This weekend, Sutton Dinghy Club welcomes the Fireball fleet to Sutton Creek for the first time in quite a while. Strangley enough we will be hosting Class Ulster Championships. With the Fireball Worlds in Ireland this year, the Class were very keen to ensure all their events got sailed. We were delighted to help out.It may come as a surprise to many but Sutton is where the Irish Fireball Fleet started 60 years ago. In Sep 1962, our former Commodore Roy Dickson, sailed the first Fireball in Ireland, #38 across Dublin Bay to Dun Laoghaire. By 1963 Roy had helped build a formidable fleet of Fireballs with the likes of Bunny Conn, Ian Baird, David Lovegrove, Hugh Morton, Ronan Henry and Brian Galton all involved. In 1963 the first Fireball Nationals were sailed from Broadmeadows znd was won by Suttons Bunny Conn and Ronan Henry, brother of recent Commodore Aidan Henry. Check out the website link below to see the extent of Fireball honors won back in the Class heyday.
The fleet remained strong through to mid 70’s but started to disappear from Sutton in the early 80’s. The most recent sighting of a Fireball in Sutton was multiple IDRA14 Champions Alan Henry and Simon Revill attending a nuber of events 2015-2017. Simon in fact won the Fireball Nationals in 2017 as crew with Noel Butler.
This weekends we will again see a Sutton crew on the start line with GP14 pair Cknor Twohig & Matthew Cotter availing of the Fireball Associations boat.
Good luck to Conor Twohig and Matthew Cotter over the weekend. It will be a small fleet but it is brilliant to see the Fireballs back ‘Home’ in Sutton Creek and look forward to a great weekend.
