Cantrell Crowley Frostbite Series: Week 6. Report by Chris Doorly
With 12 races completed and only 2 left, overall positions stayed much the same after Sunday’s two races.
Doorly/Green in ‘Deranged’ and Crummy/Burges in ‘Snowwhite’ each won a race in light n-nw winds. All forecasts were for a storm for later in the day but this was definitely the calm before the storm.
In the silver fleet, Michael McCambridge leads at this stage from Peter Sherry and Joe Coughlan but as in the gold fleet a lot can change in the last two races.
Sunday was sunny and cold with an n-nw wind and the tide was flooding for the first race. PRO Ian Mathews set a windward leeward course with 3 laps and got racing started promptly.
Race 11: the boat end was slightly favoured and there appeared to be slightly more wind out to the right. A couple of boats were over the line and had to go back, in a shifty beat things were changing all the time: those who went more left came out in front at the weather mark.
Dooley was first, Tom second, Crummy third and Keith fourth, Doorly/Green were down in about 8th place after having to do penalty turns on the beat. As the boats went right on the run, Doorly threw in a quick gybe set to go to the wind and use the tide. This quickly moved them up the fleet to third.
Keith had moved into first spot with Crummy second. They went to the right mark on the gate while Doorly/Green went left. On the next beat, Keith was ahead and at the weather mark was just ahead of Doorly. Again the gybe to get to the inside lane helped move them into the lead.
At the gate the course was shortened as the wind was getting lighter, Deranged covered the others to win, with Ken getting ahead to take an excellent second after been OCS at the start, with Keith third and Crummy fourth. In the silver fleet, Sherry finished sixth ahead of McCambridge to close the overall gap there.
Race 12: the wind was dying and had moved slightly to the right. The fleet just got away, with the light winds and tide very few were actually up on the line.
There seemed again to be slightly more wind up the middle and to the right of the course. At the weather mark, Tom was first just inside Deranged. On the reach, the wind dropped right off and every one bunched up, at the gybe mark the hooters went to shorten the course.
Ciaran took full advantage of the wide rounding by the lead boats to take the lead, Keith also went high to claim second place, Tom was third with Dave Mulvin fourth.
Joe Coughlan was an impressive fifth, and that result has opened up the silver fleet going into the last weekend.
