8 November 2012
14 boats took to the waters of Dun Laoghaire harbour this afternoon to initiate the 42nd Frostbite Series, hosted and organised by Dun Laoghaire Motor Yacht Club. While there were some concerns about entry numbers in the week leading up to today's start, a late flurry of paperwork saw 17 boats entered for the series.
While Noel Butler & Stephen Oram were, by their own admission, last off the first start line, they went the right way up the first beat by going right to enjoy a lead that was never put under threat. The rest of the fleet went left to varying degrees even though the water conditons at the harbour mouth were less favourable - choppy! Kenny Rumball & David Moran led the chase around the course, closely followed by the Clancy brothers, Conor and James. A "glut" of boats rounded after these three with close quarter sailing going on between Neil Colin & Margaret Casey, Alistair Court & Gordon Syme, Frank Miller & Grattan Donnelly and Louis Smyth & Cormac Bradley.
This latter group exchanged places through the race but at the end, the overall order on the water was; Butler/Oram, Rumball/Moran, Clancy/Clancy, Smyth/Bradley & Colin/Casey. On paper though, Rumball/Moran were credited with an OCS.
Race 1 was an unusually short race of only 3 laps............because a 2nd race was planned!
2 laps of the same course were set for Race 2. Smyth/Bradley were last off the start line this time so repeated the trick of going right. However, the wind had gone slightly more left which meant that the RHS advantage wasn't as pronounced. This left them with work to do. Rumball/Moran took the 2nd race by leading from the first weather mark, chased by Butler/Oram and Luke Malcolm & Shane Divinney. The second chasing group was made up of the same suspects as the first race, but with Louise McKenna & Hermine O'Keefe also joining in with IRL 14719 which changed hands during the summer season and Mike Murphy & son James (14908).
A fouled spinnaker for Butler/Oram cost them time and distance, allowing the Howth Yacht Club youngsters into second. Smyth/Bradley got ahead of the Clancys but were still chasing Court/Syme for 4th. The latter combination got too intimate with the last gybe mark, necessitating turns which opened the door for Smyth/Bradley to hold off the Clancys to the finish.
Race finishing order; Rumball/Moran, Malcolm/Divinney, Butler/Oram, Smyth/Bradley, Clancy/Clancy.
