Maudelayne Wins Riverside YC
Stratford Shoal Race
June 27, 2009
Riverside, CT
Bud and Betsy Heerde’s X-34 Maudelayne won the seven-boat IRC division of the 79th Riverside YC Stratford Shoal race on June 27, 2009. Maudelayne’s crew included LYC Member John Lyons and his daughter Katie, a LYC Junior Member. LYC Member Ed Colloton sailed in the PHRF double-handed division in his J/100 Outward Bound.
39 yachts competed in seven divisions. The course for the IRC division was a total of 45 miles, starting off Greenwich, sailing east around Stratford Shoal lighthouse, and returning to Greenwich.
Conditions were generally light. The first division’s start at 1400 was in a southwesterly, and many boats sailed high on a starboard-tack spinnaker reach in expectation of a freshening southerly that never materialized. By the time later divisions started, the new wind, a northwesterly, had begun to fill in from the Connecticut shore. Divisions that had started earlier, including the IRC division, risked being stranded between the two breezes. Maudelayne benefited from having sailed low after the start and was thus able to jibe back to the north and pick up the northwesterly before most of her division. The leg back from Stratford Shoal was a close fetch on starboard tack. Maudelayne, the lowest rated boat in the IRC division, was able to save her time, beating the second-place IRC finisher Afterglow, an Express 37, by 22 seconds on corrected time. Results.
