#fireball – With last Saturday lost to heavy weather, making two Saturdays lost in three weeks and an unseasonal Tuesday evening session last week, the weather for last night's DBSC Tuesday Series was much more in keeping with the time of year. While we had showers during the day, the sun came out in the afternoon and the race was held in sunny conditions with a backdrop of grey skies in the far distance across the Irish Sea.
This correspondent had a "binoculared" view of the race which saw only four Fireballs come under starter's orders. A fifth boat emerged to join the race and post the race I found out that a sixth boat would have been out if it wasn't for the owner finding that his boat had been damaged.
Noel & Stephen (15061), Cariosa & Marie (14854), Louise & Hermine (14691) and Louis & Joe O'Reilly (15007) started the race in winds that seemed to be slightly lesser than was forecast. XCWeather was suggesting WNW 9 knots with gusts to 16 knots, the current weather for Dun Laoghaire Harbour at 18:00 was WNW 12 knots with a gust of 20 knots.
A Windward-Leeward course of two laps with a spreader mark at the Windward mark was set. Butler/Oram, McKenna/O'Keeffe and slightly late, Smyth/O'Reilly started at the committee boat end of the line with Power/Barry about halfway down the line. All started on starboard tack but soon took a hitch to the right hand side. Smyth's late approach to the start line saw him crossed by Power/Barry as they went to the right as well. McKenna/O'Keeffe went furthest right. None of the crews were in full trapezing mode but the lighter lady crews were getting more time on trapeze than Joe and Stephen.
At the first weather mark the rounding order was Noel & Stephen (15061), Louise & Hermine (14691), Cariosa & Marie (14854) and Louis & Joe (15007). With a flood tide that was almost two hours old, the fleet went to the right-hand side of the run. Initially Cariosa & Marie sailed a lower course and this allowed them to close on the front two. These two plus Louis & Joe went furthest right, with Noel & Stephen initially going left. However, the latter pair then gybed back to work the RHS. Louise & Hermine followed suit, but the net effect of the multiple gybes is that the fleet became more compact with Smyth closing significantly on McKenna.
At the first leeward mark the order was Butler/Oram, Power/Barry, Smyth/O'Reilly and McKenna/O'Keeffe, with the latter having a problem dropping their spinnaker. This problem persisted to the extent that their race was lost, eventually having to capsize the boat onto a rib to drop the spinnaker.
The other three boats took an initial hitch to the RHS of the beat then sailed a long starboard tack to the weather mark. There was evidence of more trapezing but it was neither full-on nor continuous. The tide effect had a big factor in the second run. The course was set pretty much in the middle of Scotsman's bay, probably slightly closer to the harbour. After rounding the weather and spreader marks, the three boats went right in the sequence Butler/Oram, Power/Barry and Smyth/O'Reilly, the latter having lost distance to the girls thanks to a significant header halfway up the beat. Butler & Oram were probably within touching distance of the rocks at the "40-foot" before they gybed back onto port to get to the leeward mark. The other two didn't go quite that far with Smyth & O'Reilly gybing onto port first. However, it seemed that going very hard right put the boats into a different, stronger wind pattern because I could see Stephen full-out on trapeze as they sailed the "great circle route" to the leeward mark and arrive their first. Smyth & O'Reilly were the next boat in sequence and seemed to have opened a gap on the girls. They went right initially, waited for Cariosa & Marie to round and tack, tacked to cover them to the finish. However, this standard tactic seemed to fail as the girls sailed faster to the finish to record 2nd place, leaving Smyth and O'Reilly third.
DBSC Tuesday Nights, Series 1 (13.05.14)
1 Noel Butler & Stephen Oram 15061 NYC
2 Cariosa Power & Marie Barry 14854 NYC
3 Louis Smyth & Joe O'Reilly 15007 Coal Harbour
