XOD Wednesday Series at Royal Lymington Yacht Club - Race 10

With a light easterly breeze and a fast ebbing spring tide the challenge for the race officer, James, was to set a completable course. Wisely he kept the 21 boat fleet on the north side of the Solent in, what turned out to be, a windward-leeward race.

The committee boat start was set with a heavy starboard bias in the shallows behind the starting platform. Luckily there was split opinion in the fleet on whether to start right in on the shore and out of the tide or at the heavily wind favoured pin end so there was a reasonable spread of the fleet along the start line. Inevitably there was bunching at the pin end and X72, Venus helmed by Nick Froud tried to find a space where there didn't seem to be any and came together with X119, Lone Star (Stuart Jardine). Otherwise it was a clean start with a pretty good line up.

After about 10 minutes of sailing with most boats on starboard tack there was a predictable pile up as boats rounded the small spit between East Lake and the entrance to Pylewell. A few went aground including X161, Mayday, guest helmed by Fred. From there the fleet sorted itself out with X9, Zest, (the Brewers), "path finding" for the fleet an impressive distance ahead of X183, Condor, Jo Hutchinson with X78, Fury sailed by Jon Clark in third. A long starboard tack ensued up the north shore towards Tanners with the studied concentration in each boat only broken by X5, Madcap, going noisily aground. The Brewers continued to stretch with Jo Hutch also creating some space behind to the third-placed X78.

And so the time came for a courageous crew to test the port tack out into the tide to try to reach Tanners. In true "path finding" mode the Brewers were the first to go. Everyone watched. The wind started to drop from the 8-10 knot range that had got us all this far. The Brewers tacked back onto starboard and stopped, now downwind and down tide of Tanners. No-one else tacked. The Brewers were heard opening their thermos flask.

After travelling another quarter of a mile up the shore Jo Hutch tacked followed by Jon Clark in X78 and X8 Annex (John Morrow). X48, XL, Rory Paton also tacked from further inshore and X42, Julia, Stephen Whiteman bravely tacked below both Annex and XL. The wind then seemed to switch off but after a few nervous minutes it gently restarted from the same easterly direction. The race order around Tanners was X183 Phil Hutch with a considerable lead, X78 also with a good cushion and then X42, X8 and X48 in that order and close together. A slow motion gybing battle then ensued between these three boats with X42 staying offshore and finally gybing tactically onto port tack. X8 and X42 switched places with X42 further inshore. Retirements started to come in over the radio including the courageous pathfinders (the Brewers) and a total of seven boats retired.

With little wind now blowing the course was shortened by necessity at Zulu with the finishing order below. There were three boats finishing within 18 seconds of each other. There were fourteen finishers. Big thanks to the Race Officer and team for getting this race away in such light conditions.

Top five:

1st X183 (Jo Hutch)
2nd X78 (Jon Clark)
3rd X48 (Rory Paton)
4th X8 (John Morrow)
5th X42 (Stephen Whiteman)

Full series results can be found here.