Gul Fireball World Championships at Plas Heli - The great selsig debate!
by Dougal Henshall 27 Aug 2015 12:42 BST
17-28 August 2015
The debate taxing the minds of both competitors and Peter Saxton's Race Team is the great selsig debate. For those unaccustomed to the more arcane words of the welsh language, selsig can be translated into the 'Yes Minister' lingo of an Emulsified high fat offal tube or to the rest of us as a sausage.
Real time reports on both the wind and wave expected out in Tremadog Bay are telling of winds already in the high teens, gusts into the twenties and seas already building towards the 2m mark. This then fuels the selsig debate. Is it better to run a sausage, triangle, sausage course or the alternative triangle, sausage, triangle? Certainly, as the wind is expected to freshen further during the day, it will make for testing sailing, with the sea state probably more of an issue than the wind strength. Everyone has their own viewpoint; for the South African Teams it is not the size of the waves but their steepness. Meanwhile, for the Czech sailors, the mere presence of the waves is an issue, for with their home sailing all being inland, they only get to practice in conditions such as this when away at Championships.
With the wind direction currently steady at 230 degrees, the set of the waves should be fairly close to the prevailing wind, but if Tuesday is anything to go by, a confused chop coming up from the South can result in some quite unpleasant 'peaks' of water. This makes going to windward interesting, as on starboard tack the boats tend to sail lower, to keep them going through the wave pattern, on port tack the waves have been tending to knock the snout like bows of the Fireballs up to weather.
But it is the offwind legs that are going to determine this event and ultimately, that decision on the course layout. Tom Gillard spoke for most when he described the two sail reaches as 'brutal'. Speed Sails Jonny McGovan would not disagree with that for it was on the top 2 sail reach Tuesday afternoon that his fixed rudder decided that enough was enough. The pair are now sporting a small Bloodaxe foil that they hope will keep them on track.
The official view of the more detailed forecast for today could be reduced down to the simple phrase 'bright and breezy'. Given the sea state and the wind forecast, this will not be a day for half measures. Given the way the top boats have been sailed (rather than just relying on results to date) one would have to be banking on a top of the fleet shoot-out between the North/Allen pairing of Gillard and Anderton and the Hyde/Watermark boat with Peters and Sterritt, though Birrell and Brearey could just come between these two...
A selsig sandwich maybe!
www.fireballworlds2015.com