Competition is always close across many Cowes Week classes, but few can rival IRC Class 3, where Adam Gosling’s JPK 10.80 Yes! and David Franks’ J/112e Leon have been match racing each other all week and are only two points apart at the top of the leaderboard after five races. Franks won today’s race, just 51 seconds ahead of Yes! on corrected time, while Frank Lang’s X40 Optim’x took third.
“We’ve had a very close battle right through the week with Yes!,” says Franks. “It’s nip and tuck all the time – we’re match racing for first place. Today we both got good starts, with Yes! a bit closer inshore. We got ahead and I was trying to keep him behind, as you do when match racing. Adam is an excellent sailor – he was an Etchells world champion and has sailed a lot with Sid, Sir Ben Ainslie’s Olympic coach.
“Adam got ahead near the last windward mark, so I was following him then, trying to stay as close as possible.” While Yes! took line honours, Leon has a marginally lower rating and won on corrected time. “It was a fair course and we finished on the outer RYS line, so had little conflict with other fleets. The course setters did a great job.”
Today the faster IRC yachts were competing for the New York Yacht Club Challenge Cup. For most of the Regatta, two TP52 teams, Tony Langley’s Gladiator, which won the world championship in Newport, Rhode Island a few weeks ago, and Peter Moreton’s Notorious, have dominated competition among the big boats. However James Murray’s Botin 42 Callisto took victory today by a comfortable margin.
Only three boats at the entire regatta scored a straight run of first places across their first four races: Rupert Mander and Gareth Edwards’ Flying 15 Men Behaving Badly, Seville Developments’ First 40 Dusty P, skippered by Richard Patrick, in Performance Cruiser Division B and Richard Dilley’s Grand Soleil 46 Belladonna in Performance Cruiser Division A.
Race detail
Today Belladonna was uncharacteristically slow off the start line, but recovered to finish second on corrected time behind Malcolm McMay’s J/124 Eclipse. Nevertheless, Belladonna retains an overall class lead by an eight point margin ahead of Charles Youngman’s Arcona 410 Tiaki.
By the time of the Performance Cruiser Division B start the tidal stream was running towards the east, with a stronger stream close inshore off the RYS. Dusty P started close inshore on port tack, but crossed behind the leading six starboard tack boats.
The fleet subsequently split on its the first windward leg, with the majority tacking along the Island shore, but others including Dusty P, Andy Hunt’s J/120 Assarain lll and David Neville’s Dehler 34 Islay headed towards the mainland shore. “We were covering Assarain when they were heading towards the north shore,” says Kate Cope, who’s sailing on Dusty P as navigator and is running the pit. “But after they tacked back towards the Island shore we kept going, which didn’t pay, so we were down the fleet at the first mark.”
Dusty P caught up well after that, but was still beaten by three boats. Nevertheless, she still leads the class overall, only one point from taking overall victory with a day to spare. “It’s a pay and play skippered charter boat,” Cope explains, “with a professional skipper and mate, plus me as the only experienced crew, while roughly half the charterers have no previous sailing experience.
“This is my first Cowes Week and I’ve really enjoyed both the racing and the party atmosphere, with the bands on shore, the HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier visit, the helicopter display today and so on,” adds Cope, who usually races double handed offshore on her well travelled Sun Fast 3200 Purple Mist.
Both the Victory and XOD classes had earlier starts than usual today, with the former getting away cleanly and the XODs at the second attempt after a general recall. Roger Yeoman’s XOD Xcitation has become consistently faster as the week has progressed and took victory for the first time today, 32 seconds ahead of Penny Fulford’s Madeleine, while Andrew & Donna Cooper and John Boyce’s Athena took third 34 seconds later.
John Tremlett, Tim Copsey and Fraser Graham’s Astralita started the regatta posting three consecutive first places but dropped to 28th yesterday. They finished sixth today, more than three and a half minutes behind Xcitation. XODs have a discard after only four races, so Astralita now retains first place overall, but only two points ahead of Richard Faulkner’s Swallow, with Xcitationonly one point adrift in third place. Competition for the class’s most coveted trophy, the Captain’s Cup, is therefore wide open going into the final race, with almost one third of the fleet having a mathematical chance of winning.
Video Highlights of this week’s racing
Report by Rupert Holmes