Spinnaker Sailing Club Firefly Weekend 2024

Spinnaker Sailing Club Firefly Weekend 2024 © James Oborne

The weekend of 2nd & 3rd November saw Spinnaker Sailing Club holding their annual Firefly Weekend, two days of action packed racing. The Saturday is the "Twisted Tube" a random pairs, bring your own boat team racing event, whilst on the Sunday it is the Spinnaker Firefly Open, the final event of the Vines Series each year!

Sixteen helms and crews arrived on the Saturday morning for the Twisted Tube, only to be met with a becalmed lake! With both the week leading up to the weekend and the week after being dominated by high pressure there had been lots of whispering about whether there would be enough wind to race! As competitors rigged the wind started to slowly fill in from the East, giving a chance for final boat fettling (and for those who had hired on of the 12 club Fireflys to get to know their boat). After a short postponement to allow the wind to stabilise - or at least appear and not go away - racing got under way.

The team of umpires and committee boat crews ran an impressive 52 races across the day, with teams changing after every race leading to lots of exciting moments, and confused faces as sailors tried to remember which race they were in next, and which colour bib they needed! After all boats had sailed in 13 races the sailors came ashore and the race team started trying to break the 4-way tie for 3rd place! After lots of head scratching and a little bit of maths the results were announced. Spinnaker Sailing Club locals Keith & Jas Mcquillin claimed 3rd, Jono Pank and Freya Phillips 2nd, whilst Dom & Sophia Johnson took overall victory with an impressive 12 wins in 13 races!

Some of the highlights of the Saturday included Chris Guy's proud boast of being the reason Dom didn't manage a clean sweep of 13 race wins - before admitting he had been Dom's team mate for that particular occasion, Dom's constant coaching of other competitors to help them make the best of the racing, and Thomas Davey swooping into 4th Overall and 1st Under-18 Helm with mum Rosie crewing.

Six boats returned for a second day of racing on the Sunday, and were joined by another eight boats. Seven races were scheduled for the day, with a target time of 20 minutes per race, meaning lots of pressure on the starts. Extra jeopardy was added as a second discard would become available if all seven races were sailed, meaning lots of opportunities for upsets and surprises. The wind trickled in and allowed racing to start on time, with 4 quick fire races completed before lunch. With lots of tricky wind shadows and bends the race team had a challenge to lay a fair course, and with a slight starboard bias on the start line there were some interesting starts (and several recalls).

Whilst competitors had lunch ashore the race team tweaked the course to try and make the best of the fickle conditions. With a now port biased line lot's of boats were caught out as their morning strategies didn't pay off (race 6 of the day saw Barney showing us all how not to do a port flyer)! By 3pm all 7 races were complete and everyone headed ashore for tea and cake, before a final prize-giving. On the Sunday Jono & Freya took 1st overall, closely followed by Ben Nicoll & Charlie Cooper in 2nd with Nigel Wakefield and Emily Saunderson completing the podium in 3rd.

Spinnaker Sailing Club Firefly Weekend 2024 - photo © James Oborne

Spinnaker Sailing Club Firefly Weekend 2024 - photo © James Oborne

The results from both days were combined so that Jono & Freya claimed the overall weekend prize (second year running for Jono), Ben & Charlie took 2nd, whilst Spinnaker locals Neil Marshall and Emma Barker took 3rd.

A huge thank you to the afloat team who made the weekend happen including the last minute race officer for both days Abi, Sam, Phil, Tom, David, Mark, Robert, Russ and Max.

Spinnaker Sailing Club look forward to welcoming everyone back for next year's event on 1st/2nd November!

Overall Results:

Twisted Tube and Vines Series Combined Results: