Fireball World Championships at at Portoroz, Slovenia - Overall
by Jakica Jesih 20 Sep 2013 10:13 PDT
13-20 September 2013
No racing today, Tom Gillard and Simon Potts are the 2013 Fireball World Champions
A lot could still change, but nothing actually changed on this last day of 2013 Fireball World Championship. The wind conditions didn't look too promising in the morning and start was postponed until early afternoon, when the sea breeze was expected.
It was around noon when AP went down and fleet was called on to the water, although the wind didn't properly settle. Shifty conditions forced the sailors to wait a while before the first start, but the pre-start procedure was cancelled after three minutes.
The racing course was then moved in search for some better conditions, but 40 degrees difference in the wind direction between the start line and the upwind mark was obviously much too much.
Finally, after more than two hours of waiting, the conditions were regular again and the starting procedure was on, but cancelled with the AP up just 30 seconds before the start of race nine due to another major wind shift and a huge drop of wind to less than 5 knots.
It was 20 minutes before 3pm, after which no warning signal could be given on this last day of racing. The next minutes of waiting didn't offer any prospects of a fair start of the last race, and the race officer sent the fleet back. Yesterday's results are now the official final results of this Worlds.
Big congratulations go to the new world champions Tom Gillard and Simon Potts (25 points), vice-champions Christian Birrell and Sam Brearey (27 points) and 2013 European champions Matt Burge and Richard Wagstaff, who finished third with 34 points. The best Slovenian crew are Marko Kocjančič and Aljaž Jadek on 24th.
Quotes:
Tom Gillard and Simon Potts: "We're just relieved after today. We didn't have any sailing, although we'd like to. Big thanks to the P&B and everyone else. It's been a long series, we're certain the whole fleet would appreciate the last two races, there're a lot of boats behind us that would be fighting for third, fourth, fifth and sixth, so to get another sailing would've been good. It's a shame that the breeze filled in just when he cancelled the race, so – thank you Tonko!
Christian Birrell and Sam Brearey: "The event was very good and very well managed, the whole Slovenian team did a really great job of it. It's a shame we couldn't race today, maybe the race officer should have held on for another 15 minutes, because we came in in a great breeze, which is a shame not to race in. We're disappointed not to have the chance to fight out in the last race of the championship, but haven't we done a bad job earlier on in the week, we wouldn't have to. The event has been great, it's a great place to sail, everyone has been very friendly, very welcoming to us all, all British team had a great time."
Matt Burge and Richard Wagstaff: "We'd prefer to have won, obviously, but we're happy with third, we're on the podium. Especially with the last week result – a first and a third, we have a podium for both of them. Overall we're happy. There's always a lot of "what ifs" and quite a lot of races where we gave away a lot of positions, but I think that's probably the same for every boat, because the conditions were hard. Of course we're pleased, it could be an awful lot worse."
Results on www.gosailing.si and facebook.