XOD Ladies Race, Hands Cup and Lone Star Race at Itchenor Sailing Club

Itchenor XOD Ladies Race © Alastair Shaw

The XOD is a beautiful, wooden, one-design day boat that is sailed at six different locations around the Solent. On Saturday 17 August 2024 Itchenor XOD's had their Ladies Race, Hands Cup (a race for those crew who do not usually helm), and the Lone Star race for helms to sail single handed.

Four boats made it to the start line for the Ladies Race. Christine Graves, who usually sails Swallows, was helming X32, Amanda Heath was helming X101, Katie Evans took charge of X71, while Celia Hansell was steering X189. Unfortunately after drifting around for an hour or so, both the Ladies Race and the Hands Cup had to be postponed to another day due to lack of wind.

Luckily by the afternoon the sea breeze had kicked in with about 12 knots from the south-west making for a glorious afternoon's sailing on a warm summer's day. The six boats all made great starts beating down the harbour to the John Davis mark with a strong ebb tide. The early leader was Tom Watkins sailing X50 closely followed by Gerald Cheyne in X184. Steve Dover, sailing X32, followed them over to the left side while David Priscott in X101, Nick Andrews in X177, and John Tattersall in X132 tacked off to the right.

Being single handed all boats kept tacking to the minimum and sailing with the ebb tide made tactics a little easier, but there seemed to be gains made by keeping to the stronger tidal stream. The lead was shared at various times by X50, X32 and X177 with X50 leading around the windward mark closely followed by X32 and X177. Being single handed no spinnakers were allowed so the run back to the Rookwood mark was slower than normal with X32 rounding first followed by X177 and X50 with X101, X184 and X132 not far behind.

During the second beat back to John Davis, X177 took a small lead with X50 just ahead of X32 at the mark. The run back up the harbour against the ebb to the finish involved crossing the tide several times and allowed some different tactical decisions to be made. At Park, the last mark, X177 had managed to stay ahead of X50 and X32. The two leaders took the left side of the course up to the finish while the third placed X32 went right just on the off-chance. Going right ended up as the way to go with X32 pipping X177 and X50 to the line. Not far back, X101 came forth closely followed by X132 in fifth place and X184 in sixth.