the second windward mark, and then had a storming run to get himself up to third by the leeward mark. Wade, meanwhile, was finding a ladder of his own to be elusive. At the finish it was Hall who took the winner's gun, the Willcocks twins second and Howarth third and with it the meeting.

A big thank you to DWSC and especially the race officer and his race team for setting some excellent courses in some testing conditions and providing a terrific weekend's racing.

A further thank you goes to Gul and P&B for generously donating some excellent prizes.

Overall Results: