Karate Kid gusts, courtesy of Guinness

Dublin Bay sailors often have to make trade offs. Tide or wind is the most common. This week’s trade off was not really a choice. The sailors were caught between the desire of the Guinness brewery to upgrade their fermenting tanks and the gigantic windshadow cast across Dún Laoghaire harbor by the freighter carrying the tanks.

With the wind blowing from the south-east, there was nowhere to put the windward mark except close to the stern of the ship. Instead of the normal levels of puffiness you’d expect with 20-30 knot winds across the harbor, the zone around the windward mark had Guinness powered Karate Kid puffs. “Wind on. Wind off.”  It was a real challenge.

The windward mark was immediately downwind of this ship. [photo from SID Facebook Page]

The PY race started on a slightly pin-biased line. The RS400, GP14, RS200 and one IDRA started toward the pin end, with the OK Dinghy mid-line and others (including Williams’ Vago, we think) nearer the boat. It all seemed to come out pretty even because there was quite a tight bunch about 2/3 way up the first beat with lots of tacking and ducking.

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In the middle of this the OK Dinghy got its knickers in quite a twist. Unaware that there was about a 20 degree header ahead, the port-tack OK was completely irate at the various RS’s which kept forcing it to tack even further out past what it thought was the port layline. Of course the OK was completely wrong too….the layline wasn’t there at all. Meantime only the GP14 was being sensible and going up the right-hand side to take advantage of the big right shift. Round the windward mark the RS200 was just ahead of the flying GP14 with the OK Dinghy and RS400 behind.

The rest of the race was a battle on all fronts.

The RS200 capsized on the second beat, leaving the OK Dinghy and the GP14 to spend a couple of laps leading the field. They sailed around in tight proximity. Not too bad upwind but it was occasionally hairy downwind, with gybes and inadvertent broaches a constant collision risk. Cheers were heard from the committee boat at one stage when both gybed in formation and both just about managed to stay upright.

Both of the IDRA14s capsized, with Pierre Long and Hazel Rea’s effort captured beautifully on camera.

Tate’s RS400 came on a charge mid-race before getting caught at the gybe mark by a really solid gust. While the OK Dinghy chickened out and tacked around, the spi-wearing RS400 had to go for the gybe and didn’t make it.  The RS200 was hard in pursuit at this stage as well, with Enzo Michel making no more mistakes.

Meantime the GP14 and OK Dinghy battled on. Upwind the GP was spilling wind from main and jib while the OK struggled to balance the power in the big main on the puffy downwind legs.

Only on the 2nd last beat did the OK pull a little ahead of the GP14 and finished a little over 30 seconds ahead on corrected time. O’Brien and Sheridan are now in a strong 2nd place, just one point behind the OK Dinghy in the overall series 2 score.

Having recovered well from their capsize the RS200’s charge brought it to the finish just behind the OK Dinghy on the water, and into 3rd on corrected time.

Williams and Patterson brought their Vago home in 4th place, with Long’s IDRA next.  Tate brought the RS400 to 6th place ahead of the other two surviving SID Vagos, with Monica Schaefer last of the finishers.

The results are here.

All in all, a challenging day as you can see from the pics. There were several boats scored DNF too, which is hardly a surprise given the wind.

Again, most pics are from the DMYC Facebook page. Great photos guys!!