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Displaying items by tag: heat wave

Hot weather often lulls people into a false sense of security that will place lives at risk this weekend at beaches, rivers and lakes. Knowing the dangers will reduce the chance of water-related accidents and tragedies.

Rip-Currents - the tidal influence of a new moon on Saturday will cause stronger than normal rip currents this weekend. It will be the first outdoor swim of the year for many people unaware of the dangers of swimming in open water. To escape a rip current, never swim against this narrow current of water flowing away from a beach. Instead, swim parallel to shore, out of the narrow current, then swim back to shore.

Cold Water - contrary to the heat on shore, coastal water temperatures are only approximately 10° Celsius. Swimming may give the feeling of warmth but muscles cool quickly in cold water which may impair a person's ability to swim ashore. Inland waterways are cooler still.

Stranding - the tidal influence of a new moon on Saturday will expose greater areas of beach, increasing the risk that walkers will be stranded by a fast incoming tide.

Supervision - Children are curious about water therefore it is critical that adults supervise children at all times at beaches, inland waterways and farms.

Thousands of people will flock to our waterways so make sure you wear a Lifejacket fitted correctly and worn with a crotch strap.

Published in Marine Warning
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Dublin Bay Sailing Club (DBSC) is one of Europe's biggest yacht racing clubs. It has almost sixteen hundred elected members. It presents more than 100 perpetual trophies each season some dating back to 1884. It provides weekly racing for upwards of 360 yachts, ranging from ocean-going forty footers to small dinghies for juniors.

Undaunted by austerity and encircling gloom, Dublin Bay Sailing Club (DBSC), supported by an institutional memory of one hundred and twenty-nine years of racing and having survived two world wars, a civil war and not to mention the nineteen-thirties depression, it continues to present its racing programme year after year as a cherished Dublin sporting institution.

The DBSC formula that, over the years, has worked very well for Dun Laoghaire sailors. As ever DBSC start racing at the end of April and finish at the end of September. The current commodore is Eddie Totterdell of the National Yacht Club.

The character of racing remains broadly the same in recent times, with starts and finishes at Club's two committee boats, one of them DBSC's new flagship, the Freebird. The latter will also service dinghy racing on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Having more in the way of creature comfort than the John T. Biggs, it has enabled the dinghy sub-committee to attract a regular team to manage its races, very much as happened in the case of MacLir and more recently with the Spirit of the Irish. The expectation is that this will raise the quality of dinghy race management, which, operating as it did on a class quota system, had tended to suffer from a lack of continuity.