#fireball – The last DBSC Tuesday Night Race of the 2012 season took place last night and finished as it began with a win for Noel Butler and Stephen Oram. I have been fortunate enough to sail a significant number of the Tuesday nights races this season and I can't recall a night when they didn't win writes Cormac Bradley.
Last night in very odd wind circumstances they had to come from behind to secure their win. With a flooding tide in Scotsman's Bay, the question was whether there was enough wind on the seaward side of the course to justify going left rather than right on the first beat. Neil Colin & Margaret Casey pioneered the inshore route, while Louis Smyth and Cormac Bradley took the seaward option. The other seven Fireballs were also inshore of the latter combination but at the first windward mark there wasn't a great deal of distance between the boats led round by Colin/Casey, Butler/Oram, Mick Creighton & Joe O'Reilly, Cariosa Power & Marie Barry, Smyth/Bradley, Frank Miller & Grattan Donnelly, Louise McKenna & Hermine O'Keefe, Jonathan Nicholson & Viv Besselar and Dave Coleman & Glenn Fisher.
The first reach was tight which led everyone to believe that the second reach would be broader but that didn't prove to be the case and scrambled spinnaker drops after the gybe mark saw a restructuring of the pecking order with Colin/Casey going for a swim, Butler & Oram taking over the lead followed by Creighton/O'Reilly and Miller/Donnelly who had got ahead of Smyth/Bradley. Thereafter, the pack chased Butler/Oram but to no avail.
Behind them, on the second beat, Creighton, Miller, Smyth & McKenna went slightly different ways but managed to cross each other at different stages of the beat in wind conditions that made tacking angles redundant. Smyth again played the outside line but found that he had lost distance to Miller but closed on Creighton and McKenna had closed on him.
Going down the sausage, Smyth was sandwiched between McKenna (inshore) and Creighton (offshore) while Miller and Butler sailed away in their own wind and water.
At the second rounding of the leeward mark, 3rd, 4th and 5th rounded bow to transom. After varying hitches inshore, all three boats tacked onto starboard to go up the beat.
The first reach of the second triangle was a bit broader than the first time round, even though Butler/Oram led the fleet more upwind than was necessary to get to the gybe mark. Miller/Oram were still secure in 2nd, followed by Creighton/O'Reilly, McKenna/O'Keeffe and Smyth/Bradley. Despite the easing of the first reach, the second reach was again too tight for spinnakers.
As they weren't registered for DBSC, Creighton/O'Reilly didn't go through the finish line to leave the finishing order as; Butler/Oram, Miller/Donnelly, McKenna/O'Keeffe, Smyth/Bradley, Colin/Casey.
