Lymington XOD fleet Wednesday Series Race 8
by Roy Froud 13 Jun 2015 07:07 BST
10 June 2015
With the wind in the North East, the race team of Ken Hay and Jim Tenant set a first beat to mark J, Zwerver, off of Sowley. Confusion over timing caused a few boats to be late for the start, however David da Cuhna helming X161, MayDay, and Phil Brewer helming X9, Zest, made great starts at the outer end of the start line to get out into the flood tide as early as possible. This was a testing leg as the wind was against tide, resulting in a somewhat lumpy sea, but it mercifully short as the tide swept the fleet upwind.
The next leg was a spinnaker reach across to the the Island shore and this was spectacular as the wind gusted up to 27knots at times and the XODs were surfing the waves with several place changes occurring. Ado Jardine helming X140, Lucrezia, gybed inside Zest at mark 4 to briefly lead the fleet towards mark C, Colten. Unfortunately a problem with Lucrezia's spinnaker pole end fitting meant that she had to complete the leg and race without her pole, costing her 3 places with Mayday taking the lead.
From mark C there was a short beat to mark E off off Pylewell Lake and this resulted in a few more place changes, however Mayday retained the lead but not without some interesting manoeuvres to avoid incoming boats at the mark with some having to complete more than 400 degree turns!
At the finish less than 20 seconds separated the first 4 boats after nearly 2 hours of racing. Everyone agreed it had been a champagne sail.
Wednesday Series Race 8 Results: (top five)
1st X161 Mayday, David da Cunha
2nd X183 Condor, Phil Hutchinson
3rd X164 Diana, Ian Burr
4th X140 Lucrezia, Ado Jardine
5th X72 Venus, Ray Mitchell
Full results can be found here.