The 4th week of the HYC Dinghy Frostbites Spring Series welcomed some new faces to the series. The regular competitors were joined by two further GP14 entrants, building the growing numbers across the classes. A strong westerly breeze, accompanied by a strengthening flood tide going in largely the opposite direction, made for a racecourse with a variety of conditions across it. After a quick postponement, 2 races were completed around triangular courses, with only 1 individual recall for the mostly well-behaved fleet. The 3 ILCA classes started together, and the growing PY fleet had their own start right after them.

The ILCA 7s saw Ronan Wallace and Dan O’Connell fighting for the lead around the race course as usual. While it was neck and neck at the beginning of the 3rd lap of the first race, Dan had to take a penalty, while simultaneously Ronan’s kicker failed. Ronan managed to make it to the top mark in the lead, and limp his boat home while Dan reeled him back in. Ronan did well to just about hold onto the lead crossing the finish line. Conor Murphy got his first podium of the season, but couldn’t get close enough to take advantage of the difficulties in front of him. Some quick jury-rigging between races gave Ronan a makeshift kicker, and he went on to win the second race also. Richard Tate and Andrejs Samoilovs swapped 5th and 6th in each race, while Oisin Hughes took home 4th in both races. A guest appearance from Conor Gallagher added an international element to the day’s racing.

The ILCA 6s saw Marco Sorgassi deliver 2 convincing wins, not only beating the rest of the ILCA 6s, but also most of the ILCA 7s! Dave Kirwan again opted for the ILCA 6 instead of the 7, and was a close 2nd in the first race, while in the second race, an individual recall and a capsize allowed Dan O’Hare to take 2nd . Marco has a 6 point lead in the series after 8 races, and with 10 more races to go, there are still plenty of opportunities for the fleet order to change.

The ILCA 4s were fresh from some training on Saturday with HYC’s Aoife Hopkins, although there were very different conditions between the 2 days! Charlie Keating improved on his showing last week with two first places, while the rest of the fleet swapped places between the first and second races. In the series overall, Aisling Kelly maintains her lead over Riaghan Boardman and Viktor Samoilovs. Time will tell if some of the more recent entrants can climb the leaderboard by the end of the series.

The PY Fleet grew again with the addition of Alan Blay’s GP14 from Sutton Dinghy Club. However, Blay could only manage 2nd in both races against Daragh Sheridan, who made the most of the breeze to blast down the reaches and runs in his RS Aero to take two 1sts. Matthew Cotter was joined by Aoife Hopkins in their GP14, but gear failure on the water didn’t allow them to compete in the racing. Mike Evans’ RS800, Peter Boyle’s GP14 and Jeremy Beshoff’s B14 rounded out the rest of the fleet.

Full results from the day and series are available here. There are 5 more Sundays and 10 more races in the series, as well as the annual Round the Island race on Saturday 11th March, so be sure to join in the growing winter Dinghy fleets.