Home hopefuls look to heavens
As the sixth race was sailed yesterday, the single event discard came into force and sins and poor results of the past instantly became forgotten.
From the top down, class by class had little in significant changes.
Dutch veteran skipper Piet Vroon’s Tonnerre de Breskens romped home as usual, leaving her smaller rivals in classzero to duel happily amongst themselves leaving this division fairly clearly decided, at least as far as the winner goes. Michael Bartholomew’s South African entry Tokoloshe held sway over former Crosshaven sailor Jamie McWilliam, now representing Hong Kong on his own Ker 40-footer Peninsula Signal 8, with the pair holding second and third overall.
Best of the home fleet continues to be Kieran Twomey’s Gloves Off, though the RCYC haven’t shown the form of their opening races since Monday and are poised to hand over fourth place to visitor Mark Devereux’s Brevity unless the fresher winds expected today can offer something different.
With 10 of the 15-strong class one boats racing close to level or within a few points of one another on IRC handicap, today’s racing will be decisive in terms of tomorrow’s single Harbour Course race.
Richard Fildes’ Welsh entry Impetuous is back in the lead of the class after the discard took care of Tuesday’s disqualification, though a fourth place yesterday didn’t quite match the run of four bullets in their score sheet.
Conor Phelan’s Jump Juice from the RCYC is principal challenger, counting second, third and fourth places for the series so far, but perhaps will need another gear to shift the visitor from top spot.
Richard Goransson’s Inga from Sweden had a seventh yesterday but had already used his discard to deal with a disqualification from Tuesday after a mark-rounding incident.
Amongst class two where the J109 one-designs are holding a poorly attended national championship, their presence has swelled the ranks of this busy class to 25 boats. For the third consecutive day, John Hall’s J109 Something Else leads overall in the class and championship while Ian Nagle and Paul O’Malley’s’ RCYC entry Jelly Baby has yet to find a way of edging out the Dun Laoghaire boat.
Of all the nine classes taking part this week, none is as closely contested as class two in the non-spinnaker fleet where three boats are tied for the lead after five races.
John Hayes’ Minstrel, Tom McNeice’s Minx III and Conor O’Donovan’s Xtension are all on 16 points, though fourth-placed Bryan Heffernan’s Aisling (14) could yet threaten as he has so far won twice.
Weather for today is expected to turn completely opposite to the past three days with rain replacing yesterday’s gleaming conditions and a shift in direction towards the east with fresh winds likely to deliver lumpy seas.
Expectations that tomorrow’s finale could be a windy affair have been dampened by the weak low pressure system due in from the Atlantic that is likely to deliver further unstable weather for the racing, possibly giving an edge to the local crews as the final race is sailed mostly around the Inner Harbour area and close to Roche’s Point.
