Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

#fireball – On the last Tuesday night before the Nationals (Waterford Harbour Sailing Club, Friday 3rd to Sunday 5th July, with Flying Fifteens and 420s), six Fireballs were in action in DBSC racing last night.

Yet again the Race Committee was able to get two races completed in a breeze that started in an Easterly quarter and moved round to the North. This was in contrast to the XCWeather projection for 19:00 of 13 knots with gusts to 20 knots from a southerly direction. Sea-breeze maybe! It faded a bit as the evening wore on but there was still enough "oomph" in the breeze to get a good second race in.

This correspondent was afloat for the first time since last year and our assessment was that the pin was the place to be from a wind perspective. However, with a strong flooding tide, going out to sea was not that sensible. Consequently, the pin got ignored as the fleet stacked up on the Committee Boat end of the line. As a correspondent for another class has already written, the "modus operandi" was to head inshore on port as soon as one could after the start, sail sufficiently inshore to be able to clear the weather mark and tack accordingly.

The consequence of such a simple approach was that on the 4-laps of the short Windward-Leeward course, I only witnessed two place changes in the race. Team Clancy, Conor & James (15113) led from the start. They were followed by Noel Butler & Crew (15061) and Frank Miller & Ed Butler (14713). Neil Colin & Margaret Casey (14775) and Louis Smyth & Joe O'Reilly (15007) swopped fourth place and fifth place during the race, with Smyth/O'Reilly taking the bigger scoring place at the finish. Mary Chambers & Cormac Bradley (14865) shepherded the fleet from behind!

For the second race, a triangular course was set with three laps. In accordance with the changing wind, the weather mark was relocated and the beat was made a bit longer. However, the first reach was quite broad, giving a tighter second reach.

For the first beat, Neil Colin & Margaret Casey went out to sea at an early stage and paid the price by rounding in the lower order of the fleet. At the head of the fleet, Noel Butler & Crew appeared to steal a march on everyone else, certainly in terms of distance at the weather mark, but the overall impression of the first beat was that the fleet was much closer together. In second place at an early stage was Team Clancy, a position they never relinquished! In contrast, the next three boats, Messrs Miller, Smyth & Colin mixed it up with each other both upwind and downwind so that they had a race within a race. Chambers & Bradley in their first outing were closer to the fleet and on the off-wind legs of the first lap were mixing it with Colin and Miller.

Having seen Colin's temporary demise on the first beat by going to sea, the fleet reverted to type by going inshore for the remaining two beats. The proximity of Colin, Smyth & Miller to each other meant that none of them strayed too far from the other two. The only boat that could afford to experiment was Chambers & Bradley, but while they didn't encounter any snakes, they didn't find any ladders either.

After their poor first beat, Colin & Casey recovered to third place at the finish and Miller & Butler took the next place.

On a night when the sun shone, the breeze was good and two races were completed, there was lots to be pleased about. Everyone got a chance to have a session on the water before the Nationals, there was some close quarter racing and for the last Tuesday of June, there was a sense that at last summer was here.

The racing scene now relocates to Dunmore East for the 3-day Nationals and a nine-race programme. Dunmore East has been a popular venue for the Fireball Class but our recent numbers have not allowed us to go there by ourselves. This year we will share the venue with the Flying Fifteens who are enjoying very good numbers in DBSC racing (high teens) and the 420s.

On current form, it may be a case of who can push Messrs McCartin & Kinsella off the top ledge of the winner's rostrum. Last year they made a clean sweep of our domestic regattas, won the Shetland Nationals, finished fourth at the Europeans in Shetland and, if memory serves, finished well inside the top ten at the UK Nationals. They have won both domestic regattas of our 2015 calendar, the Open Championship (Skerries) and the Ulster Championships in McCartin's home club of Cushendall. The obvious candidates are Noel Butler & Kenny Rumball who have also occupied the rostrum this year. Team Clancy will also be knocking on the respective doors of the front three to mix up the pecking order. XCWeather is suggesting that there will be no shortage of wind – base wind strengths in the mid-teens with gusts being a few knots higher.

In other Fireball news, with an Irish connection, Will Moody who graced the Irish Fireball circuit for a number of years has been appointed as the Marketing Officer of Fireball International. After leaving Ireland for warmer climes, Will has relocated back to the UK where he has been for the past couple of years.

The new Class Secretary is Jackie Barker, wife to Andy who is a Fireballer with an enviable regatta reputation at the highest level.

These are recent appointments by the FI Executive after a very protracted post- election (2014) process of consultation and discussion initiated by new FI Commodore Steve Chesney.