News
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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
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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
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Final Frostbite Sunday 2018
With 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
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Fast and furious!
Monitoring the forecast from the Thursday
beforehand the weather prognosis for the Frostbites of Sunday 9th
December wasn’t good, with the base wind strength in the low twenties but gusts
going above 30 knots. Indeed, had the Frostbites been scheduled for the
Saturday evening, competitors wouldn’t have taken their covers off their boats,
the wind was whistling through the rigging and it was very wet.
Sunday dawned bright but cold and there was
a sense that the wind wasn’t quite as vicious as had been forecast! XCWeather
was still sticking to its projection of a wind range of 21 – 28-30 knots and
indeed at 11:17 the Dublin Bay weather buoy was recording 21 knots ...
Posted 11 Dec 2018, 03:19 by Stephen Oram
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Fireballers mark the close of the season with prize-giving and dinner
The Irish Fireball Class Association marked
the close of the summer season with their annual prize-giving dinner at the
National Yacht Club on Friday 30th November. There was a good
turnout for the dinner with a combination of young and not-so-young, active and
retired Fireballers, at least one of whom has been based outside of the country
for the recent past. A party of Fireballers from north of the Liffey got
through passport control to spend the evening in Dun Laoghaire and were
rewarded by taking away the biggest prize of the evening – the Travellers’
Trophy.
Class Chairman Neil Cramer of Skerries
Sailing Club opened the proceedings with a review of the season and started
that ...
Posted 3 Dec 2018, 03:30 by Stephen Oram
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A Challenging Day!
The fifth round of the DMYC-hosted
Frostbites provided the fleet with the most challenging conditions yet and even
then what was forecast didn’t really materialise. On Friday at the Fireball
dinner and prize-giving the speculation was that we mightn’t get out at all. At
that stage the forecast was for 6 knots gusting to 30 knots. On Saturday the
harbour was reduced to mirror-like conditions, but the forecast for Sunday was
starting to show that there would be wind the following day with the base wind
strengthening but the gusts staying as severe as before. An early
reconnaissance of the harbour in the committee boat suggested that the forecast
conditions weren’t in place and ...
Posted 3 Dec 2018, 03:27 by Stephen Oram
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Healthy winds again!
The fourth round of the 2018/19 offered to
be a healthy affair with a projected forecast of 10 – 14 knots from the east, a
bit of sunshine and an air temperature of 6/7⁰. After a round of capsizes last
weekend in the strongest winds of the series so far, a refresher on procedures
was undertaken in the clubhouse before the racing. Some unique scenarios had
arisen which needed a sharing of minds as to how to best manage them on the
water.
Today’s complication on the water took the
form of a barge carrying a large tonnage of granite rocks into the harbour,
potentially, I think for repairs to the east pier seawall after the storms of ...
Posted 26 Nov 2018, 01:16 by Stephen Oram
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