K and I went for a walk after my working day finished, and we had some sunshine and clouds for our walk out on the West Pier of Dun Laoghaire. It seems the racing from the hut doesn’t use sound signals any more, so next time I’ll have to take a VHF radio with me to listen in to the starts – was very confusing whether racing was starting or not!
Winds were variable to say the least. The forecast was westerly, the actual wind was easterly at the start, then towards the end of racing it went away, then northerly, then nor-westerly. Boats coming under spinnaker from the direction of the Kish suddenly found themselves in no wind, and then wind coming on from the bow.
A Spanish family passed by, and asked what was going on in the harbour (dinghy racing), and I became a full-on tour guide to the boats, the wind conditions, the jellyfish, a bit of history of the harbour and the Martello towers and more. Turns out they’re a sailing family – at least the children are – so they had some concepts of what was going on, but couldn’t believe that the IDRAs, Lasers, Fireballs etc were all racing in about 5 knots of wind.
On our way home, Harbour Kebab seemed to be an appropriate choice.