Nice of you to share despite the unfortunate end.
I have only just begun playing around with FA off and it would definitely be nice if people could get together for some advice on how to do combat in that mode.
My initial reflections include an insight that putting more power to your engines is a good thing. Mostly because it recharges the boost quicker. Using the boost seems to stabilise the ship (probably due to a sudden strong impulse in the direction you are pointing your ship). This has worked favourably for me. In your example I would think it would allow you to handle the situation at the end. You seem to end up in a short range joust by noticing you are in trouble and boosting past your opponent... problem is you do not have an engine strong enough to turn and counter the motion until your opponent is also turned around. With full power to the engines you can influence your direction more strongly and if you save up you can do 2 boosts almost directly after one another, which mean you could use one to boost past, then another to turn and boost towards the enemy.
Now, I may be totally wrong (complete newb on Elite in general and FA off in particular), but this is how it seems to me.
Also, if you want a bit of an easier time to begin with, I would recommend "Recon wing" combat session. It has a missile launcher anda gimballed laser of some kind, which allows you to focus more on just keeping distance and less on fine aiming. Just, keep from brute force spamming them all to death on the initial pass so you get a bit of an actual fight going.
/Merf - Wants a FA off only multiplayer mode...