Coaching Day with Barry McCartinBetween sailors and volunteers some 18 Fireballers took part in a coaching day with Barry McCartin at the DMYC on Saturday. The group ranged from class veterans to adult sailors from SID to young sailors taking a break from 420s with an eye to the #Howth2020 World Championships. McCartin is an experienced coach and also the top Irish Fireballer having notched up a top ten place in the most recent 100 boat world championships in Carnac. Participants benefited from an initial briefing by Barry on the finer intricacies of boat tuning to maximise boat speed. In particular subtle adjustments with strut or chocks to optimise pre-bend and sail shape for a range of conditions were explored. Sailors were reminded ...
Posted by Stephen Oram
Single race……before the snow started falling!Last week’s report
opened with a few lines from Keats’ “Ode to Autumn” so the weather gods may
have been amused by that because yesterday, after racing was completed it
started snowing!! We know that Winter follows Autumn, but it is slightly at
odds with the time of year – early March!
The wind forecast
suggested that while the morning would be quiet there would be a healthy wind
for the 14:00 start of proceedings and that as the afternoon wore on the wind
would build. Rain was also in the forecast, but it was not due to arrive until
later. By 12:00 the rain was with us and the wind was building, and Frostbites
Co-ordinator Neil ...
Posted 4 Mar 2019, 04:22 by Stephen Oram
“A John Keats type of day”Sunday February 24th was more akin to the
opening lines of John Keats’ “Ode to Autumn” “Season
of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close
bosom friend of the maturing sun,Conspiring
with him how to load and blessWith
fruit, the vines that round the thatched eaves run”for even though there was a healthy breeze
forecast, Dun Laoghaire Harbour was shrouded in mist. Nor was the temperature
in compliance with the forecast – a
spring-like 12/13º but there was a distinct autumnal coolness in the air.Despite these atmospheric setbacks, the
good news was that the wind was blowing from a direction, 150-160º, that
allowed us to use the maximum width (East – West) of the harbour ...
Posted 25 Feb 2019, 08:28 by Stephen Oram
Bright & breezy but two races completed!From the previous
Friday morning, the XCWeather website had been consistent in its forecast for
Sunday afternoon at 14:00, winds of the order of 17/18 knots with gusts to
28/30 knots from a direction of south or south of south-west. And so, it was!
Given the forecast and bearing in mind that very little “frostbiting” has been
had this year, there was an awareness that we should try and get at least one
race in and that sense was manifested when the Frostbite Co-ordinator, Neil
Colin shared the exact same sentiment by What’sApp on Saturday afternoon.
An early trip down
to the harbour and the East Pier suggested that the water inside the harbour ...
Posted 18 Feb 2019, 04:20 by Stephen Oram
Cold and blustery!After yet another Sunday lost to adverse
weather last week, the Dun Laoghaire Frostbite fleet got another two races in
today, Sunday 3rd February. Initially the wind looked to be nicely
consistent with a bearing of 210⁰ which set up the course with the committee
boat inside the end of the West Pier and a weather mark near the entrance to
the marina. The gybe mark was off towards the East Pier and the gybe mark was
about a third of the way across the mouth of the harbour, but closer to the end
of the West Pier.The PY fleet had a healthy turnout of 20
boats with good Fireball numbers, Shane McCarthy’s Solo, Tom Murphy’s ...
Posted 4 Feb 2019, 00:44 by Stephen Oram
Series 2 gets underway in Dun Laoghaire!After two successive Sundays were lost to the
vagaries of the weather, with 6th January lost to no wind at all and 13th
January abandoned on the Saturday due to a pessimistic forecast of 30 knot
gusts for the Sunday, the Dun Laoghaire Frostbites finally got underway
yesterday with three races inside the harbour.
A XCWeather forecast of 15 – 17 knots with gusts
in the low twenties from a direction just west of north suggested that sailing
would be possible and so it proved. There was a healthy turnout for all three
starts and even though the temperature was only around 6/7⁰ there was no sense
of ”shock and horror” when the Race Officer, Cormac Bradley, suggested that a ...
Posted 21 Jan 2019, 04:04 by Stephen Oram
Final Frostbite Sunday 2018With howling gales on Saturday, courtesy of
Storm Deirdre, the weather forecast for today was a lot more benign with a base
wind of 9 knots with gusts up to 15 knots from a WSW direction. Or at least
that’s what XCWeather was saying during the morning. Arriving at the office to
get a piece of work done before racing, the view from the 3rd Floor
of my office location suggested that the Tukey Shoot participants were having a
good race but there was nothing excessive about the wind. They had a fleet in
excess of 50 bots.With a solitary double points scoring race
on the Agenda for today, there was a debate as to whether we ...
Posted 17 Dec 2018, 02:36 by Stephen Oram
