XOD Week Regatta at Royal Lymington Yacht Club
by John Olliff-Cooper 27 Jul 20:14 BST
Lymington XOD Week Regatta © RLYC
30 XODs competed for Lymington XOD Week honours, kindly sponsored by Ocean Safety and Sanders Sails.
After Saturdays racing was abandoned due to big seas in wind-against-tide and an increasing south-westerly, the sailors had more time to prepare for James and Carolyn Markby's fabulous garden party with, support from James and the local Beachcomber Gin company.
All that late night 'preparation and practice' lead to some very sore heads on Sunday, when we had two intense windward/leeward type courses to cope with. Fast out the traps, perhaps aided by their Saturday evening activities, were Max Crowe's X33 Claire de Lune, ahead of our party host James and his X179 Expeditious, and Jo Hutchinson's Condor X183. Race two saw a visitor leading the way with David Palmer from Ichenor in Princess Jalina X188 wining ahead of Jonathan Clark's X78 Fury, and X33 Clare de Lune.
On Monday John Whyte and his team aboard Malcolm McKeag's committee boat, Chinook, set a couple of excellent longer courses. Jonathan Clark's Fury team were on fire with two bullets. Also consistent was Rory Paton's XL with a second and a third. Paul Woodman and Ollie James' Ibex X32 showed great pace to score third in race 3, whilst Eric Williams in Mersa showed everyone his navigational nous, only to lose out to Fury in the second race.
Tuesday brought an altogether more difficult challenge with a fickle easterly. Our race team set two fantastic courses including a long foray east to Hampstead Ledge. Class captain Steve and Isobel Adshead's Astra sailed a faultless race to a clear win ahead of XL with Phil and Jo Brewer's X9 in in third. In the second visitor Penny Fulford's flying X58 Madeleine from the Cowes division cleverly managed to find all the marks to chalk-up a dominant win. XL and Zest showed great consistency to finish second and third again.
Wednesday and the breeze was up. X188 sailed a flawless race 1 winning easily from Condor and Claire de Lune. Because of the discard situation XL still needed to beat Fury in the last race whist being in the top five. After mistakingly going back for what she thought was a general recall, luck was on her side as many misjudged the turning tide. Zest sailed off for a commanding win with XL second ahead of X32 Ibex and Roger Yeoman's charging X50 Xcitation.
Overall our race team supplied us with excellent racing, and the Royal Lymington's friendly staff provided cake, tea and beer. This proved to be a fantastic regatta, with great prizes courtesy of Sanders Sails and Ocean Safety.
Overall results:
1st XL - Rory Paton, Stuart Paton, Rodney Charman and Amanda Paton
2nd Fury - Jonathan Clark, Henry Bagnall and Jonathan Clark
3rd Princess Jalina - David Palmer, Jamie Lee, Damian Ash, Pete Mitchell
4th Zest - Phil and Jo Brewer Debbie Miles
5th Claire De Lunne - Max Crow, Jeremy Baker, Mike Crow