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Since the last instalment, it's all been a bit rubbish. Cold winter, cold spring, volcanic ash, financial meltdown and elections. So clearly now is
the time to put all that nonsense behind you and get out in the Fireball, where anything can happen and most of it is good.
Back in March we had our fleet AGM, when Helen stood down as Fleet Captain and Richard was duly elected by virtue of being the only person daft enough heroic enough to stand. Helen has done a fantastic job over the past four years, and I know we'd all like to thank her for all the hard work she has put in. New FC Richard doesn't actually have a whole Fireball of his own, just some pieces, but gets a lot of enjoyment from swimming around other people's. Book him up to crew for you now and then refrain from shouting too loudly at him - by way of a thank-you.
April/May we had the Firebowl personal handicap thing. There was one race on the first day before the wind disappeared, and three pretty great races
on day two. The handicaps are never perfect, but we saw some very close racing in all four races and a bit of controversy too; the latter thoughtfully provided by the two lead boats in race 2 who got the
course wrong and were duly lobbed, but not before one of them managed to persuade Dangerous Dave to come back from the correct mark in order to round the incorrect one. Lesson number one guys, write the
course down properly and stick to it. Race 3 was pretty close too, with nearly everyone converging on 'S' at the same time. And we all got the finish wrong in race 4, but it didn't seem to matter too
much so we pretended we hadn't. Anyhoo, when the dust had settled the top 5 boats were separated by only one point and we had to use the fancy tiebreak rules to get the following results:
1st 10 pts Mike Shreeve and Adam Race 2nd 10 pts Gordon Stokes and Richard Botting 3rd 11 pts Dave Bevan and Mark Homer
4th 11 pts Martyn Lewis and Richard Byne 5th 11 pts Bob Morris and Paul Butler
Next up is the Inter-Fleet Championships on June 20th. We won this event last year which was pretty unlike us, particularly as some of our
best sailors were in other (less successful) teams. As we are all good sports and know that taking part is more important than winning, our team motto this year will be 'Rah rah rah we don't care!", and
we will aim to put our fattest sailors into the smallest boats and generally enjoy ourselves. I hope you'll attend, as it's always a great event even if you're not sailing.
And then there's just the rest of the summer to look forward to, with the ongoing races series for the Hancock trophy, Winship trophy, Summer 72
trophy, Sunset trophy, plus the Marriot Bucket event, Fleet Champs, the Open Meeting and a few social events to boot. If you can't find something to interest you in that little lot, there's clearly
something wrong with you.
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