Sam and Benjamin's 2 Big weekends in a Ovington Fire Fly
Published 10:34pm on 18 Mar 2025
With the 505 still in the container coming home from AUS I needed a boat to sail for the Ovington inlands. Jono Pank very kindly offered the new Ovington class demo Fire Fly. I have to admit it is not my normal style / speed of boat. That said though I jumped at the chance and dived head first in
We had done some work with Jono boat late last year so I knew 1/2 of what I needed to change on the brand new class boat. I had sorted a few of them before the first sail in Portland harbour. We were dog slow and low upwind in 20knots. Downwind we bore away onto a run for the first time and wobbled all over the place. I am used to boats that plane and get more stable. A Fire Fly is definitely not one of them. It got stuck in the troff of the waves and was very wobbly. Benjamin my 8 year old son and crew was not impressed. Thankfully I told him we were sailing inland for the next 3 times.
Day 2 at Sutton Bingham sailing club. I had sorted a few more jobs on the boat. We had 3 great races against Jono and another Fire Fly. We were slowly getting closer to Jono as the day went on. It was a handicap event and it took quite some getting used to being the slowest boat of the start line. Benjamin and me really enjoyed sailing the Fire Fly around a small shifty lake. Easy to tack and gybe on shifts. Plus pointing high up wind and running straight down the runs made it perfect.
Now onto the Ovington inland's. I had finished the job list on the boat which included shaping the leading and trailing edge of the centre board and moving it to the front of the case. Plus adding jib ratchets which also changed the sheeting angle. These changes and a few others transformed the boat. I have fed these changes to the Ovington factory and hopefully they will come as standard soon on a race Fire Fly. It will be great for the class if you buy a new boat and it be on the pace out the box.
Race one started and I was happy with a 6 place at the top mark. I had a new experience on the top reach when we surfed of someone stern wake and shot through to leeward of them. I have never managed this with a spinnaker boat. Admittedly we only weigh 110kg so were quick all weekend of the wind. By the end of the race a few people had spun out down the run and we were up to 4th.
As the day went on we got properly to grips with the boat and race course and scored a 2,1,2. As you can imagine Benjamin was very excited to have won a race. The racing was very tight and any wrong shift up wind got heavily punished. Down wind was a great game of let the kicker of as much as possible and put the centre board in the box. As you can imagine this was very fast until the mast hits the water as a few of our competitors found. The entertaining part of this was getting Benjamin not to react to the first little wobble as the next one would be twice as big.
We both enjoyed the first day and went ashore as over night leader to warm up from a very cold day. Grafham living up to its name as the coldest place on earth
Sunday of Ovington inland's was the same cold direction with a little less wind. During race 5 we had a great battle with Jono until we both let Nigel Wakefield through. It's always fun when you cover second place and third sails round you both. We had an interesting run where Jono went one side and us the other. Nigel went down the middle. Our side won more than luck than judgement. The windward mark was so close to the shore you had no idea what puffs and shifts were coming to your side of the run when you picked it.
Race 6 Benjamin became a proper Fire Fly crew when you dropped the jib pole over board during a gybe. Que floods of tears from him. Thankfully we went back after the race and found the jib pole.
Race 7 and we were on a roll. We won the committee boat and layed the windward mark in one. So of we rolled for a 3 straight win of the day.
A big thanks to Jono Pank for all his help with working out how to make a Ovington Fire Fly into a rocket ship. I can throughly recommend borrowing the class boat for an event. The class a very friendly and welcoming. There was a complete mix of boats there this weekend. Ours and Jono new Ovington's, a few Rondar, some beautiful wooden boats and 6 boats from Cambridge University.
Photography Paul Sanwell
