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Spotted at the New Year
January 4, 2011
We spent a great week in Baltimore, County Cork, leading up to the New Year. We took time to visit Leo to see how his Sile a Do is getting along. Leo is working on the boat in Hegarty’s Boat Yard on the River Ilen at Oldcourt, halfway between Skib and Baltimore. At the entrance to the yard I spotted a familiar transom shape:
It’s a Fireball!
Distinctive shape, plywood, for about five seconds I thought: “Sure, I can fix this up, an auld woody, a nice project for the Spring.” Then common sense took hold.
Hull Number 518 makes it really old. At some stage in the early to mid Seventies it was somebody’s pride and joy.
A check at Fireball International shows the design was launched by Peter Milne in 1962 and the first World Championships was held at Hayling Island, UK in 1966 and won by Bob Fisher (yes, the acclaimed yachting journalist) and Peter Beale with hull number 1599. Therefore, 518 was built well before that year.
Current new boat numbers are somewhere around 15200.
Here was the square in Baltimore on New Year’s Eve at the turn of the year>
Topics: Miscellany, Sailing | Comments Off on Spotted at the New Year
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