Firefly open meeting at West Kirby Sailing Club
by Torrin Blazeby 9 Feb 12:14 GMT
8 February 2020
Saturday saw the Firefly 2020 calendar kick off in style with the West Kirby Open. The decision to move the Open from July to February and to make club boats available was rewarded with a much bigger turnout than the last two years, including students from three universities.
18 boats were met with near perfect conditions on Saturday morning. With the format of ten short fleet races and a small box course this made for some fantastically close racing across the fleet.
The first race saw a very close and exciting battle at the front of the fleet between Torrin Blazeby and Ella Marston from West Kirby SC and Chris and Liz Kameen from Imperial Poona. This battle continued for the next three races, seeing both boats take race wins in some very tight racing.
Lancaster University's Roscoe Martin and Ellie Ben sailed a brilliant series and took the win in the final race, as well as being one of the only boats to stay upright when Storm Ciara finally did hit, which made for some great spectating!
Unfortunately no more sailing happened after lunch due to the wind, however five races had been completed, allowing for one discard. Torrin and Ella took first, Chris and Liz in second and Roscoe and Elllie finished third.
All the competitors would like to thank the superb organisation of West Kirby Sailing Club for yet another great day's racing, and look forward to the next Firefly event in the calendar!