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The Fireball is a British
The Fireball was granted International Yacht Racing Union international status in 1970.
The design is supported by a class club, the ''International Fireball Class''.
The Fireball is raced worldwide, with the largest fleets in Australia, Canada, France, South Africa, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States.
A review in ''Yachts and Yachting'' magazine in March 1962 concluded, "she is good for inland water or the sea. Her performance has proved intriguing for expert helmsmen, yet she is stable enough to be kind to the clumsy novice."
In a 1994 review Richard Sherwood wrote, the "Fireball is a high-performance dinghy, not as fast as an International 505 or Flying Dutchman, but allowing a great deal of latitude in the positioning and adoption of all gear except sails and hull ... The (usually) high-cut jibs and the small spinnaker require less strength to control, so that many successful racing crews have had women members."
In a 2012 review in ''Yachts and Yachting'' magazine, Toby Heppell wrote, "The Fireball might look sticky in light winds, but can skate along quite nicely if the water is flat – predictably, that uncompromising bow will not cope so well with insufficient wind and chop. Best of all, Fireballs love to plane which is the root reason why many people love to sail dinghies. On a smooth surface you should get lift-off from around Force 3 on both downwind and upwind legs. Further up the wind scale, Fireball sailors reckon they are still racing when everyone else has gone home ... That’s what sailing a Fireball is about. A boat for everyday sailors that can provide enjoyable racing from about age 16 to 60 plus. Forty years on our verdict is that the Fireball is still a load of fun to sail."
Writer Paula Irish included the design as one of her 2018 list of "25 Best Beginner Sailing Dinghies". She wrote, "if you want the added excitement of a trapeze boat, with an acceptance that you may find it trickier, the Fireball is a good option with entry-level boats from just a few hundred pounds and flexibility to fit the boat out to suit you, making it good for smaller helms or crews. The class association describes the Fireball as "probably the highest performance dinghy that just about anyone can sail in almost any wind strength.""
sailing dinghy
Dinghy sailing is the activity of sailing small boats by using five essential controls:
* the sails
* the foils (i.e. the daggerboard or centreboard and rudder and sometimes lifting foils as found on the Moth)
* the trim (forward/rear angle o ...
that was designed by Peter Milne as a one-design racer and first built in 1962.Sherwood, Richard M.: ''A Field Guide to Sailboats of North America, Second Edition'', pages 74-75. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1994.
Production
In the past the design has been built by Rondar Raceboats of the United Kingdom, Nautivela of Italy, Chippendale Boats in the UK and Duvoisin Nautique in France. Today it is built by Weathermark Sailboats and also by Winder Boats, both in the UK. Over 125,000 boats have been completed.Design
The Fireball is a recreational racingsailboat
A sailboat or sailing boat is a boat propelled partly or entirely by sails and is smaller than a sailing ship. Distinctions in what constitutes a sailing boat and ship vary by region and maritime culture.
Types
Although sailboat terminolo ...
, originally designed to be built of wood for the amateur builder. Today most new Fireballs are made predominantly of fibreglass
Fiberglass (American English) or fibreglass (Commonwealth English) is a common type of fiber-reinforced plastic using glass fiber. The fibers may be randomly arranged, flattened into a sheet called a chopped strand mat, or woven into glass clo ...
.
It has a fractional sloop rig with aluminum
Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. It ha ...
spars. The hull is a single hard chine scow
A scow is a smaller type of barge. Some scows are rigged as sailing scows. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, scows carried cargo in coastal waters and inland waterways, having an advantage for navigating shallow water or small harbours. S ...
design, with a retractable centreboard
A centreboard or centerboard (US) is a retractable hull appendage which pivots out of a slot in the hull of a sailboat, known as a ''centreboard trunk'' (UK) or ''centerboard case'' (US). The retractability allows the centreboard to be raised t ...
