#dbscturkeyshoot – The forecast leading up to the final race of the Dublin Bay Sailing Club Rathfarnham Ford Turkey Shoot Series was not looking overly promising writes Kenny Rumball! Windguru was showing gusts of 37kts for Sunday morning. Regardless of this, the INSC made preparations for the forecasted conditions by digging out and dusting off some of the older 'working jibs' a smaller headsail for the 1720s should we be sent racing on the Sunday morning. The reality on the Sunday morning was of a much more sedate wind as the two teams were rigging up which prompted skippers Kenneth and Alexander Rumball to opt for the usual headsails and getting the crews to rig up to more powerful and bigger mast head spinnakers!
The decision as the teams sailed out appeared to be the right one with boat boats taking a spin upwind and then sailing back downwind with the big chutes up. However once these had been dropped, conditions changed dramatically! The beginning of the 37knot forecast ripped down the race track. There was enough time to change the spinnakers to the more manageable fractional kites but the larger jibs had to stay in place...
With a laid weather mark and using the yellow outfall as the gybe mark followed by the pin end as a leeward mark, Fintan Cairns and his team laid an excellent course once again of a triangle, sausage, triangle. The wind being from the West gave a flat sea which the 1720s are much more comfortable in allowing them to power up through the fleets. Initially, INSC1 (Kenneth Rumball), INSC2 (Alexander Rumball), Lady A (Colin Byrne RIYC) and Brian Matthews and team all went out to the left of the course while Martin Byrne and Niall O'Neill both sailing from the Royal st George, took a track out to the right handside, the advantage were minimal but the rounding order at the top mark was Matthews followed by Martin Byrne, INSC2, INSC1, Niall O'Neill &team, Lady A.
With the breeze hard on at this stage none of the 1720s flew kites on the triangular course, few place changes took place up the next beat, however INSC1 which had been struggling for pace up the beat needed to catch up and so threw caution to the wind and hoisted their fractional spinnaker! Niall O'Neill and INSC2 followed suit and the three boats took off, powering their way downwind and reeling in the leaders.
The last beat saw a tight battle at the front with Martin Byrne and Brian Matthews duking it out all the way to the finish! INSC2 came home, 3rd 1720 across the line with INSC1 5th 1720 across the line.
What is fantastic is the majority of crew on both INSC boats were mainly inexperienced racers with little to no experience on race boats or having raced and pushed a performance boat so hard in the extreme weather. All participants on the INSC boats were blown away by the experience with all exclaiming how much they learnt over the 7 weeks of racing and the training day.
With competition amongst the 1720s in the DBSC winter racing hotter than ever, the INSC race training programme is really proving its worth for customers in boats where there is 'no where to hide'. Both INSC boats are planning to compete in the Spring Series so if you want to improve your crewing skills, there is no better racing programme to sign up to.
