1 November 2012
Irish Fireballs get back to racing!
After an approximate seven week break since their last regatta, the Irish Fireball fleet will take to the waters of Dun LaoghaireHarbour this Sunday, 4th November, to start the winter-long Frostbite Series. This is a series of Sunday races held inside the harbour, unless the weather is very benign, between November and March with the exception of the Sundays either side of Christmas.
The Sundays before Christmas count as one Series, the Sundays after Christmas count as a second Series, and the winter-long event counts as an overall Series. In recent years the turnout for the races has been as strong as our summer fleets, but there is a suggestion that the numbers registered for the 2012/13 running are down on previous years.
The format is quite simple. A short frenetic course is sailed inside the harbour, generally multiple laps of a triangular course, before everyone retires to the Dun Laoghaire Motor Yacht Club's premises for soup and rolls and a port mortem of the race.
The daily prize is a set of DMYC mugs, with the rule that only one set of mugs can be won by a boat across the series. So the race winners on Sunday 1 get their mugs and if they win on Sunday 2, the mugs go to the 2nd placed boat in Race 2. The DMYC mugs have iconic status with many Irish Fireballers having mugs for each year going further back than they might prefer to!
After a relative mild September and October, air temperatures in Dun Laoghaire dropped radically yesterday and the major newspapers in Ireland carried pictures of snow-covered mountains in Donegal and Sligo yesterday. DublinBay today is not an appetizing site for Fireballers - grey with white horses and a very cold westerly breeze!