, a vertical transom, a transom-hung, kick-up rudder
A rudder is a primary control surface used to steer a ship, boat, submarine, hovercraft, aircraft, or other vehicle that moves through a fluid medium (generally air or water). On an aircraft the rudder is used primarily to counter adve ...
controlled by a tiller
A tiller or till is a lever used to steer a vehicle. The mechanism is primarily used in watercraft, where it is attached to an outboard motor, rudder post or stock to provide leverage in the form of torque for the helmsman to turn the rudder. ...
, with a tiller extension for hiking out. The boat displaces and can be equipped with a spinnaker and trapeze
A trapeze is a short horizontal bar hung by ropes or metal straps from a ceiling support. It is an aerial apparatus commonly found in circus performances. Trapeze acts may be static, spinning (rigged from a single point), swinging or flying, an ...
.
The boat has a draft
Draft, The Draft, or Draught may refer to:
Watercraft dimensions
* Draft (hull), the distance from waterline to keel of a vessel
* Draft (sail), degree of curvature in a sail
* Air draft, distance from waterline to the highest point on a vesse ...
of with the centreboard extended. With it retracted the boat can be beached or transported on a trailer or car roof rack.
The design has adopted changes over time. In 1966 construction of fibreglass was permitted. The use of a single crew trapeze was added in 1965. The sails and hull are controlled, but changes to the rigging are permitted and mast chocks and struts have been used in the past.
The design has a North American Portsmouth Yardstick
The Portsmouth Yardstick (PY) or Portsmouth handicap scheme is a term used for a number of related systems of empirical handicapping used primarily in small sailboat racing.
The handicap is applied to the time taken to sail any course, and the han ...
racing average handicap of 85.6, with an RYA Portsmouth of 956. It is normally raced with a crew of two sailor
A sailor, seaman, mariner, or seafarer is a person who works aboard a watercraft as part of its crew, and may work in any one of a number of different fields that are related to the operation and maintenance of a ship.
The profession of the s ...
s.
Operational history
The Fireball was granted International Yacht Racing Union international status in 1970.
The design is supported by a class club, the ''International Fireball Class''.
The Fireball is raced worldwide, with the largest fleets in Australia, Canada, France, South Africa, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States.
A review in ''Yachts and Yachting'' magazine in March 1962 concluded, "she is good for inland water or the sea. Her performance has proved intriguing for expert helmsmen, yet she is stable enough to be kind to the clumsy novice."
In a 1994 review Richard Sherwood wrote, the "Fireball is a high-performance dinghy, not as fast as an International 505 or Flying Dutchman, but allowing a great deal of latitude in the positioning and adoption of all gear except sails and hull ... The (usually) high-cut jibs and the small spinnaker require less strength to control, so that many successful racing crews have had women members."
In a 2012 review in ''Yachts and Yachting'' magazine, Toby Heppell wrote, "The Fireball might look sticky in light winds, but can skate along quite nicely if the water is flat – predictably, that uncompromising bow will not cope so well with insufficient wind and chop. Best of all, Fireballs love to plane which is the root reason why many people love to sail dinghies. On a smooth surface you should get lift-off from around Force 3 on both downwind and upwind legs. Further up the wind scale, Fireball sailors reckon they are still racing when everyone else has gone home ... That’s what sailing a Fireball is about. A boat for everyday sailors that can provide enjoyable racing from about age 16 to 60 plus. Forty years on our verdict is that the Fireball is still a load of fun to sail."
Writer Paula Irish included the design as one of her 2018 list of "25 Best Beginner Sailing Dinghies". She wrote, "if you want the added excitement of a trapeze boat, with an acceptance that you may find it trickier, the Fireball is a good option with entry-level boats from just a few hundred pounds and flexibility to fit the boat out to suit you, making it good for smaller helms or crews. The class association describes the Fireball as "probably the highest performance dinghy that just about anyone can sail in almost any wind strength.""
Events
See also
* List of sailing boat typesReferences
External links
* for Weathermark Boats * for Winder Boats {{Sailing dinghies and skiffs