DBSC Fireballs Tuesday night 14.07.2020Four Fireballs raced in the third of the Tuesday DBSC series in Dun Laoghaire last night. Once again the harbour was the setting due to Covid19 restrictions on rescue personnel. Any fears that the enclosed waters may have resulted in dull racing were blown away by the weather conditions. What initially looked like a quiet night proved to be anything but with 11 knot westerly winds gusting up to 20 knots and beyond during the two windward-leeward races. For the Fireballs, starting alongside the mixed PY fleet which included a sprinkling of Aeros, Finns and IDRA 14s it was an effective 5 lap burn around the harbour with a downwind finish. For both races the committee led by Suzanne ...
Posted by Stephen Oram
First Tuesday racing DBSCFour Fireballs made it to the startline of the long awaited first Tuesday DBSC races since lockdown. The forecast was not promising much more than 2 knots but actually sailors were greeted with a very decent force 2-3 southerly. On this auspicious occasion Dun Laoghaire Harbour was dominated by a huge fleet of Lasers, unsurprisingly given that it appeared for many weeks that singlehanded boats might be the only dinghies allowed to race this season. The singlehanders also included at least four Aeros, two of which were sailed by Fireball National Champions Noel Butler and Stephen Oram. So it was that the Fireballs got away in the first PY start in a five lap windward-leward race - Frank Miller ...
Posted 1 Jul 2020, 03:25 by Stephen Oram
Announcement re Fireball World Championships in Howth 2020In response to the global Coronavirus outbreak the Irish Fireball Association, Howth Yacht Club and Fireball International have been carefully evaluating plans for the Fireball Worlds in Howth in August 2020. Given the severity of the current crisis and ongoing uncertainty around travel, social distancing, club functionality, and the impossibility of getting any fix on the timing of a return to normality we must, with great regret, now cancel our event in August. We will be engaging together and liaising with Fireball fleets worldwide to see if suitable dates can be found in 2021 or further into the future to welcome Fireballers to Ireland for a World Championships. For those who have already registered and paid HYC will refund the ...
Posted 19 Apr 2020, 01:35 by Stephen Oram
Calm between the storms!With wind speeds
of 37 knots being recorded off the end of the East Pier at lunchtime on
Saturday (on a handheld anemometer) and Storm Brendan blowing hooligans today,
the Frostbites of Sunday 12th January could be said to have been
sailed in the (relative) calm between the storms! And the wind behaved in
accordance with the forecast, starting off quite strong first thing on Sunday
morning (09:00) but dropping off in strength as the morning wore on. At about
11:30 it was down to 10/11 knots and during the race it dropped below ten but
came back up again. The sun was out as well, but there was a slight coolness in
the air.Numbers ...
Posted 13 Jan 2020, 05:55 by Stephen Oram
Series 2 underway in balmy conditions!The second half of
the Dun Laoghaire Motor Yacht Club’s Frostbite Series gut underway yesterday in
what were almost balmy conditions for the 5th of January. From the
middle of the week, this author’s favourite weather website XCWeather was
suggesting that winds would be of the order of 12/13 knots with gusts of 26/27
knots from just west of south, but the flags within the harbour complex didn’t support
that theory. Additionally, the readings from the Dublin Bay buoy for the two
hours before my arrival at the club suggested that the base wind was correct
but the gusts were only one or two knots more.Temperature-wise
it was mild, around the 10 ...
Posted 6 Jan 2020, 05:37 by Stephen Oram
Marathon to close out Series 1!Series 1 of the
DMYC-hosted Frostbites closed with a marathon race, in relative terms,
yesterday with a modest turnout of 44 boats, a wind that fluctuated between 170
and 180º with a high of just
over 10 knots and some sunshine, though there was a distinct coolness in the
air. Indeed, there was a light covering of white on the hills behind Dun
Laoghaire.The PY fleet had
the best turnout of the day with nineteen boats - Fireballs, Wayfarers, RS200s,
Aero 7s, Laser Vagos, an RS400 and the Solo of Shane McCarthy. This fleet got
off to an almost clean start with only one OCS, a Fireball that didn’t come
back, though another Fireball DID come back ...
Posted 18 Dec 2019, 06:09 by Stephen Oram
Sunshine for Christmas countdown!Fifty-eight boats
took to the water for the first Frostbite Sunday of December, which for a lot
of people is the trigger for the countdown to Christmas. From Friday afternoon
this column’s favoured web-based weather forecasting site was predicting northerly
winds up to 10 knots for the afternoon but at 09:30 on the morning the
direction wasn’t correct although the grey skies were as predicted. The larger
keelboats left the harbour with breeze outside but by the time I returned to
the waterfront area at 12 noon, the omens for vigorous racing in the afternoon
weren’t good. A walk of the east pier to just beyond the bandstand revealed a
very flat outer area ...
Posted 3 Dec 2019, 06:51 by Stephen Oram
