On the Friday of last week, I exchanged WhatsApp messages with Brian Mulkeen in respect of the weather forecast for Frostbite Sunday. Just after noon on Friday, the respective forecasts from XCWeather and Met Eireann were as follows;

And the most recent reading from Dublin Bay Buoy, at that stage, was showing wind strength at over 40 knots with gusts in excess of 50 knots. By Saturday evening the contrast between the two forecasters hadn’t improved and if I were relying exclusively on XCWeather, I would have cancelled at that stage. But given what Met Eireann was suggesting we decided that we would wait until the following day before making a final decision. The Sea Area Forecast at midnight Saturday didn’t give any great certainty as to what we might get the following day.

Sunday dawned clam in my neck of the woods with no movement in the trees as I hit the pavement at 09:30. That sense was compounded when I arrived at the waterfront, the inner harbour was a flat calm! A competitor from the Turkey Shoot indicated that it had got very flat in the latter stages of their racing.

The race team went afloat without a fixed timetable given that we didn’t know what was happening in the racing area. When we did get there, what little breeze there was, was coming from a westerly direction – consistent with the forecast. Initially we were recording 5 – 7 knots but as a rain squall came in this ramped up very quickly though the low teens, the mid-teens and into the high twenties (28 knots), at which point I was considering calling it all off even though a windward-leeward course had been set. A number of stalwart Frostbiters were indicating that it was touch and go, but just as quickly as the wind had got up it dropped again to the just over twenty and then into the high teens. My initial decision was to sail one race and see how the afternoon worked out. If the wind stayed up, we would call it quits after one race and then head home.

An understandably reduced fleet were given a generous start line to facilitate clean starts and the favoured tactic was a starboard tack to the far side of the harbour (inshore) and up the port-hand side of the beat to a mark just inside the end of the western breakwater.  In the PY Class, the solitary two-hander was the GP14 of Sean Craig & Stephen Boyle accompanied by five Aeros, Messrs, Butler, Oram, van Mannen, Phelan and Harris. Discretion played the better part of valour for the GP14 with no spinnaker flown on the first downwind leg. But as the wind eased marginally, the grey spinnaker appeared in the second and third downwind legs. Two other two-handers, an RS200 and a Fireball decided that enough was enough and went home for an early shower. In an understandably fast paced race, Noel Butler took the win on the water with an elapsed time of 22:32, while the GP14 came in 1:23 later with Roy van Mannen a further 47 seconds down. Butler saved him time on the GP14 with van Mannen taking third on handicap.

The ILCA 7s and 6s had single figure fleets but enjoyed close racing on the course with some spills along the way.  One ILCA lost its rig and was towed home before the racing started and for the second race of the day, an ILCA 4 joined the fray.

The results for the ILCA 7s would see the same three boats feature in the podium places with Matteo Valentini leading home Hugh Delap and Theo Lyttle in the first race.

In the ILCA 6s, three boats occupied the podium places in both races, with Conor Clancy taking the honours in the first race from Darren Griffin and John O’Driscoll.

By the end of the first race the wind had dropped to the low teens (10 – 12 knots) which meant that a second race would be manageable. However, given the exertions of the first race, a two-lap race was notified with the course staying as was.

In handicap terms Craig & Butler got revenge on Butler with the GP14 taking the win from Butler and van Mannen.

In the second race for the ILCAs, the same finishing order was repeated in both classes – Valentini, Delap and Lyttle in the 7s and Clancy, Griffin and O’Driscoll in the 6s.

Racing was completed by 15:30. On leaving the DMYC after the daily prize-giving, at approx. 17:15 the wind had ramped up again, with the rigging of the boats on the hard whistling to a very cold westerly.