With chilly conditions and a building easterly breeze very accurately forecast, the penultimate Sunday of the post-Christmas series of the HYC Dinghy Frostbites kicked off at the weekend to fight it out for the remaining races, and build on any late attempts to climb the leaderboard writes Conor Murphy.
Race Officer Neil Murphy and team set two Olympic courses, and despite a general recall for the ILCAs due to the tide pushing them across the line, the rest of the starts got away cleanly. With wind against tide, and both increasing, the sea state got lumpy and challenging as time went on.
CONSISTENT O’CONNELL
The ILCA 7s saw consistency in Dan O'Connell from Cove of Cork leading each lap of each race, despite pressure from the host club’s Conor Murphy and Colm Cunningham. O'Connell took first in both races, as did Murphy with second, while Colm Cunningham took third in Race 1, and Andrejs Samoilovs took third in race 2, a strong showing for the Malahide contingent.
Rory Lynch of Baltimore on 13 still leads the series, although his absence has shortened the gap to second place Conor Murphy (16) and Dan O'Connell (20). With one more weekend scheduled, anything could happen at the top of the ILCA 7 leaderboard.
The ILCA 6s saw a new race winner in Dave Kirwan of Malahide – usually an ILCA 7 sailor, he dropped to the ILCA 6 fleet, and came away with two race wins. He also finished fourth on the water overall in the combined ILCA fleet in both of the races, showing remarkable speed against the ILCA 7s despite the smaller rig.
By scaling down to the ILCA 6, Malahide’s Dave Kirwan won twice – and was ahead on the water of some ILCA7s while he was at it
Ciara McMahon and Viktor Samoilovs took 2nd in a race each, while Glenda Gallagher took 3rd in each. Tom Fox (Rush) still leads the series on 13 points, with Samoilov (22) and McMahon (28) filling out the rest of the podium spots.
The ILCA 4s had remarkable consistency in their results for both races. Current Irish Optimist National Champion Harry Dunne (Howth) continued his successful transition to ILCAs by winning, followed by Stan O'Rourke, Oleksandr Bezpalyi and Charlie Power in both races.
TOP COACHES REAP REWARDS
Their coaching from Luke Turvey and Rocco Wright is still paying dividends, as the ILCA 4s featured in the first batch of sailors around the top mark, demonstrating great starts and first beat speed & tactics. Overall, O'Rourke (14) leads Bezpalyi (18) and Power (29) heading into the final weekend.
The PY Fleet saw Daragh Sheridan continue his run of form, making it five firsts in a row after winning both races. The triangular courses with fast reaches benefitted the light planing RS Aero, enabling Sheridan to win by nearly 2 minutes on corrected time in one of the races.
The GP14s of Alan Blay and Conor Twohig swapped 2nd and 3rd in each race. Despite winning one of the races by over 3 minutes on the water, the fierce handicap on Jeremy Beshoff's B14 unfortunately meant they didn't feature on the podium. Sheridan (11) leads the series, followed by Alan Blay (16) and Sam Street (26).
RS AEROS AMONG THOSE TARGETING ISLAND RACE ON SATURDAY MARCH 9th
One weekend of the regular Sunday series remains, after which all focus shifts to the Round the Island Race on Saturday, 9th March. This iconic race marks the end of the winter season in HYC, and all dinghies with a PY handicap are welcome to take part. With a strong RS Aero entry already, it's shaping up to be a great event. Details and entry are available on www.hyc.ie.
Full results for the Dinghy Frostbites are available below