#fireball – Today's (Day 2) participants in the Fireball Pre-Worlds being hosted by the Royal Varuna Yacht Club in Pattaya, Thailand had a glorious day on the water with sunshine and 10 knots of breeze writes Cormac Bradley.
The tide made life challenging but kept the racing tight through the fleet. Today the left hand side paid from the start of both races. The vastly experienced Heather McFarlane and Chris Payne led the fleet around the first weather mark of the day followed closely by Nathan Batchelor and Sam Pascoe who had the bunch behind them.
On the second lap, Christian Birrell and Sam Brearey moved through to second place but then had to go backwards through the fleet as a second pumping infringement was recorded by the on-the-water jury. They did recover to third, just ahead of Ben Schulz and Doug Sheppard. The Swiss combination of Christina Haerdi-Landerer and Cedric Landerer closed out the top five. In the second race, over-standing the first weather mark was the subtle tactic but this time the combination of Batchelor & Pascoe took the fleet round the mark, followed by McFarlane and Payne. Ben Schulz will have been frustrated at having to give both of them room at the mark to round third. Birrell & Brearey moved into third by going high around the top mark and another change at the gybe mark saw Tom Gordon and Jack Fletcher (AUS 15071) take fourth place.
Birrell and Brearey ducked out early and headed for shore, leaving Batchelor and Pascoe to have a comfortable win, followed home by McFarlane & Payne, Gordon and Fletcher, Schulz and Sheppard with the Canadians Jospe and Egli closing out the top five.
2014 Fireball Pre-Worlds:RVYC, Pattaya, Thailand. R1 R2 R3 R4 Pts.
1 Heather McFarlane & Chris Payne AUS 15048 2 1 1 2 6.0
2 Ben Schulz & Doug Sheppard AUS 15061 6 3 4 4 17.0
3 Veronica and Ben Falat GBR 15092 4 2 11 6 23.0
4 Nathan Batchelor & Sam Pascoe GBR 15087 1 dns 2 1 26.0
5 Joe Jospe & Tom Egli CAN 15024 10 5 8 5 28.0
