Firefly Open at Hamble River Sailing Club

Published 14:52 on 24 Jul 2012

The 2012 Hamble River SC Firefly Open Meeting was held on Sunday 22 July. Unusually for this long standing event a one day, three race format was used this year, to allow the one-off River Hamble Games to take place on the Saturday. The Open meeting was one of the final sea opens before this year’s Firefly National Championship which takes place at Pwllheli in the last week of August.

The meeting attracted nineteen entries comprising seven local boats and twelve visitors from as far afield as Exeter, Felixstowe and the Welsh borders. Weather-wise the day provided fantastic conditions – at least for Summer 2012 – with bright sunshine and ten knots of breeze for almost the entire day. The fleet was also ‘visited’ by the returning Clipper round the world fleet just prior to race one. Some excellent photo opportunities were created as the Firefly sailors weaved through the large spectator fleet!

With spring tides in force Principal Race Officer Dermod O’Malley and his team pushed through the three race schedule in an efficient and timely manner. This included the use of an improvised black flag (or Race Officers’s gillet!) to keep the fleet in order and allow a prompt return to the river for tea and cake at 4pm.

Winners of the event were Stuart and Jane Hudson from Keyhaven who crossed the line first in races one and three. Nigel Wakefield and Sophia Hulbert from Gosport Model Boat Club were unlucky to lose out as the wind died halfway through race three, denying them overall victory and eventually dropping them to third place overall behind Angus Cook (visiting from Devon) and local sailor Ann Wilkinson.

A number of youngsters competed in their first ‘open’ event including eight year old Cameron Yates (sailing with Dad Mike) and Megan Hance (aged ten) sailing with Barney Smith. Megan was rather disappointed to learn of her boats black flag disqualification (entirely the helms fault!) in race three after she’d crossed the line in second place. Top under 21 helm was Alex Francis sailing with Callum Weston.

At the prizegiving the overall winners paid tribute to the large number of volunteers from Hamble River SC who made the event a success, including race officer and HRSC Commodore Dermod and his team, and Rear Commodore House Susie Yates for on-shore organisation and keeping helpers and competitors fed and watered.

The next event in the Firefly class calendar is the Royal Lymington open on July 28/29. The 66th Firefly National Championships takes place at Pwllheli in North Wales from the 25 to 31 August. Discounted entries can be made before the 11 August.

Three photos taken by Bertrand Malas accompany this report:

4853 – Overall winners – Stuart Hudson and Jane Hudson lead the fleet in race one

4795 – Barney Smith and Megan Hance

5206 – Downwind action

Photos were also taken by Eddie Mays

Results can be found by clicking here

Last updated 13:17 on 16 April 2024