Viking Marine Frostbite Series 2 at Dun Laoghaire Motor Yacht Club - Day 14
by Ian Cutliffe 21 Feb 09:54 GMT
18 February 2024
Stephen Oram and Paul Phelan - Viking Marine Frostbite Series © Alyson Orr
Races 13 & 14 of the Viking Marine sponsored Frostbites in Dun Laoghaire Harbour saw a change of Race Officer with DMYC Commodore, Ian Cutliffe, taking over the reins of race management from Cormac Bradley who had the day off.
A fleet of 43 boats enjoyed two Olympic courses of three and four laps respectively and with the wind in the West, post-race comment was that there were big shifts on the water and at the start of the second race a major shift.
As this correspondent was off the water, I can only report the results and make comment on the finishing order of the PY fleet where the quest for a combined win on the water and a win on elapsed time is a recurrent theme between the Fireballs and Aeros.
Seventeen boats contested Race 1 which had a "run-time" of nearly twenty-eight minutes. First over the line was the Fireball combination of Alastair Court & Gordon Syme (15156) leading home a quartet of Fireballs in the form of Louise McKenna & Hermine O'Keeffe (15016), Owen Sinnott & Grattan Donnelly (14865), Neil Colin & Margaret Casey (14998) and Paul ter Horst & crew (14790) all of whom finished ahead of the first Aero.
Noel Butler, in turn led the Aeros home with a near two-minute margin on the next Aero, Damien Dion, with Roy van Maanen, Stephen Oram and Paul Phelan the next in line. The IDRA 14 of the Long family finished 4:32 down on Court & Syme. On corrected time however, the podium places were shared, in order, by Butler, Long and Court.
The same number of boats started the second race and again a quintet of five Fireballs occupied the first five finishing places on the water, spanning 4:39. The last of these beat Butler on the line by a second. Yet again, however, Butler did enough to take the win on elapsed time over Court & Syme, with Sarah Dwyer (Aero), the Longs, and Paul Phelan (Aero) taking the remaining top five places.
In overall terms three Aeros are top of the log - Butler (6pts), Dwyer (26pts), Oram (28pts) with the Longs (33pts) and Court & Syme (40pts) closing out the top five.
The ILCA 7s had another high percentage turnout for both their races - 10 boats from a possible 13! Conor Byrne took the day's honours with two wins, while Theo Lyttle and Brian O'Hare shared the balance of the podium places, Lyttle scoring 3,2 and O'Hare 2,3. In Race 1 fourth and fifth went to Niall Cowman and Chris Arrowsmith while in Race 2, Arrowsmith jumped to fourth with John Marmelstein taking fifth.
Lyttle leads the overall standings on twelve points, three ahead of O'Hare who has a five-point cushion on O'Byrne. Gavan Murphy and John Marmelstein with scores in the thirties close out the top five.
Darren Griffin took the day's honours in the ILCA 6s with two bullets. Hugh Delap would have been second overall on the day with a 2,4 with Justin Geoghegan pipping Judy O'Beirne for the last podium place for the day with a 5,3, compared to Judy's 4,5. Shirley Gilmore and Conor Clancy also had top five finishes but only in one race each, a third in Race 1 and a second in Race 2 respectively.
In overall terms Griffin leads the fleet on ten points followed by Clancy (16pts), Delap (23pts), Gilmore (31pts) and Michael Norman (43pts).
Frostbite Mugs were awarded for the previous Sunday - Hugh Cahill and Michael Norman (ILCA6s) - and if memory serves (because I don't have Neil Colin's notes to hand), Mugs for the day's racing went to Damien Dion (Aero, R1), Owen Sinnott & Grattan Donnelly (FB, R2), Brian O'Hare (ILCA 7, R1), Niall Cowman (ILCA 7, R2), Judy O'Beirne (ILCA 6, R1) and Justin Geoghegan (ILCA 6, R2).