Lymington X Boat Week and Autumn Series - Day 1
by John Olliff-Cooper 3 Oct 2017 15:23 BST
30 September 2017
With a flooding tide and fresh westerly breeze, a strong fleet of XODs including visitors from Cowes and Yarmouth, competed vigorously for the port biased start line.
On the nice long beat to A Hurst early leaders were X32 (Paul Woodman and Olli James) in Ibex from mid-line, and X178 Beatrix helmed by guest star Stuart Jardine. Stuart showed that he's back on-song after being off injured during Cowes week by undercutting Ibex to lead at the mark. They were followed by X48 XL (Rory Paton) and X72 Venus (Nick Froud).
Ibex managed to sneak past at D mark, and all looked pretty simple to sail to mark T (Lymington Bank) but then all of the front runners misjudged the tide allowing Jonathan Clark's X53 Gin through into first place.
Despite everyone trying very hard on an excellent course, the places at the front thereafter remained the same.
Autumn Series Race 1 Results: (top five)
1st X53, Jonothan Clark
2nd X32, Paul Woodman and Oliver James
3rd X178, Stuart Jardine
4th XL, Rory Paton
5th Venus, Nick and Roy Froud
Full results can be found here.