Nordic Folkboats racing at Royal Lymington Yacht Club
by Chris Baldwick 26 Jul 2016 11:14 BST
23 July 2016
A solid sea breeze of 15-18 knots greeted ten Nordic Folkboats for the RLym YC Saturday Points Race on July 23rd.
The Race Officer, Ken Hay, tried to take advantage of near perfect conditions to set a longer course including a leg to the Island shore, but his plans were thwarted by a fog bank rolling in from the west just a few minutes before the start. He prudently decided not to send the fleet across the main channel, giving the fleet a simpler two lap windward-leeward race between Pennington and Tanners.
A start line was laid with a bias accounting for the building ebb tide. The favoured end proved to be by the platform with Crackerjack and Bonnie making the best of the short beat to Pennington, while Riot and Samphire found the tidal advantage of the pin end was not as much as they hoped. Naturally, by the time of the revised start the fog had dispersed!
Most of the fleet then headed for the mainland shore to avoid the building ebb tide on the run to Tanners. However, there seemed to be a little more breeze to seaward and Samphire and Padfoot gained to follow Crackerjack round the leeward mark.
Crackerjack skilfully managed the choppy conditions to stretch her lead, but there was close racing between Padfoot, Bonnie, Tak and Samphire on the second circuit. Crackerjack maintained her lead, while Bonnie managed to pull through to second by staying inshore on the second spinnaker run to Tanners.
Bonnie correctly judged the final layline into the finish to take second behind Crackerjack, with Tak, Samphire and Padfoot overlapped as they crossed the line in that order.
It was good to see Madelaine on the water again after being dismasted on the Round the Island Race.