Dublin Bay Sailing Club has issued a revised schedule for its much anticipated 2020 season. Commodore Jonathan Nicholson says his committee has considered many factors in putting the programme together and reports as follows:
Dinghy Racing
Dinghy racing commences in phase 3, for single handed or boats crewed by household units. The first race will be on Tuesday the 30th of June and will take place in the harbour. The Water Wags may follow on the 1st of July, again for household units. Racing on Saturday will also be available for all dinghy classes including Water Wags commencing on the 4th of July, who meet the criteria described above.
Due to the restrictions currently in place, and likely to be in place for at least phase 3, there will be reduced crews on our committee boats and ribs.
Cruiser and Keelboats
Racing for the cruiser and keelboat classes commences in phase 4, on Tuesday the 21st, Thursday the 24th and Saturday the 26th of July. The Tuesday programme has been significantly extended to provide a complete schedule for all boats akin to the programme run from a committee boat on Thursday nights. The season has also been lengthened, adding two weeks to both the mid-week and weekend series.
Depending upon the guidance from Irish Sailing, a mini-series for cruiser and keelboat classes with restricted crew numbers not counting for overall series points, may be run in phase 3 (between the 30th of June and the 20th of July). for the cruiser and keelboat classes with restricted crew numbers. Clarity will be provided when possible.
In recognition of the extraordinary circumstances that we all now face, and the somewhat condensed programme that we are planning, we have reduced the boat entry fee. The new schedule of fees can be found here and you can enter here. I would like to remind you all that DBSC is a club of members and is run by volunteers and despite the delayed start to our racing programme this season, we are endeavouring to provide you with the maximum number of high-quality races, all run from committee boats with experienced and highly qualified race officers and race management teams.
I would like to thank all those who have entered to date. The club needs the support of its members with the majority our income coming from boat entry and membership fees. As mentioned above we have reduced the boat entry fee recognising theses extraordinary times and condensed schedule, while considering that we have a very high fixed cost base, much of which has already been committed, and some of our members will not be entering this year for obvious reasons. It is essential that the remainder of our membership enters as soon as possible. Simply put the club needs the income and clarity of the number of boats planning to race.
We will communicate directly with those who have entered to date on how the reduction will be applied.
We have calculated that we need a minimum number of boats to enter per fleet (blue, red, green and dinghy) for that fleet to be viable. Water Wags are considered separately. The decisions on fleet and class viability will be made on Thursday the 25th of June for dinghies and Thursday the 2nd of July for keelboats and cruisers.
As such only entries up to Wednesday the 24th of June and Wednesday 1st of July respectively will be considered when defining the new starting schedule and class composition. Again, please enter now.
