Irish Fireball National Championship at Lough Derg Yacht Club - Day 2
by Cormac Bradley 16 Sep 2017 21:57 BST
15-17 September 2017
Yesterday's disruption to normal service, when Neil Coiln & Margaret Casey won the last race of the day, was eradicated by an authoritarian performance by Noel Butler and Simon Revill when they took all four races wins on Day 2.
In the last race they won by a significant margin but in the other three they did the sociable thing and initially mixed it with the balance of the fleet. Indeed Colin & Casey and McGrotty & Cramer were allowed to flirt with leading the fleet and Jon Evans & Aidan Caulfield also led around at least one weather mark. But Butler ultimately extinguished all aspirations of glory.
McGrotty and Cramer exchanged yesterday's three third places for three seconds today and a third place which theudiscard togo to second place overall.
Colin and Casey had an "up and down day mixing a 2nd with a 7th but will be happy with 3rd overall and a comfortable 12-point gap to 4th overall where there is a tie between Evans & Caulfield and Louise McKenna & Hermine O'Keeffe. The tie is broken in favour of he Ladies!
Next is Grattan Donnelly & Joe O'Reilly sailing Frank Miller's boat. My advice of it being bad karma to beat the owner of the boat you are sailing was ignored today as this pair beat Miller & Ed Butler in all today's races to lie a place ahead and three points ahead of their boat's owner.
The other all-lady combination had a better day but still prop up the fleet.
Winds were lighter today, topping out at 10 knots and dropped during the course of the day. Yet Race Officer Liam Moloney and his team got the programmed four races in mixing the Fireball racing with starts for Shannon One Designs (SODs), Squibs and Mirrors. As this is being typed, Lough Derg is under "soft rain but everyone is off the Water and looking forward to tonight's BBQ.