Hippie Wind

Whatever the weather forecast says, Dublin Bay gets the last word in these things.  With a South Westerly wind the committee set a course with a start mark due north of the martello tower and the windward mark in under Teddies ice-cream.  By the end of the race the breeze was back in the south west. As if nothing had changed in the interim. HA!

Back at the start, once more the PY race started in two tranches with the Lasers taking the 2nd gun three mins after the other PY boats. In the first start Tom Murphy's K1 underestimated the strength of the tide and whanged into the committee boat, getting into a right tangle.  Then at the end of the first beat Sheehy's OK Dinghy forgot the offset mark and had to go back to round it correctly, but then that was the end of the non-wind related strangeness as a real hippie wind kicked in.

Wind? Which wind?

By the bottom of the first run Sheehy's OK Dinghy was sitting in a near dead lull and watching the Lasers charge downwind behind him along with the Vago. Then the wind filled in again and everyone sailed a tight and evenly competitive beat. Ronan Kenneally, that Cork fella, sailed fast up the beat and had nearly caught Sheehy's OK Dinghy by the end, with both of them extending slightly on the rest of the pursuing Lasers. 

The beginning of the last run was normal and the run saw Kenneally gliding past the OK Dinghy, with the rest of the Lasers again bringing more wind with them down the run. 

Then it all went wobbly. 

Kenneally was working to pass the leading IDRA14s when the wind turned off and - after some indecision - flicked right round to become an easterly. The run became a beat and boats struggled to round the leeward mark on a beat against a whooshing spring tide. Kenneally and Sheehy made it, followed by Galavan who'd seen breeze where it shouldn't be and had gone right over to the north to grab breeze and to leave O'Hare and the rest gasping for air near the mark.

Even after you got past the mark you weren't safe as the mounting tide and dropping wind could easily sluice you past the finish line completely if you weren't careful.

After having had the whole fleet within 50m of each other not 100m from the last mark, the final results show the huge spread of times at the finish. Boats that had been within feet of each other finished the race up to 10 minutes apart.

But it was good fun nonetheless.  And that Cork fella won fair and square, whatever the wind was getting up to.

Results below.

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