Burton Sailing Club FF Open 11th and 12th June 2022

The high winds and desire for the trophy, saw just the quickest of the quick take to the water here at Burton. The select band of local sailors and visitors were neck and neck throughout all of the five races. With only one discard to be had it went right to the wire, and the last leg of the last race was the decider as to who would take the trophy home.

The weather was warm and sunny, with a force 3 with gusts to 30 knots on the Saturday,  testing all of the sailors and causing one retirement.   Sunday was much calmer with sufficient wind speed to sail well and just get the boat on the cusp of a plane.  The beat was square so as the boats tacked away you could never be sure who would come out on top and as the race courses used the whole of the water  there were some really long kite legs to settle down into and enjoy. 

In every race a different boat would reach the windward mark first, the places only opened out gradually so there was close racing throughout, any mistake costing dearly and a couple of close calls were to be seen where two boats wanted to be on the same piece of water. 

I said it was the best of the best and consequently the sailing throughout the fleet was hotly fought, Pete Needham and David Bentley/Tim Wilkins FF2660, giving a very good account of themselves against FF3977  Grant pollard and Jessica Leek.

FF3563 from Blithfield with Martin Smith and Karen Beston were constantly in a tussle with FF3483 Adam Kenny and Ian Merrifield, swapping positions and finishes during and at the end of each race. 

FF3519 Tim Bird and Chris Swallow lead the first race from beginning to end, they just couldn’t be touched getting a handsome first win for Burton. FF4091 Notts County, Jeremy Arnold and John Allen were on a fast pace getting some good leads, with FF3768 Malcolm Hall and Martin Nelson also in contention. These three boats all sailed to their best, being variously hot on their heels. being chased by, then hot on their heels again, you could not keep count of the times the positions changed at the front.  ​

The ending was a happy one for BSC, 40 years after the inaugural award of the trophy by Paul and Sue Amos,  and 11 years since it last came ‘home’ the trophy was lifted by a Burton boat, FF3768 ‘Kitty Woo’ crewed by Malcolm Hall and Martin Nelson and very much to the delight of their sponsors www.dbd-lean.com

Thank you to our ‘visitors’ for travelling and the whole army of BSC people who got the event up and running, special mention to our hosts ‘The house committee’  Sarah, Andy, Mari and Viki for a well organised admin and feeding routine. Also our race crew, Bill, Craig and Angie on the committee boat and Steve, Donald, Alex, Isobel, Will on the safety boats.  PS, also thanks to Phoebe and Amelia for inputting the results in sailwave, no one wanted that job!

Full results see link: https://burtonsailingclub.co.uk/documents/results/open_meetings/2022/FF/Flying%20Fifteen%202022.htm

Report by Malcolm Hall,  BSC Fleet Captain
Photos credited to Alex Hall