#dbsc – The Beneteau 50 Mermaid IV will continue her long standing lead into the final race of DBSC's Turkey Shoot takes place this Sunday morning with an expected 70-boat turnout for the climax of the six week Dublin Bay series. Second overall is White Knight trailing by 12 points. Overall results for the Rathfarnham Ford sponsored series are downloadable below.

Racing in a mixed fleet of cruisers – from 20 foot to 50 foot – has been taking place each Sunday morning since 3rd November and concludes this Sunday, 15th December.

Racing is held under modified ECHO (i.e. time on time) and handicaps have been recalculated weekly during the series.  An overall prizegiving will takes place after racing at the RIYC.

#dbsc –  The Beneteau 50 Mermaid IV continues to lead the 70–boat Rathfarnham Ford sponsored Turkey Shoot series. Fives races have been sailed with one discard applied. Results are downloadable below as a word file. Second overall is Fox in Sox and third is the J109 Indecision.

#DBSC – The Beneteau First 50, Mermaid V leads the overall rankings after four races of the 70–boat DBSC Turkey Shoot sponsored by Rathfarnham Ford. The series discard has been applied and this has tightened results. Full results downloadable below. Second overall is The Cartoonist and third is the new J70, J boats Ireland. 

#dbsc – The Fast 42 African Challenge is the overall leader after three races in the Rathfarnham Ford sponsored DBSC Turkey Shoot for cruisers on Dublin Bay. Second is a Beneteau design, the First 50, Mermaid IV. Joint third is the J109 Indecision and the Hunter Sonata Asterix. Racing continues this Sunday. Full results are availalbe to download below.

#TURKEYSHOOT – Deja Vu was the winner of the second Rathfarnham Ford sponsored DBSC Turkey Shoot race last Sunday in light conditions on Dublin Bay. A photo gallery from Aidan Tarbett is available below and results are downloadable as a word file below. 

#dbsc – J boats Ireland, the new J70 design, was the winner of the first race of the 2013 DBSC Turkey Shoot last Sunday. Results from last Sunday and handicaps and starts for next Sunday are below. 

#dbsc – There looks like there should be plentry of breeze for this weekend's oprening race of the DBSC Turkey Shoot series on Dublin Bay with over 60 boats entered so far. Racing takes place each Sunday morning from 3rd November to 15th December 2013 inclusive.

Racing will be under modified ECHO (i.e. time on time). Handicaps will be recalculated weekly during the series. Initial handicaps to be decided by the Race Committee. Results of first Sunday will be published in days following the race.

In a special note in the sailing instructions organisers appeal to  more “experienced” sailors, to give plenty of room to other boats in all situations but particularly at mark roundings. Advice intended to keep the event enjoyable for everybody.

The organisers have also asked that boats do not race with their anchor carried on it’s bow position.

Full Sailing Instructions are downloadable below as a word file.

#inss – On foot of the Tuesday Night DBSC series designed to get novice racers out racing in Dublin Bay, in which the Irish National Sailing Club and the Royal Irish Yacht Club usually fielded three boats each on most Tuesday nights, the idea came along to have both organisations work together to keep interest up and get people sailing through the winter.

INSC1 & INSC2 were crewed by members of the Royal Irish Yacht Club in a programme conceived by Kenneth Rumball and Patricia Judge of both racing and offering Royal Irish members the chance to compete and learn new skills during the 2012 Turkey Shoot Series.

INSC1's original crew of Kenneth Rumball (skipper), David Boyle, Jeff Greene & Anne Bergin spent the Saturday before the start of the series out training in Dublin Bay in a very strong Westerly, learning how to manage a fractional asymmetrical kite on a 1720 in 25kts of breeze. With a few knock downs and some wet feet, everybody came in tired yet full of enthusiasm ready for race one the following week.

The conditions on race day one greeted us with a big north easterly swell and 30kts of breeze. We launched full of optimism and though sailing well, we had a dismal day, crossing the line as one of the last boats on the water.

The following Sunday, our crew had changed with Steve Finn and Sue Malone joining the boat as Jeff Greene had suffered illness and could not sail with us. Steve and Sue are regular sailors with the Irish National Sailing Club, sailing most Saturdays and on other club events. With this crew we sailed out very much looking to prove ourselves. This we did, we started to sail very well with all crew learning on a very steep curve about how we want to sail and how to perfect the various boat handling manoeuvres.

As a team, everybody kept on learning and improving. The team went from being nervous flying a fractional kite in 15kts of breeze to on the final days being confident enough to hoist, drop, gybe and sail with the masthead 1720 kite in 25kts of breeze, let alone doing this in close proximity to the various J109s and A35s we were racing against.

Sailing a boat with 5 year old Dacron sails and an un-faired hull with anti-fouling more commonly found on a fishing trawler, showed just how much the team could make the boat perform. We had some great highlights including, being just pipped on the line for line honours twice and blasting through the fleet with the big kite up with smiles on everybody's faces.

The final result of second overall for INSC1 was the biggest highlight for all on board. Much murmers and genuine surprise at the prize-giving made it even more worthwhile as the INSC1 crew collected the prize for runners up securing second place overall in the 2012 DBSC Turkey Shoot.

INSC2 had opted not to have a race training day before the main event. With 5 sailors out for what would be for some their first race experience, INSC2 was to take a slightly less intense approach. None the less, INSC2 had some fantastic results and enjoyed mixing it with the best at the top end of the fleet. With some hot shot visitors on the penultimate day of racing, the grins could not be contained as thy had the big kite up in 25kts of breeze, putting INSC1 under pressure and putting them well ahead of other 1720s racing from the RIYC. Fundamentally the sailors on INSC2 learnt a huge amount from their skippers and drop in crews.

The race-training programme will be developing further. With world-class sailors acting as skippers on the boats that have hundreds of offshore miles and having crewed on top boats that race around the cans, we hope to have more boats out providing race training to give everybody the opportunity to race and learn from the best sailors in Ireland. The race training programme will continue into 2013 with plans already afoot to launch the programme into the spring chicken series.

– Kenneth Rumball

#dbsc – Using five year old cut down Dacron sails and using trawler antifouling on its hull, a sailing school 1720 has finished runner-up in DBSC's Successful Turkey Shoot series yesterday.

Full overall results for the 2012 series and yesterday's race results are downloadable below as word files.

The Irish National Sailing School (INSS) sportsboat with Kenneth Rumball and five novices on board cheered as they took second overall at yesterday's prizegiving in the Royal Irish YC to Darragh Cafferkey's A35 Another Adventure after a hard fought six race series.

In a great spread of designs, one of the oldest boats in the 90–boat fleet, Sarnia, a venerable Sparkman and Stephens design took third overall. That afternoon Rumball switched boats to finish as a winner of the Fireball class in the DMYC frostbites.

In the four weeks to date, Dun Laoghaire's DBSC Turkey Shoot sailing series has had nearly 60 different non-sailors taking part. Boats that have taken non-sailors racing have benefitted with a handicap discount, a new DBSC initiative. The start times and handicaps for Sunday morning's race are downloadable below as an excel file.