Gill Flying Fifteen Southern Travellers Series at Grafham Water Sailing Club

Gill Flying Fifteen Southern Travellers Series at Grafham Water © Paul Sanwell / OPP

This year's Gill Flying Fifteen Open meeting at Grafham Water SC also served as event two of the 2023 Southern Travellers Series. It was planned as a two-day event, 13-14th May. In the end the weather gods gave us a great day's racing on the Saturday and a flat calm on the Sunday.

Fifteen Fifteens entered, with some sailors having only just returned for the World Championships in Freemantle - good effort Ian Cadwallader, Bill Chard and Josh Preater!

PRO Peter Curtis ran an extra (4th) race on the Saturday which turned out to be an excellent decision. All four races were windward-leeward courses, which made for close, tactical racing in the average 8-10 knots NNE that we got for the day.

Race 1 was taken in fine style by the team from Aldeburgh, Duncan Matthew & John Chalker, with John Hanson & Alistair Stevenson in second and local boys Simon Kneller & Ashley Painter slotting into third spot.

However, results-wise things were about to rapidly change as Flying 15 Johnny-come-lately new boys Ben Cooper & Richard Bundock suddenly got the hang of sailing a Flying 15 and posted three wins in a row. Now, we know Ben and Richard are very experienced sailors, but even so, this was a really impressive performance from sailors unfamiliar with a Flying 15, securing them the win overall.

The Aldeburgh team picked up two 2nd places after their win, to secure 2nd overall. That left the rest of the fleet squabbling for 3rd, 4th and 5th.

Gill Flying Fifteen Southern Travellers Series at Grafham Water - photo © Paul Sanwell / OPP

Grafham regulars Geoff Floyd & Colin Gilbert had a sensational first beat in races 3 and 4, leading round the top mark in both... so far ahead of us I'm not sure which way they took down the run, but anyway they took a great 2nd place in R4. This just showed that all the boats on the water had the pace to do well on the day, but it was critical to get the shifts right on the all-important first beat.

In the end it was as tight as it could be for the 3rd spot with John Hanson & Alistair Stevenson, Ian Cadwallader & Simon Forbes, and Simon Kneller & Ashley Painter all tied on 10 points.

After some mathematical tie breaking, it was John & Alistair in a well-deserved 3rd place overall.

So, well done to Ben & Richard winning the event and taking home the Grafham trophy for the Flying 15 Open - a lovely half hull model of a Flying 15 - don't forget to bring it back next year guys!

After Round 2 of the Southern Travellers, Jeremy Valentine & Andrew Telford from Datchet Water Sailing are leading the series overall.

Huge thanks to the PRO Peter Curtis and the whole team at Grafham who made this such a successful and enjoyable event, with a special mention for Coxswain Andy Taylor for getting all the Fifteens launched and recovered so efficiently - we do hope to welcome even more 15ers back to Grafham next year.

The event was sponsored by Gill who supplied some excellent prizes.

Finally, I must add a note of personal thanks to Tim O'Brien for letting us use his FF4084 for the event.

More photographs of the event can be viewed at the Grafham Water SC Photo Gallery.

Richard Bundock and Ben Cooper (centre) win the Gill Flying Fifteen Southern Travellers Series event at Grafham Water - photo © Paul Sanwell / OPP

Overall Results:

Grafham Water SC is based in Cambridgeshire and offers some of the best inland sailing in the country. The club is open to all classes of boat with strong fleets of Dart 15s, A-class catamarans, Lasers/ILCAs, Solos, D-Zeros, RSs and Flying Fifteens. For more information about the club please visit the website at www.grafham.org or call the club on 01480 810478. Follow the club on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/pg/grafhamwatersc