XOD Wednesday Series at Royal Lymington Yacht Club - Race 18
by John Olliff-Cooper 3 Sep 2018 05:27 BST
29 August 2018
RLymYC XOD Wednesday Series race 18 © RLymYC
The Wednesday race for the Lymington Divisions XOD fleet was a little short on numbers, likely mainly due to the Holiday period, only 13 boats crossed the start line.
The very unpromising forecast of light N or NW winds and quite a strong ebb tide gave the Race Officer Chris Baldwick and his team an unenviable task in setting a good course. Sensibly, he set a running start SE out to "H" Jacksons, almost mid-Solent, against the tide.
As we have seen many times during this unusual summer with its offshore winds, the inshore end of the start line was favoured. X119 Lone Star (Stuart Jardine) took advantage of this by starting on starboard at the inshore end, and gybing immediately to take advantage of the reduced tide inshore.
On this run it became obvious that those sailing only two up had a weight advantage over crews three up It proved to be enough to allow Phil and Jo Brewer in X9 Zest to lead Lone Star around "H" mark, followed by X72 Venus helmed by Nick Froud (3 up) and Madcap Chris Torrens (2 up).
In the fickle winds those four boats steadily drew ahead of the rest of the fleet, opening up a good safe gap of over 1½ minutes, eventually Venus overtook Lone Star, ending the race almost challenging Zest. Madcap too finally passed Lone Star.
Throughout the race Rory Paton in XL48 had been boxed-in but gradually pulled through the fleet finishing 5th, 1½ minutes behind Lone Star, but 2 minutes ahead of Oyster X170 in 6th.
Again many thanks to the Race Team for actually getting a race completed in very light and precocious winds.
Full results can be found here.