Royal Lymington Yacht Club Monday Night Dinghy Series - Day 1
by Ann Brunskill 24 Apr 2012 14:43 BST
23 April 2012
April showers
Monday dawned wet and windy but RLymYC Race Officer Stuart Jardine was confident that the centre of the low pressure would be over Lymington in time for the first of the Monday Night Early Series Dinghy races and he was proved correct with 10-15 knots from the north east and flat water.
The flood tide and the backing wind tempted many of the Class 2 sailors to overstand the first mark (Pylewell), but then they had a fast starboard reach towards the starting platform which favoured the boats with asymmetric spinnakers. A few laps of the windward-leeward course later, the fleet headed back up river on the last of the breeze to finish on the Club Line.
In Class 1 Nigel Walbank in the Musto Skiff beat Luke and Emma McEwen in the RS800 by 9 seconds on handicap. Richard Russell and Stuart Watson continued their battle in Class 2 with Russell's RS100 beating the Blaze by 4 seconds.
The LR Scow fleet is already highly competitive and 15 boats turned out. There was a challenging first beat with most people going inshore and the ones who went furthest in lost as there was less wind. Jane Pitt-Pitts led the way to the windward mark but Rory and Alex Paton flicked past and she maintained second place until just before the wave barrier when Adrian Summers got a puff of wind to put her into third.
Hattie Rogers had a convincing win the Optimists as did James Eady in Class 4 in his Laser 4.7.
Full results are at www.rlymyc.org.uk/Racing/Results/results.shtml