Fireballs at the Dublin Bay Sailing Club Tuesday Night Series - Day 1

Six Fireballs rocked up for the first DBSC Tuesday race last night and were treated to two snappy Windward-Leeward races in the harbour. Earlier the signs were not looking good, the day was very gusty and wind guru at one point was predicting 38 knot gusts for the evening. There were deep black clouds to the west but conditions in the harbour were almost balmy with the odd challenging gust.

The race committee decided to go ahead and set two windward-leeward races in the harbour, an excellent call in the circumstances as it got the Tuesday series off with a bang. The wind was flicking more and more southerly which caused a slightly delayed start but when the fleet got away there was a significant pin bias. The Clancys took their chances on a port start approach from amongst cruisers and pulled away sweetly and quickly chased by the pack with Butler/Tedz closest on their heels. The leeward spreader pin caught at least on boat out as Miller/Butler had to return for a proper rounding in a thicket of lasers. The run rewarded those who went a bit high and gybed back at a fast angle rather than the straight rhumb line though gusts changed ideal angled frequently. On the water this correspondent thought the Clancys got the gun just ahead of Butler/Tedz but the official results don't reflect their presence, perhaps a bit of tidying up to be done on paperwork.

For race 2 the W mark was moved further left giving a cleaner beat though once again left seemed to pay as it was feeding in some welcom gusts. This time there was no doubt that Butler/Tedz were in control pretty well from start to finish followed by the Clancy brothers. The downwind finish was a novelty which worked well. Hats off to DBSC for the innovation of allowing for 2 races on a Tuesday which despite some reservations in the fleet certainly paid off last night.

Roll on next Tuesday and we look forward to a fuller complement and more red dots on the water.