Royal Lymington Yacht Club Nordic Folkboats Saturday Series Race 4
by Chris Baldwick on 22 May
20 May 2017
The fourth race of the Royal Lymington Nordic Folkboat Series was raced in classic West Solent conditions - a Force 4 to 5 South Westerly wind with a flooding neap tide, which meant that the sea state was relatively flat.
Eight boats started including newcomer Robin Taunt in Jibe – O.
Race Officer, Gerry McCafferty set an interesting course making good use of the West Solent race area. The start line was biased in favour of a port tack start, with a first leg towards the Pennington shore before short tacking up the shoreline and a dash across the tide to mark B in mid channel. Bonnie judged the angle to mark B best, and led the fleet on a fast fetch to Black Rock buoy over on the Yarmouth shore, followed by Padfoot, Madelaine, Lady Linda and Samphire, with a short gap between these five and the back markers.
Black Rock to mark D close to the Lymington shore, was an exhilarating broad reach under spinnaker on port tack, Padfoot and Madelaine showed their mastery of the conditions to get ahead of Bonne at the mark. A gybe in 20 knots of wind saw the fleet then sailing east to Solent Bank buoy in an increasing wind, where Madelaine showed great down wind speed under spinnaker to lead Padfoot and Bonnie at the mark. The fleet then went inshore to mark G and a series of short tacks along the shore to avoid the worst of the adverse tide to the Platform finish.
On this final beat, in the last few tacks, Padfoot managed to pass Madeleine to win in just over an hour and a half followed by Bonnie, Lady Linda and Samphire with the back markers some two minutes behind.
A great day's sail on a sparkling Solent with a steady 20 knots gusting on occasion to 27 knots... perfect Nordic Folkboat conditions!
Results can be found on the RLymYC website Folkboat section here.