Portmore Insurance Royal Lymington Yacht Club Spring Series - Day 2

The crew on Boomerang enjoy the racing on the second day of the Portmore Insurance Lymington Spring Series © Hannah Neve

The weather for The Royal Lymington Yacht Club's second weekend of racing (luckily) did not live up to its billing. Predicted wind speeds of 30-35 knots largely blew through overnight and the racers who listened to the forecast missed out on flat water and a warmish 15-17 knots.

This unfortunately included most of the RS Elite fleet as the majority of skippers had already made their decision that racing was unlikely to happen and that's especially understandable for those travelling from London or the Home Counties. This then made it easy for Mike Rapson's E'Tu and Martin Wadham's Kiss to match race the starts and pick up the series points! In the first race both boats elected to start on port tack at the pin and Mike Rapson in E'Tu nailed it, hanging head to wind to close the door, timing the bear away and distance to the line perfectly. E'Tu covered Kiss all the way up the long first beat, but Kiss got inside for the rounding at the bottom of the run and held onto that lead. In the second race, E'tu repeated the same start, but this time Kiss shut the door on starboard, forcing E'Tu to duck and they never recovered.

It was the same story of low numbers in the Folkboat fleet but that should not detract from the keen competition in the class with all five starters vying for the frontline honours. Essentially windward/leeward courses were set with slight variations which made for competitive racing. Jeremy Austin's Tak took first place in the first race followed closely by Chris Hill's Padfoot who just managed to pip John Whyte's Scaramouche on the finishing line marginally ahead of Peter Tunney's FlutterBy.

The pecking order in the second race was largely established immediately after the start with Padfoot and FlutterBy going right into the wild blue yonder and Tak and Scaramouche taking the more direct, but perhaps less imaginative, direct route to the George Hotel mark at Yarmouth and thence back to the mainland side with a short windward/ leeward hitch and then to the finish. Tak and Scaramouche held gold and silver places throughout with Padfoot coming back strongly at the end (but alas too late) for the bronze.

The Lymington Handicap Fleet was reduced to just one boat, Richard Truscott's Unity but her main claim to fame was being on the course side for the start of race 4 and having to return and restart. The Committee Boat team were also tested during the start sequence for IRC Class 2 by the IRC Class 1 boat J.A.R., a Cork 1720 owned by Rick Otten which got its rudder caught on the committee boat's anchor chain and was held there for several minutes before being released without significant damage to either boat or without interrupting the starting sequence!

IRC Class 1 were set 2 cascade windward-leeward courses starting at George Hotel with a tight reach in both races to end just upwind of Pylewell. The results for both races were identical; Zarafa first in both, Robin Taunt's Jibe making it to the podium in 2nd and Jitterbug having two 3rds.

In IRC Class 2 Brightwork got the best start, but was soon overtaken by Ray Crouch's Adams 10 Boomerang. The wind strength favoured Boomerang which went on to win both races with Bob and Jon Baker's Brightwork coming second twice and David Lees' Hepzibah third.

Full results can be found here.