Day 1

4 boats on the start line today. Light southerly wind and mild temperature. Today was probably the closest 4 boat racing we had in a long time. Wile Gilbert and Fergal struggled in the really light races, Des and Richie took advantage of their narrower boats to give the TS2s a hard time. Races were not decided until the finish line and each of the 4 skippers won races. Des jib leech line gave him some trouble to tune his jib at first and he lacked speed in the early races. Richie and Fergal progressively tweaking their boats through the races making progress with better speed. Gilbert had his boat tuned up for really light wind and suffered towards the end as the wind though still gentle picked up and his main leech was too open as a result he suffered from poor pointing. All enjoyed this good day and we even almost finished on time...

 

Day 2

Skippers from Cork, Wexford and Dublin made the trip up to Dromineer for this racing day. It was light it was good but it was not the best conditions for wide beam boats who suffered in these light wind conditions - so narrower boats took regularly the front of the pack.

 

Day 3

Here again the 4 usual suspects turned up - and though we all started on A rig as we were optimistic despite the gale warning but since we decided to race in the more sheltered part of the harbour it seems the right rig choice at first. But as we sailed in the first race while up wind was tricky at times, downwind was clearly survival mode and Gilbert managed to get the best of it winning the first race. But then we got some senses and we all changed down to B rig and it was much much better then. With much closer racing which saw Richie really getting better and better each race and he was looking for his race win which eventually came after much determination. It’s nice to see someone relatively new to the class progressing and challenging the top positions. And it was not an easy day by any mean as both Fergal and Des suffered from breakage. It proved to be too much for Des jib swivel as for Fergal the whole rig fell after one of the shroud snapped. But it was nothing that couldn’t be fixed on the pontoon... All in all a great day racing IOM.