Chilly Valentine’s Day for Dun Laoghaire Fireball Race

15th February 2016

Only four Fireballs risked romantic disharmony by taking part in today’s Frostbite racing in Dun Laoghaire harbour writes Cormac Bradley. Or maybe it was the weather that put people off, because even the organisers were warning about the weather – “rather cold and on the heavy side. Decision to take part entirely up to competitors” was the Facebook message to participants before the racing.
By the time I got to the harbour the four Fireballs were enjoying a good “skite” around the trapezoid course with a five-lapper set for the day. With the wind measured at 14.3 knots with a gust of 21.9 knots out of NNE (22˚) the fleet got round the course quite quickly – so quickly that my late arrival meant that I missed the first half of the race.
By the stage I arrived Frank Miller & Grattan Donnelly were in a very comfortable first place, with Alistair Court and Gordon Syme in second. Team Keegan were in third and Louis Smyth was in fourth. None of the boats flew spinnaker on the top and bottom reaches and on the leg between Marks 2 and 3, Louis Smyth was the only one to break out the “duster”!
The weather mark was situated in the middle of the mouth of the harbour, with No.2 a short distance inside the end of the west pier. No. 3 was situated at the entrance to the marina and No.4 just to the west of the gantry for the HSS. This gave the fleet a beat that was the length of the N-S dimension of the harbour and the approach was to sail a long port tack to the starboard layline into the weather mark.

2015/16 Frostbites: Sunday 14th February 2016, Day 4
1 Frank Miller & Grattan Donnelly 14713 DMYC
2 Alistair Court & Gordon Syme 14706 DMYC
3 Team Keegan 14676 RStGYC
4 Louis Smyth 15007 Coal Harb.

Frostbites 2015/16 – Series 2 Overall. (Assumes No discard)
1 Noel Butler & Stephen Oram 15061 NYC 1 4 1 1 1 1 DNC 15
2 Frank Miller & Grattan Donnelly/Cormac Bradley 14713 DMYC 4 2 3 4 2 3 1 19
3 Conor & James Clancy 14807 RStGYC 2 1 2 2 DNC DNC DNC 32
3 Neil Colin & Margaret Casey 14775 DMYC 3 3 5 3 3 DNC DNC 32

Overall position assumes that DNC = number of individual race entries + 2 and No Discard.

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