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DBSC 2015 Sailing Season Ready to Start on Dublin Bay

12th April 2015
DBSC 2015 Sailing Season Ready to Start on Dublin Bay

#dbsc – The boats are lifted in, 23 racing marks are laid across the Bay and the Dublin Bay Sailing Club yearbook has been posted to 1,200 members. It means only one thing; the biggest sailin league in the country – is about to start.

For the 2015 season there have been tweaks to the DBSC racing format.

In the keelboat divisions, the trend of mixed handicap and one-design racing will be carried further when the Sigma 33 class start racing with Cruisers 2.

The Sigmas enjoyed a considerable popularity in Dublin Bay since they emerged as a separate class in 2000 but recently this has waned. Re-joining Cruisers 2 on the starting line, with which they raced earlier, should provide all concerned with more competition, according to Sigma captain Paddy Maguire.

The Sigmas will retain their separate identity, and will continue to receive separate results, as will Cruisers 2. But overall ECHO and IRC results will be provided for the combined fleets. 

In the foreword to the 2015 DBSC yearbook, Commodore Pat Shannon comments:

'There was a time when DBSC was almost entirely a one-design club – in fact, Dublin Bay, deservedly or not, had the reputation of being "the home of one-design racing". The reason advanced for this accolade was that Ireland was not on the same economic level as our more affluent neighbours. One-design racing suited our pockets. We could not afford – so the argument goes – the constant innovation, the frequent model changes that is the hallmark of cruiser racing.

Such is no longer the situation. Whether or not economics has anything to do with it, cruiser racers form an important part of the Dublin Bay fleet – up to one- third in 2014. Cruiser racers, yes, but with a qualification. For some, like the 31.7s, the distinction between cruisers and one-designs is academic, since, in essence, they are one-design and receive one-design points, the accompanying ECHO handicap points providing an award system for boats that may not be in a position to compete on level rating.

The one-design/cruiser distinction is not so absolute either in Cruisers 1. The J109s constitute a major part of the fleet, and in addition to IRC and ECHO results, also receive points for one-design

This trend of mixed handicap/ one-design racing is carried a step further in this season's programme, with the Sigma 33 class racing with Cruisers 2. The Sigmas enjoyed a considerable popularity in Dublin Bay since they emerged as a separate class in 2000 but recently this has waned. Re-joining Cruisers 2 on the starting line, with which they raced earlier, should provide all concerned with more competition and more enjoyable racing. The Sigmas will retain their separate identity, and will continue to receive separate results, as will also Cruisers 2. But overall ECHO and IRC result will be provided for the combined fleets.

The dinghy situation continues to occupy the committee's minds. We conducted an on-line questionnaire during last season among interested parties to see what changes to the programme might encourage more entrants and more classes but no clear pattern or consensus emerged. Further discussions took place over the winter months with dinghy representatives which will result in some changes to the 2015 programme'. 

The first 2015 DBSC Races are: Tuesday 28th April, Thursday 23rd April and Saturday 25th April. The last races of the season will be: Tuesday 25th August, Thursday 27th August
Saturday 26th Sept.

Race Results

You may need to scroll vertically and horizontally within the box to view the full results

Published in DBSC
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Dublin Bay Sailing Club (DBSC) is one of Europe's biggest yacht racing clubs. It has almost sixteen hundred elected members. It presents more than 100 perpetual trophies each season some dating back to 1884. It provides weekly racing for upwards of 360 yachts, ranging from ocean-going forty footers to small dinghies for juniors.

Undaunted by austerity and encircling gloom, Dublin Bay Sailing Club (DBSC), supported by an institutional memory of one hundred and twenty-nine years of racing and having survived two world wars, a civil war and not to mention the nineteen-thirties depression, it continues to present its racing programme year after year as a cherished Dublin sporting institution.

The DBSC formula that, over the years, has worked very well for Dun Laoghaire sailors. As ever DBSC start racing at the end of April and finish at the end of September. The current commodore is Eddie Totterdell of the National Yacht Club.

The character of racing remains broadly the same in recent times, with starts and finishes at Club's two committee boats, one of them DBSC's new flagship, the Freebird. The latter will also service dinghy racing on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Having more in the way of creature comfort than the John T. Biggs, it has enabled the dinghy sub-committee to attract a regular team to manage its races, very much as happened in the case of MacLir and more recently with the Spirit of the Irish. The expectation is that this will raise the quality of dinghy race management, which, operating as it did on a class quota system, had tended to suffer from a lack of continuity.