So, some specks of pre-season dust still flying in the air, but much has settled and we have finally got down to the pleasant business of racing our boats: nailing the starts, roll tacking, catching waves and grand tactical plans up the beat.
This week - one great race courtesy of DBSC - and several more to look forward to this weekend with the George's Friday series kicking off on the 2nd May (18.45 gun) and DBSC continuing on Saturday at 14.00.
But, this week saw the opening Tuesday of the DBSC summer series. The wind looked like yawning off for the evening, but we were pleasantly surprised to see it pipe up in Scotsman's Bay to around 12 knots from the East. Some nice evening sunshine and waves completed the picture .... truly amazing.
A decent turn out of 7 lasers and a Vago had a good clean start from the East pier, and beat through some moderate swell towards Dalkey. The W-L course looked a little short at first, but all became clear as the flooding tide started to exert itself and the windward mark was indeed quite far enough.
The race developed into 2 sub-races; O'Hare, O'Connell and Kenneally went hard right immediately and arrived at the first mark together with Tate just hanging on to them ahead of Dwyer and Walsh. Barry had plenty of ground to make up having snagged his jacket on the boom and having had to endure an unscheduled swim. O'Hare and O'Connell eked out some gains over Kenneally while Tate, Dwyer and Walsh were close together at the bottom mark. Dwyer raced well to lead this group as Tate made the fatal mistake of tacking onto starboard to clear his air from the Vago.
Kenneally did well to pull back some ground on the leading pair with the win looking a sure thing for O'Hare as he lead on the final downwind leg. However, disaster struck at the leeward mark as Gary found a personal WTF lull in the wind. O'Connell grasped his opportunity as he caught a lift that took him inside O'Hare and went on to take a well earned gun. Dwyer and Walsh battled it out for 4th and 5th respectively, with Tate and Barry (who later confessed in the bar to having had a second swim) completing the card.
All in all a super night's work by the race committee and patrol team and some happy sailors sailed home with big intentions of making up places in the races to come.
Finally a call to arms - 7 lasers and a Vago was a good turnout - there are plenty of more we look forward to seeing soon - get cracking, it looks like we are going to have some great, close racing this summer!
Let's see some 420s and RS's and OK Dinghies and Finns and so on and so on. The boats are out there.
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