Monday Evening Dinghy Early Series at Royal Lymington Yacht Club
by Ann Brunskill 13 Jun 2013 08:32 BST
3 June 2013
Monday Evening Dinghy Racing Early Series at Royal Lymington © RLYC
The Early Series ended last Monday in near perfect sailing conditions. Only one of the eight races had to be abandoned due to bad weather and there has been an average of over 60 dinghies out each Monday. Luke and Emma McEwen in their RS800 were the overall winners of the Fast Handicap Fleet in Early Series, with Nigel Walbank in the Musto Skiff 2nd.
Peter Saunders took the Medium Handicap in the Seafly with Stuart Watson 2nd in the Blaze. Catherine McGuire and Nicola Putt won the LR Scow class, beating Rory Paton by 6 points with Mike and Ros Urwin third. Ellie Watkins won the Slow Handicap Class. Millie Boyle took first place overall with a very consistent performance followed by Tom Mitchell.
Windward/leeward courses were set by Race Officer Stuart Jardine just to the west of the river mouth and were much enjoyed by all with a testing reach back up to the finish in fickle winds. Classes 1 and 2 had a beat up to Oxey and a very fast run back down to the river. The beat up to a moveable mark off Pennington in south westerly wind for Classes 3 and 4 was challenging as the strength of the flooding tide was seriously misjudged by a number of the Scow sailors.
The rounding of the windward mark looked like a dodgem car ride with boats hitting the mark and taking penalty turns rather to close for comfort to some of those who were making their approach.
Next week there will be a Pursuit Race for all boats and the Late Series starts on the 24th June.
Full results