Wind made a welcome return to Dublin Bay yesterday, with a lovely 10 to 11 knots of breeze materialising just in time for racing for the Flying fifteen Facet Jewellers Holiday Cup. The new perpetual trophy did its job in boosting numbers turning out on the bank holiday weekend, with 10 boats rewarded with two-up, easy-hiking sailing.
A novel Frequent Flyer pairing of Ian Mathews (helm), just back from his second place at the Championship of Ireland, and Alan Green had it their own way in both races, leading for the most part while the rest fought it out in tight quarters behind them.
In Race 1, Alan Dooley and Joe Hickey, sporting the Mitsubishi yellow spinnaker in Fflogger, put in a storming first run, staying high for pressure while others dawdled conservatively downwind, and overtaking the pack to deny John O’Sullivan and Ken Ryan’s Rhubarb second place.
PRO Brian Mathews moved the race course further out in the bay for Race 2. Mathews and Green again sailed to perfection, well in front if not quite out of sight. Alan Balfe and John Whelan in Perfect Ten kept their noses clean too, sailing fast downwind, happy to allow others to engage in counter-productive ‘tactical’ sparring far out to the right, and claiming second.
Tom Murphy and Carel Leroux played the shifts to take third in Rollercoaster, with hairline-tight finishes as places changed dramatically over the beat to the line in the group behind.
Back on the balcony at the National YC, former DBSC Commodore Pat Shannon of Facet Jewellers, who had guest helmed on Frank Burgess’s Snow White, presented the new Cup to Mathews and Green, expressing his admiration for the Flying Fifteen design and praising the fleet for its stalwart contribution to the Dublin Bay scene in recent years. The Flying Fifteen for several years has had the biggest one-design fleet sailing in the bay, its continued growth giving the lie to the cliché of the general decline of the sport.
Then a rogue squall reminded us that we were having far too much fun for an Irish summer’s day, and everyone dashed indoors. Debates over the rules soon moved to consideration of whether Bony M, playing in the harbour later, were cool or not, the majority, in spite of hipster protestations, firmly in favour of not.
Another perfect day on Dublin Bay.
