Wednesday XOD Series at Royal Lymington Yacht Club - Race 9
by John Olliff-Cooper 1 Jul 2017 12:25 BST
21 June 2017
A bit of Midsummer Madness!
Race 9 of the Lymington XOD Wednesday Serues was sailed in beautiful sunny conditions with en ebbing tide. The fun started with the race officer displaying a splendid course to S (Sanders Sails) to Z, twice round with a moveable mark N marked as the final windward mark from which the fleet would beat to a Platform finish.
As the Easterly wind of about 8 knots started to struggle against the SW sea breeze it became a real battle to find any wind at all!
The early leaders were Phil Brewer in Zest, Rory Paton in XL, Bill Dunsdon in Beatrix, Fenella Lees in Oyster and David da Cunha in Mayday. By the time the fleet reached Z for the first time the order remained Zest, XL, Beatrix, Madcap (Chris Torrens) and Persephone (Richard Field). This order remained unchanged until S was rounded for the second time.
However at this point the wind collapsed and the key decision was whether to stay offshore or look for wind on the mainland shore. Madcap, Persephone and Mayday went for the inshore route while Zest, XL, Gleam (James Meaning) stayed out in the mainstream. The wind filled in first from the east inshore leading to a very tight and exciting run to Z where the race officer very wisely decided that further punishment was not a good idea, and shortened the course to finish the fleet at Z.
This led to an extremely tight finish, with Madcap just beating Persephone followed very closely by Zest, Mayday and Beatrix, with a complete bunch of XODs all finishing at once in the middle of the line. It must have been very tricky for the writers to accurately determine the middle order of the 19 starters.
XOD racing doesn't tenser than this!
Race 9 Results:
1st Madcap – Chris Torrens
2nd Persephone – Richard Field
3rd Zest – Phil Brewer
4th Mayday – David da Cunha
5th Beatrix – Bill Dunsdon
Full Lymington XOD Series Results can be found here.