After so much promise with sun-filled races towards Greystones on Saturday, as a local observer has wrily remarked, Sunday was more Factor 6 than Force 6…….Perhaps in other places, local coastal anomalies and neighbourhood weakness in tidal streams made events possible. But off Greystones, you need a good working breeze to deal with those very real tides, and the summery weekend’s entire allocation of wind for Greystones seems to gave been used up by late Saturday afternoon.
Thankfully, most competitors had experienced good racing in the sunshine on Saturday in the many feeder races that have become a key part of the Taste of Greystones event. With Saturday night partying at many locations ashore and aboard boats in the marina much in evidence, there were some who said that a lack of racing on Sunday was no great loss. But as the results of the feeder races show, there were some serious competitors heading towards the hospitable North Wicklow port looking to strut their stuff in the combined fleet programme on Sunday morning.
Admittedly the very light or non-existent wind forecast for Sunday’s wind had kept numbers down a bit, but even so 25 yachts raced from Dublin Bay, ten from Poolbeg, they raced from Clontarf too, while eight more from Wicklow swelled the fleet to a significant number when added to the high-powered 14 who’d sailed in the early-start ISORA race. But the fresh winds winds that had initially favoured the South-bound boats were not so kind to the Arklow boats which had to motor to Greystones after experiencing the same wind hole as the later-arriving ISORA boats off North India Buoy, a wind hole which saw its mission in life as being a general expansion of calm with mist for Sunday morning
Thus the morning so keenly anticipated offered wind with no visibility, or visibility with no wind, and the Race Officer had little choice but to invite all to zip up the sailbags and head to the clubhouse for the complimentary lunch.
A fine lot of crystal and silver waits for a good home, and Greystones SC hope to rerun the event in some form or other, but maybe not this year as a very crowded fixture list makes September and early October difficult to navigate. Though the thinking behind a Taste Of Greystones Regatta is as a seasonal ender to mark the rich harvest in the Garden County, GSC Regatta in 2019 had too much of the mists and mellow fruitfulness and calm of early Autumn, and not nearly enough of the wind that shakes the barley. So the club may rerun yesterday’s races as a season opener in 2020, on the Sunday before club racing commences along the East Coast.
Details will be shared with all entrants as they become clearer.
Feeder Races Results
Poolbeg Class 1 1st Chipita 2nd Extension
Class 2 1st Black Opel 2nd HillyBilly
Clontarf 1st Wylie Coyote 2nd Enchantress
Wicklow 1st Big Cheers 2nd Ruff Nuff
ISORA 1st Eleuthera 2nd Aurelia
DBSC Class 1 1st White Mischief 2nd Gringo
Class 3 1st Dubious 2nd Starlet
Class 5 1st Shearwater 2nd Katienua
