“Talking Sailing” From My Archives.1994 Fireball Worlds – Durban

by Richard Crockett

On coming across this feature memories flooded back as this was a remarkable event in so many different ways. Ian Pinnel and his crew Daniel Cripps (uk) won with a day to spare and were the only team to have single figures in every race.

More importantly there were a lot of women competing, and not just as crew, but helming too. Their husbands or sailing partners were exceptionally complementary about them, with Mark Rushall who sailed with his wife Liz said this when asked about sailing with his wife: “Its good. I used to helm the Fireball when I was a lot smaller, but the Fireball is actually a fantastic boat to sail with a girl helm because you really want somebody as light as possible at the back of the boat. As soon as we switched we knew we were fast, and all we had to do was learn how to sail. It’s good and it’s fun and we do swop positions. We spend so much time sailing that if we were doing it apart we would hardly see each other.”

That’s not all as this feature is crammed full of interesting words, pics and more.

READ IT HERE:  Pages from 1994 04 – SAILING Magazine – OCR