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#fireball – The majority of the eight-boat Fireball fleet in the second round race of DBSC Series 3 will have come off the water having had an entertaining evening writes Cormac Bradley.  I say the majority, for in the blustery conditions there were a number of costly capsizes, one of which resulted in a DNF and another that saw a 4th with a possibility of a 3rd become a 5th.

A westerly breeze was blowing with some quite hard squalls at the start of the evening but the viciousness of the squalls eased off as the evening wore on! An amendment to the sailing instructions saw the Fireballs promoted to the first start and a check of the ebbing tide before the race did confirm that it was pushing us away from the line. The Flying Fifteen fleet was on Race Committee duty tonight and they set an excellent Olympic course of three laps.

Messrs Butler & Oram (15061) went hard left on the first beat and worked the inshore side of the course. Neil Colin & Margaret Casey (14775) did the same, from the pin end of the line. Just up from the pin, Smyth & Bradley (15007) could be found, sailing a parallel course to 14775, with Louise McKenna & Hermine O'Keefe (14691) also going left, but astern and marginally to leeward of Smyth. Nicholson & Besslar (14781) went right into the ebbing tide as did Miller & Donnelly (14713) and Power & Barry (14854). Miller & Donnelly broke away from the offshore side of the beat to mix it up with Colin & Casey, while Nicholson & Besslar left that manoeuvre to a little later and crossed ahead of Smyth & Bradley. Later, up the same beat these two would cross each other again with Smyth, on starboard very close to Nicholson's transom!

At the weather mark Butler & Oram were gone again! A cluster of boats rounded together, Colin & Miller having worked the port lay line were ahead of Smyth who rounded just ahead of Nicholson and McKenna. Applying the Adam Bower's mantra of WUMPETA, Smyth stole a modest march on both Miller & Nicholson to get out from under the lee of the one and over the top of the other to allow him to chase Colin & Casey.

The first reach was tightish, but the second one broadened out as the fleet went offshore. McKenna & O'Keeffe's night came to an early finish when Hermine appeared to come off the wire and the resultant capsize, with spinnaker, left them too far behind the pack. Smyth closed on and overtook Colin & Casey to round the leeward mark in 2nd place. However, Colin & Casey stayed offshore for the early part of the second beat while Smyth & Bradley went in and within a couple of hundred metres, the situation was reversed with Colin sitting in 2nd spot. The first four boats gybed at the weather mark to stay out in the ebbing tide and this allowed them to slide towards the leeward mark. Butler & Oram were doing another horizon job! Colin & Casey were in a comfortable 2nd while Miller & Donnelly had closed on Smyth & Bradley to challenge for 3rd. At the 2nd leeward mark the order was Butler, Colin, Smyth & Miller.

The third beat saw the lead boats stay out in the tide initially before crossing the course to work the inside track of the beat. There didn't seem to be any sense of boats closing on the boat ahead of them but Miller stuck close to Smyth. Around the third and final weather mark, Smyth was able to launch his spinnaker before a squall came across the water to stay high. Miller, on the other hand, rounded in the squall and was forced off to leeward trying to get the spinnaker up. This left him fighting to get up to the gybe mark and he ultimately paid the price with a capsize, under spinnaker before he got to that particular "holy grail". The finishing order seemed to be set!

Except down the two reaches, Smyth & Bradley closed on Colin & Casey to the extent that there were only boat lengths between them at the final leeward mark. Colin's rounding left him marginally to leeward of an IDRA (PY fleet) while Smyth was able to round to windward of a Laser (also PY fleet) and all four boats were within a distance of 10 – 15m. Colin tacked to go inshore, crossing ahead of the IDRA. Smyth went over the top of the IDRA and stayed out in what was a foul tide. Halfway up the final beat, with the committee boat relocated further to windward, Smyth & Bradley crossed Colin & Casey with a gap of about 30m and Smyth & Bradley ahead! The remainder of the beat saw Smyth & Bradley covering their opposition to the finish line where they were rewarded with a 2nd place that hadn't looked at all likely throughout the previous triangular lap.