XOD Saturday Series at Royal Lymington Yacht Club - Race 1

Lymington XOD Saturday Series race 1 © Lymington XOD Class

A chilly, shifty force two to three north easterly greeted the ten intrepid XODs which made it out for the first race of the season.

Race Officer Ken Hay and team sent the fleet from a Platform start across to Black Rock, just off Yarmouth on a run / broad reach and from there on a beat back to Colten, just to the West of Lymington River entrance, and through the Platform gate to Berthon and more. Most of the fleet chose to start near the pin end of the line with Stuart Jardine in X119 Lone Star half way down the line and Steve Adshead in X63 Astra furthest to leeward. The line was well set with no clear advantage to either end.

The fleet advanced across the Solent towards Yarmouth pretty well in a line. It was neck and neck; at one moment the windward boats looked to have the edge only for the leeward boats to nudge forward and look good and then to drop back. At Black Rock Ado Jardine in X140 Lucrezia from the windward group popped round first from the windward group followed by Lone Star from leeward just ahead of David & Fenella Lees in X170 Oyster with the rest of the fleet in crisp close order with barely a gap between them.

With an ever strengthening spring ebb tide the race effectively restarted and the critical, or fatal, decision proved to be whether to tack off early across to the Lymington shore, continue on port into the ebb tide and big chop and work a few shifts out of the main channel before crossing, or free off to get into weaker tide closer inshore and then harden up and carry on up the Yarmouth shore. Leading boat Lucrezia elected to tack off early as they had lost their wind, Lone Star continued on and Oyster headed for the Yarmouth shore. Who got it right? The early tackers found lighter wind and lost out in a big way and the port tackers/middle grounders were able to lee bow the tide. Oyster's route into the Yarmouth shore initially looked quite bad, however as the fleet were swept to the East by the tide this option started to look very good. However, there was another twist in the tail. The group that had lee bowed the tide across to the mainland shore experienced the stronger inshore breeze earlier than those further offshore and this gave them the final advantage to take the top places.

With the fierce tide and variable wind the race officer team sensibly shortened course to give Lone Star the gun ahead of James Markby in X179 Xpeditious and Ian Burr in X164 Diana.

Race 1 Results: (top five)

1st X119 Lone Star - Stuart Jardine
2nd X179 Expeditious - James Markby
3rd X164 Diana - Ian Burr
4th X63 Astra - Steve Adshead
5th X53 Quest - Manfred Schepers