Royal Lymington Yacht Club XOD Saturday Series - Race 11
by John Olliff-Cooper 9 Jul 2019 21:11 BST
6 July 2019
23 teams were greeted by perfect conditions with a SW sea breeze of 12 to 14 knots, air temperature in the early 20s and wall to wall sunshine for the eleventh race of the Saturday Points series.
This is arguably the most competitive One Design racing in Lymington, if not the whole Western Solent!
With the tide just starting to run to the West, the fleet started with an upwind leg to B (Pennington). The early leaders seemed to be 179, 32 and 33. However, by the time the fleet reached the first mark the ebb tide was well away, which caught out a few boats. James Markby with his star team of Ben Paton and Alex Hayman judged the approach perfectly and set off on the long downwind leg to G (Tanners) with a good lead.
There were plenty of tactical decisions to be made on this long leg against the tide, and the fleet closed up. In the end it was the legendary Stuart Jardine who rounded first, but then lost a few places on the following upwind leg to C (Oxey).
The top 6 boats were now very close together indeed. By the penultimate mark S (Sanders) Rory Paton in 48 showed some true genius and slipped around the lead pack to turn first, before a short fetch up to the finish line.
In the end, not much more than a minute that separated the first six boats! One Design racing does not get much better than this!
As ever, many thanks to the superb race team of Paul Stickley, Alastair Wilson and James McGill for putting on a splendid race.
Race 11 Results: (top three)
1) Rory Paton X48. XL
2) Robin Balme X117. X-Ray
3) James Markby X179. Xpeditious
Full race and series results can be found here.