Sailing Magazine
by Richard Crockett
Immediately after the Fireball Worlds finished off Durban in 1994, the 505 Worlds commenced with a star-studded fleet.
There were some concerns expressed in the build-up to the event about the size of the fleet, but with five world champions including Ian Barker and Chris Nicholson, the world champions of the previous two years, it was a star studded fleet. Some competitors even went as far as to say that it was the “hottest” fleet to contest a worlds for some years.
An interesting thing the 505 fleet always does is the gate start. Why more classes do not use it I don’t know. It works, it’s fair, and it generally gets the fleet off cleanly with the first start. If it was prejudicial to competitors, I am sure the 505 fleet would have stopped using it years ago.
One international judge said that the only thing wrong with the gate start is that “it’s so bloody fair”. I think that this comment just sums up the gate start perfectly.
The internationals appeared to love the Durban conditions, and everything about sailing off Durban, and said so in many of the mini interviews I conducted, and which are part of the report today.
Sadly there were no South Africans in the top 10, with our best position being 16th overall by the pairing of Rob Hancock and Alan Franklin.
THERE’S LOTS TO READ HERE: Pages from 1994 05 – SAILING Magazine – OCR
