Tuesday Night Fireball Series at Dublin Bay Sailing Club - Day 6

What looked like a hopeless case all of yesterday morphed into a decent night's racing. All day long Dun Laoghaire was enveloped in a mild airless haze, but when Fireballers arrived to hope against hope that there might be racing, flags were weakly fluttering in the harbour area.

Seven boats made it outside the harbour where the committee set up a W-L course with the start line quite close to the cruiser Harbour Mark. The start took place at low water with an initially mild flooding tide just starting. The line being slightly boat end biased the bigger group tustled for that end and the prize of first tack in out of the tide. But was it out of the tide? The course configuration was further out than a typical DBSC Tuesday race and in all likelihood the tide was fairly even over the course. The wind however was not; there were signs that the better breeze was offshore. Thus the Clancy brothers and Noel Butler Stephen Oram got cleanly away and took an initial hitch inshore, while Frank Miller/Grattan Donnelly had a messy start and headed out to sea to clear their wind. The latter went from last place to third by this punt and the places remained more or less constant to the finish where the Clancys took the gun from Butler/Oram. Those who went inshore attempting to avoid the strengthening tide found only less wind and woe.

The second race, in a stronger tide, followed a similar pattern but this time Miller/Donnelly put their money where their instincts lay and headed straight out to sea off the unfavoured pin end, got their breeze and led to the windward mark.They maintained a reasonable lead to the finish, chased down by Butler/Oram, the Clancys, and Louise McKenna/Hermine O'Keeffe. The breeze held up to the extent that the fleet were able to carry spinnakers all the way home.

All in all this was another good evening of racing stolen from what had all day looked like a hopeless case.