Lymington Town Sailing Club Winter Dinghy Series - Race 3
by Karl Thorne 24 Oct 2016 16:54 BST
23 October 2016
Breakfast like a King, and sail like a Champion
With a great breakfast and the finest proper coffee of any sailing club I've ever visited in the UK (and most of Europe) there is always an incentive to get out of bed on a Sunday morning, meet your mates and go dinghy racing at the Lymington Town Sailing Club whatever the weather. Uniquely the Club, benefiting from the Solent micro-climate, races every Sunday of the year – potentially that's a lot of breakfasts.
Conditions for Race 3 could only be described as "getting fruity". A building flood tide to directly oppose a gusty East North-Easterly meant that the Solent Chop was only ever going to get bigger after the start. When the gusts started increasing to 27 knots it meant that racing was limited to 30 minutes for the leaders in each fleet, to ensure everyone was safely back in the River before any real carnage could happen.
Race Officers Karl Thorne and Mike Rose, set a long beat and run for the Fast Handicap boats which included a few 29ers, an RS400, RS700 and B14 at the start. Sadly conditions took their toll and only 3 out of the 8 starters managed to complete the 2 laps of the course - some of these boats can be a real handful in the Western Solent in these conditions, as bearing away into the short steep chop doesn't often end well. Full respect to anyone that gives it a go. A special mention to the 29er sailed by Geoff Havers and William Homewood, William is some way off 29er crew size yet and is normally more at home driving his RS Feva, but they got round without falling over and finished 2nd; although afterwards Geoff reckoned the luffing up round the leeward mark was just as tricky as the bear aways at the top.
The Medium handicap fleet were set a downwind slalom to make sure they had chance to practice their heavy airs gybing technique and not have too far to beat back, understandably there were still a few fallers. In the main the boats in this fleet are able to manage better in these conditions, and this is reflected with 10 finishers out of 14 starters. Including the 2nd placed museum piece of a 420 sailed by Tig Williams and Pete Conway, Pete is somewhere around 80 (nobody quite knows) and still trapezes - although in slightly milder conditions he prefers to helm his International 14 or Musto Skiff. Another Pete, this time Barton, showed a real masterclass and at one stage was two legs ahead of the fleet in his RS Aero 7, and looked disappointed to have been shortened as he crossed the line to take a comfortable win, all the more impressive as he was just back from a hard fought Open Meeting win the day before in his Aero at Chew Valley.
Thanks to the RIB crews who had a cold, busy morning, especially Nigel Walbank stepping in late in the day to make sure we could still go racing.
Race 3 Results:
Fast Handicap
1: RS400 - Mike & June Baker
2: 29er - Geoff Havers and William Homewood
3: RS700 - Richard Keeton
Medium Handicap
1: RS Aero 7 - Peter Barton
2: 420 - Tig williams and Pete Conway
3= Tasar - Richard Russell and Sylvia Weger
3= Seafly – John Claridge and Clare Sleigh