Irish Fireball Frostbite Series 2 at Dun Laoghaire - Day 6

Strong winds give way to continuous rain!

The gales of the last two Frostbite Sundays disappeared towards the end of last week which meant that racing was a distinct possibility as the weekend arrived. And so it turned out that 11 Fireballs were able to get on the water for the first time in three weeks. The winds however, were replaced by continuous rain, as predicted on the BBC forecast the night before, a blanket of rain coming in on Saturday night and covering the country throughout Sunday.

Another sporting event in Dublin, also subjected to rain, may have influenced the numbers on the water, because while the Fireball fleet was a respectable size, the overall sense was that the other fleets were smaller.

Rigging up in the harbour there was the sense that while the base wind strength was very manageable, there were much stronger gusts coming through as every so often the rigging in the adjacent boats started whistling as the breeze got up.

Looking at the Dun Laoghaire Harbour website this morning, as I was on the water yesterday, the record shows that we sailed in 12 knots of WNWesterlies that swung to the north by 15º as the race progressed. The website also recorded gusts of more than 20 knots in the hour duration of the race and while the thermometer might have been recording temperatures of 6.5º C, it felt quite a bit colder than that!

With the committee boat sitting off the east pier the conventional wisdom was to go right on the beats. Off a clean start, that's the direction that Kenny Rumball and Dave Moran (15058) took. Their closest rivals, Noel Butler and Stephen Oram (15061) went left initially, but of the group that went that way they were almost the closest to the committee boat, the exception being Cariosa Power and Marie Barry (14854) who were marginally to weather of them. Conor and James Clancy (150**) were also going left as were the author, with Louis Smyth (15007), Frank Miller & Grattan Donnelly (14713) and Mick Creighton and Joe O'Reilly (14937).

About two thirds of the way up the beat there was a three-boat meeting of port and starboard tacked boats which left two crash-tacking and led to the first retirement of the day – Creighton & O'Reilly.

At the first weather mark the "usual" three boats were in close company – Rumball/Moran, Butler/Oram and Clancy/Clancy, with Team Clancy slightly behind the other two. The next group consisted of Gavin Doyle & Dave Sweeney (14953), Miller/Donnelly and Smyth/Bradley with a strong gust at the weather mark making rounding and hoisting a lit bit more "helter-skelter" than normal.

The combination of breeze and good angles on the two spinnaker legs meant that these legs were fast 3-sail legs. As the race progressed, the two bunches of boats stayed within their respective confines; Butler and Rumball always keeping an eye out for the other, Clancy waiting to pounce should either make a mistake.

A windward capsize early into the third beat caused the author to lose track of what happened to the leaders on the third beat, but by the time we rounded our third weather mark, the leaders were close enough to each other that a slightly oversized blanket would have covered the pair of them as they approached their last leeward mark (4th rounding). Butler had the inside berth and controlled the rounding to protect his lead into the very short hitch to the finish. Clancy took third with Doyle/Sweeney 4th and Miller/Donnelly 5th. This latter performance gave the pair the day's Mugs.

With the pressing engagement of a rugby match with a 3pm kick-off, the decision to set a four-lap race was probably more influenced by rugby than weather, but in truth nobody was complaining. In addition to the early retirement from the first beat there were three other retirees, Smyth/Bradley and Power/Barry being two.

The rugby result didn't help the mood of those who hadn't had a good day on the water, but getting out for a sail was a good afternoon given the weather conditions of the past two Sundays.

Race 4 Results:

Results after Race 4:

* Provisional – haven't confirmed this on the score-sheet.

There was no Frostbite racing last Sunday, 3rd February, but Kenny Rumball & Dave Moran went out sailing and their "adventure" was videoed by Calum Paterson, a Frostbite sailor racing a Laser Vago and a colleague of Kenny's at the Irish National Sailing School. The link to the video is below.