It’s little less than a week to go until the 2015 DBSC Turkey Shoot kicks off and we’re all just about ready for racing.
Kenneth Rumball is fresh back from Malta and the Rolex Middle Sea Race where Kenneth and crew finished third in class IV aboard XP-act. It’s the time of the year when boats start to come out of the water. Anyone who commutes on the DART in the morning will have begun to see 1720 rigs beside our workshop in the coal harbour. However, as some of the masts come down others stay up, with the 1720s earmarked for the DBSC Turkey Shoot being on the receiving end of some TLC. With hulls washed and sanded down, boats bailed and lines and rigging tuned to race perfection. Final jobs are underway this week by our dedicated maintenance team in our workshop under the direction of Kenneth’s expert eye.
Our programme was started by Kenneth in 2012 as there was an absence of any way for novice and intermediate sailors who wanted to make the step to racing boats to do so without a tedious, work your way up from the bottom approach, necessitated by the high octance world of sailboat racing. Kenneth saw an opportunity to give sailors practical experience in many roles on the boat that would ease the transition from cruiser to racer. Participants DO NOT need to be a highly experienced sailor to compete in this series, what's important aboard is every crew member being comfortable in what they're doing and having the confidence to push the boat under the watchful eye of the Team INSS.ie Race Skipper. We all agreed that a good outcome would be sailors getting out on other boats racing in the bay after a programme, and this was most certainly achieved!
While the INSS crews are most certainly in training, there’s nothing to suggest that they’re slow on the course. The INSS boats are usually at the competitive end of the fleet, if not winning races. In fact this year we aim to build on last year’s success which saw Team INSS win the DBSC Spring Chicken (see video below). Can we go for the double this year? However, winning really isn’t the ultimate success – what we count as achievement is when one of our past sailors sails by us on the race course using their new found knowledge and ability as part of a competitive race crew.
There's one place left on the 2015 DBSC Turkey Shoot Crew. Full information can be found here.
2015 DBSC Spring Chicken...