Monday Evening Dinghy Racing at Royal Lymington Yacht Club - Day 4

RLymYC Monday Evening Dinghy Racing © Keith Willis

For this Monday evening's dinghy race at the RLymYC, race officer Ken Hay and his team took full advantage of the force 4 south westerly breeze, sunshine and rising tide to send the fleets out for a good blast around the Solent.

First off were the Optimists, running down river in the fresh breeze to stay ahead of the outbound ferry. Tom Ling did well to finish first ahead of Jake Stokes, closely followed by Ollie Baddeley and Hugo Anderson after a long battle back up river in the now-dying breeze.

The LR Scow fleets headed into the Solent on a close reach towards a first mark laid close to Baverstock. From there the course towards the Oxey shore was a beat to windward against the flooding tide. The downwind run back to the first mark gave crews a few minutes to relax before heading back to windward and then back to the mouth of the river on a broad reach. The fleet closed up as the wind decreased in the river above the wave barrier and the competition for places was maintained all the way to the finishing line.

The Gold Fleet winners were Jo and Freya Hutchinson beating Rory Paton into second place with Eric Williams third. In the Silver Fleet Nigel Russell and Claire Sowry were first followed by Pel Bruce and third was John Evans.

Euan Etheridge and William Homewood in their Feva made the best start in the Slow Handicap. Fellow Feva sailors Alex Paton and Jasmine Summers were perturbed at the start by a bee in the cockpit, so were slow to hoist their spinnaker. But in the end the race was dominated by the Laser 4.7s, led by Isabella Drewitt who finished just seconds ahead of George Smith and Ewan Horn.

The Medium fleet was also not a spinnaker boat's race: the best start went to Mike Saqui's Laser Radial, while Richard Russell and Sylvia Weger took line honours in their Tasar. The Tasar's race was helped somewhat by a Feva parked head to wind at No.10 post, which provided a convenient obstruction to wipe off the rest of the fleet. In the end Karl Thorne's storming lead out of the river in his Aero helped him take first place on corrected time ahead of the Tasar. John Claridge and Pete Sanders finished a few seconds later in their Seafly for third.

The decent breeze at the beginning of the race favoured the skiffs in the Fast fleet. After a promising start by Rob and Jan Martin and Liam and Julie Willis in their respective RS400s, they were left behind by the trapeze boats on the long planing run east down to "G" buoy. Abby Keitley-Hanson's valiant first attempt at helming Steve Homewood's twin-trapeze trimaran provided some spectator sport, with two capsizes and a broken tiller extension, letting Nigel Walbank's Musto Skiff through to third (one capsize) behind Luke and Emma McEwen in their RS800 first and the Martins in their RS400 second.

Full results at rlymyc.org.uk/OnTheWater/Racing/Race_Results.aspx