Island Trial!!!!!

A great initiative was announced to the dinghy fleets today at the prize-giving of the DMYC Frostbite season.

Paul Keane (and Hugh Sheehy) are organizing an event that's likely to become one of the coolest contests on Dublin Bay. The Island Trial is a novel GPS-based event where every type of boat can enter the same race even if they're not on the course at the same time.

The course is from the mouth of Dún Laoghaire harbor, around Dalkey Island, and back.

Route Outline - The Island Trial

Each boat sends their GPS-track to the contest site and the rankings are calculated from this data. You can pick your moment to suit the wind and tide*. You can enter multiple times. You can enter in multiple boats.  It's just cool.

Rankings will be calculated on absolute time for the "Bragging Rights Cup" and on handicap for the "Handy Sailor Silver Salver"

See more information at the contest site here.

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* - Common sense indicates that there are times you should NOT sail either, nor ever sail alone. 

DMYC Frostbites 2012/13 – Final

As usual recently, there's a write up on the PY fleet activity over on the OK Dinghy site here.

However, this was also the last day of racing for the Laser and Fireball fleets, as well as PY.

The cold windy week hadn't left many people still believing that we'd get one final day of racing in the 42nd DMYC Frostbite series, but there was a good crowd in Dun Laoghaire just in case and ready to race. There were even boats being rigged in a couple of clubs before the final decision had to be taken and racing was cancelled for the day.  A good thing too, looking at the wind data from the East Pier.

25-40 knots. 2 Deg C. Brrrrr...

The prize-giving was accompanied by good spirits, pints of beer, and rather excellent Irish Tapas. Mmmm.

These are the overall top 3 in the PY, Laser and Fireball classes.

Laser	Fireball	PY
Galavan	Rumball	OK Dinghy (Sheehy)
Elmes	Butler	IDRA14 (Long)
Arrowsmith	Clancy	IDRA14 (Hamilton)

Here are the final Series 2 and Overall results for Laser and PY.

Laser:    Series 2           Overall
PY:         Series 2           Overall

So, the end of another DMYC Frostbite season. Hopefully the weather'll get better soon!

Kudos again to the organizers for running a great event. 

SailX Group - DLDinghies leads the way

Apart from pure boatspeed, getting your tactics and positioning right is one of the most important things you can do to win boat races. SailX is a super realistic online racing simulator and has long been used by high level sailors as a great off-the-water way to practice tactics.

SailX now supports a new groups system, which allows private training, practice and coaching sessions. These groups launched earlier this week.  As of today there are 4 groups active.

Two are administrator groups for the system itself. One is the Skandia RYA GBR squad. The other is Dún Laoghaire Dinghies.  And ours was the first non-administrator group that was set up...in the world.

So, if you want to improve your tactics go and sign up to SailX. Then sign up to the DLDinghies group on SailX and we'll start to organize some sessions.  Bad weather doesn't stop you learning how to go fast.

Patrick's Day Racing

The weather forecast for Patrick's Day turned out to be accurate. Cold, occasional rain or even snow, light winds.  Nevertheless, and despite it being a holiday weekend, good fleets appeared in PY and Laser and headed for the course outside the harbor in (vain) expectation of 2 races.

There's a report of the PY racing, complete with full results, on the Irish OK Dinghy Association website here.

The Ryan brothers were sailing Richard Tate's RS400 and made a winning return to the PY fleet, with the fading wind helping them to a big winning margin.  The OK Dinghy was the best of the rest in 2nd and O'Hare's RS400 topped off the podium in 3rd - in a race where the faster boats generally had the best of things.

The Ryan brothers returned in style.

The overall in PY sees the OK Dinghy clear ahead, with a 6 point margin going into the final race.

On the Laser side it was a similarly challenging day, with the wind dropping off dramatically on the 2nd beat and the following two reaches being a great test of light wind skill and the ability to sit still.

Outside the walls - March 3

Sunny weather, light winds and awkward sailing times of the HSS ferry made a trip outside the walls the call on Sunday March 3rd, with the Laser and PY fleets pouring through the harbor mouth en-route to a compact 6-lap course.

The track of the OK Dinghy on March 3 2013

There's a full report on the PY race over on the OK Dinghy website, with the two IDRA14s of Long and Hamilton leading the way, and the Lyttle sisters' 420 in 3rd.

Hamilton in the winning IDRA14

RS200, 420, OK Dinghy at the windward mark

Enzo Michel got 4th in his RS200 and the OK Dinghy struggled home in 5th.  The raw results are here.

The Laser race, where the shifts were just as important as in the PY race, was good because Sean Flanagan finally got the chance to show his speed in conditions that suited him.