Sports Council funding has enabled Dublin Bay Sailing Club (DBSC) to purchase an £80,000 committee boat, leading to the most fundamental changes to courses in the club's 119-year history.

Hand in hand with the purchase of the 33-foot catamaran, the south-city race organisers - one of the biggest yacht racing club in Europe - have embarked on an ambitious new range of courses devised by a top Dun Laoghaire-based sailor that will offer up to 752 new course options - all with windward starts - for both Saturday and midweek keelboat racing.

DBSC is the umbrella club that organises racing for Dun Laoghaire's four waterfront clubs, Dun Laoghaire MYC, Royal Irish YC, Royal St George YC and the National YC. It also organises popular Irish Sea keelboat weekend championships.

The decision to introduce this and other innovations follows the findings of a survey of the club's 1,200 members at the end of last season.

The club's 300 boats race midweek on Tuesdays and Thursdays and have longer races on Saturday afternoon. Initially, club commodore Fintan Cairns will combine race-hut and floating starts with fleets swapping over on a monthly basis.

Ironically, the fundamental changes come in spite of a satisfaction rating of 83 per cent for traditional starts from Dun Laoghaire's West pier.

Nevertheless there is widespread belief that the changes will breathe new life into club racing. The architect of the new courses is one-design champion Tim Goodbody, a former commodore of the Royal Alfred YC, and someone with a lifelong experience of the vagaries of Dublin Bay's fickle breezes.

The twin hulled 16-foot wide committee vessel, which was purchased in Britain with the sports council grant and support from Dublin Port, is ashore in Kinsale Boatyard awaiting modification work that includes an auto-winch system for ease of anchoring and race management equipment.

Both fast and slow classes have been borne in mind and organisers are stressing that the new courses are club racing courses and not championship ones.

Primarily the aim is to relieve congestion on mid-week starting lines and to allow race officers more flexibility to redesign courses or to shorten races in dying winds.

There are 24 different courses covering every 15 degrees of wind direction from 000, 015, 030 onwards. For each wind direction there is a choice of 11 courses, giving 264 courses, amounting to 752 possibilities over each race day.

A circle of eight marks has been created with the centre at north mark (M) which is the ninth mark.

The circle has been achieved by laying four new marks - Bligh (F), Asgard (J), Boyd (K) and Saoirse (B) in the western part of the bay with cooperation of the Dublin Port authorities.

Bligh is named after the famous Captain William Bligh, who carried out the first professional survey of Dublin Bay as well as being a superb seaman and navigator.

Asgard (apart from its association with Erskine Childers) was the Viking Paradise - the Viking connection with Dublin Bay being that they had a settlement on Dalkey Island.

Boyd is called after Captain Boyd, who is also commemorated on the East Pier.

Saoirse was the name of the famous yacht in which Conor O'Brien, of the Royal Irish Yacht Club, sailed around the world between 1923 and 1925 under the flag of the new Irish Free State. On his return to Dublin Bay, he was accorded the exceptional honour of having all DBSC racing cancelled so that members could accompany him in their boats to his mooring.

The circle is based on magnetic bearings from the North mark to become the main area of racing. The diameter of the circle is approximately 1.70 nautical miles and it forms the nucleus of the club's new courses.

Courses now offered include around the cans, trapezoid type courses, Olympic courses, windward-leeward and very short courses of varying types. Finishes, however, will always be at the traditional West Pier line.

The arrival of the new committee boat will eliminate problems encountered by keelboat classes that have gone aground in pre-start sequences caused by a silt-up in the starting area and towards Salthill and Seapoint, north west of Dun Laoghaire harbour.

A likely effect of the new procedures is to telescope starting times that will allow later mid-week starting.