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After last week’s racing was abandoned due to high winds, a soggy Dun Laoghaire saw the restart of the Frostbite racing yesterday. It rained the entire day and initially there didn’t seem to be enough breeze to warrant a race, despite a forecast that suggested there would be lots of wind.

Twelve Fireball started the race, with one boat recording a DNF, and the wind filled in sufficiently to give a steady breeze though there was very little trapezing and downwind sailing was quite benign!

Messrs Butler/Oram and Rumball/Moran did their usual thing of leading the fleet off the start line with both boats fancying the LHS of the course. Those who went right found themselves off the pace though subsequent beats saw a wider corridor of favourable wind to work one’s way upwind. Neil Colin & Margaret Casey and John Chambers & Hugh Butler were two combinations who didn’t have the best of starts but worked their way left-wards and came into the first weather mark along the port lay-line in “very good nick” to secure places behind the front two. Behind these four there was a chasing group who kept close company with each other – Louise McKenna & Conor Kinsella, Andy Boyle & Conor Clancy, Frank Miller & Grattan Donnelly, Gavin Doyle & Richard Franck, Owen Laverty & Ed Butler and the all ladies team of Cariosa Power & Marie Barry.

This was the running order until the end of the second beat, when the Power & Barry combination dropped a place to Louis Smyth & Cormac Bradley. The latter combination had a poor first beat, even though they had gone left and spent the balance of the race playing “catch-up”.

Doyle/Franck & McKenna/Kinsella were the competing combinations for the day’s mugs, all those ahead of them having won one already and they were in close company for most of the race. Doyle/Frank got ahead during round three and held onto this “mug-winning” slot to the end of the race, shortened to 4 laps. At the front of the fleet it was a bit processional with Butler/Oram winning again from Rumball/Moran. After pulling the iron out of the fire at the end of the first beat, Colin/Casey finished third, while Doyle/Franck climbed to a lofty 4^th and were followed home by Boyle/Clancy.

In terms of the overall situation in Series 2, the leading two are separated by a point and have a comfortable advantage over the next placed boat.