The earliest video footage of Flying Fifteen keelboat racing
by Magnus Smith 8 Dec 12:00 GMT
Flying Fifteen sailing at Kircubbin Sailing Club in 1955 © UKFFA
When searching for the oldest footage of the Flying Fifteen racing keelboat class, we encounter a challenge: British newsreels from the 50s and 60s were primarily focused on royalty, and if the monarch’s husband was spotted in ‘Coweslip’, the cameras seldom captured anything else.
Thus, ignoring 20 videos that solely exhibit “The Duke”, we must start with Cowes Week 1952, as it captures the rest of the fleet (near the conclusion).
Hayling Island in the 50s showcases a fleet of Flying Fifteens (one featuring a two-digit sail number) alongside other Hornets, Canoes, Fins, Enterprises, and motorboat footage.
We are unable to embed the video here, so please visit youtube.com/watch?v=e4vOIATSthY and skip to 4m38s.
Next, we present the 1955 Championships at the Royal South Western YC, Plymouth, which is not available on YouTube, but you can find it here:
player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-yacht-races-from-plymouth-sound-1957-online (jump to 1m36 if you’re in a rush!)
From the same club that hosted this year’s National Championships, we can observe amateur construction of Flying Fifteens in Northern Ireland, captured sometime in the 1950s. You may notice more steel nails than you’d prefer…
Cowes Week 1963 has sufficient coverage of the fleet to merit inclusion.
Cowes Week 1970 features a different prince (now our King) but does showcase the fleet a few times (fast forward to 1m43s).
Lastly, we aim to display a video from outside the UK; while the class appears only briefly here, it’s noteworthy as you may not have seen how a Fifteen looks when fully submerged! Dinghy sailing at Port Hacking, Sydney (sometime in the late Seventies) has some footage at the beginning, at 0m50s and at 3m25s.
What about the rest?
Do you know of any F15 videos that document racing fleets from the 1940s to the 90s that we may have overlooked? We would love to share these with fellow sailors. You can send us video links for immediate consideration.
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