Image: Rupert Mander and Gareth Edwards are overall winners of Cowes Week 2024. Photo Paul Wyeth/pwpictures.com
A spectacular final day of racing at Cowes concluded with a classic downwind finish against the tide on the Royal Yacht Squadron line, with competitors sailing tight into the beach off the Green in a thick and fast procession that lasted for hours. They were led home by Jo Richards’ 27ft H-Boat Woof, creeping along the shore under spinnaker, less than a boat length off the rocks below the RYS Platform, to take to take line honours in IRC Class 7. He also won today’s race on corrected time, his fourth victory of the week.
However, overall class winner is Victoria and Chris Preston’s 100 year old classic West Solent One Design Suvretta, while Craig and Emma Dymock’s H-Boat Wight Wedding took second place just two and a half points behind.
Four boats scored an unbroken run of first places over the first six days of the Regatta: Imogen Watkins’ Fareast 28R Mako in the Sportsboat class, Stuart Reed’s Sunbeam Firefly, Rupert Mander and Gareth Edwards’ Flying 15 Men Behaving Badly, and Richard Dilley’s Grand Soleil 46 Belladonna, in Performance Cruiser Division A.
Men Behaving Badly had already won her class with a day to spare, but also won today’s race, just four seconds ahead of Graham Deegan’s Akarana, to seal overall victory in White Group. Mander and Edwards were also crowned overall Cowes Week winner for the second time in three years and the fourth time in total.
What’s the secret behind their success? “You have to keep as fast as you can and stay ahead of the others, while successfully orienteering around the buoys,” Mander says. On a boat with no electronics and only two people on board Edwards says this means, “We both note the course and are talking it through all the way, checking the bearings and spotting the marks as soon as possible.”
“That was difficult today,” adds Mander, “we’ve never been that far west before in a Flying 15 and the marks were hard to spot in the waves. It was the most fun sailing we’ve had all week, planing downwind and hard work going upwind, plus a full-on reach across the Solent with spray flying everywhere.”
After a particularly close battle with David Frank’s J/112e Leon this week, Adam Gosling’s JPK10.80 Yes! won IRC Class 3 today and in doing so scooped his sixth overall Black Group victory. Today both boats started side-by-side at the pin end of their committee boat start line, with Leon initially getting away to a narrow lead she defended vigorously. Yes! got past at a windward mark, then stormed away on a tight spinnaker reaching leg before stretching away to the finish.
“It was a lovely race today, in a reasonable breeze with an interesting course that included a reaching leg which suited us well,” says Gosling. “To me Cowes Week differs from most regattas that have windward-leeward courses – here it’s about all points of sailing, with a lot of navigational challenges. It’s good to have those extra tactical processes and Cowes Week is like a three-dimensional game of chess.”
Other stand out performances this week include Arjen van Leeuwen & Silvy Leijh’s Dutch J/109 Joule, which won the class with a day to spare. They continued racing today, crossing the finish today overlapped with another 109, John Smart’s Jukebox, and James & John Owen’s J/99 Jet, accompanied by rapid fire from the RYS cannons.
In Performance Cruiser Division B Seville Developments’ First 40.7 Dusty P discarded a fourth place picked up on Thursday to finish the series counting only race wins, five points ahead of Andy Hunt’s J/120 Assarain lll in second place.
In IRC Class 1 Lance Adam’s Cape 31 Katabatic also had four first places, but also an OCS collected on Monday. Julian Metherell’s Bullit won today’s race, but second place for Katabatic was sufficient to secure overall class victory, three points ahead of Bullit.
In Alain Waha and Matt Waite’s J/99 Further West won all but one of her first five races in IRC Class 4, having been second on Sunday. A fourth place today also was enough to win the class overall, three points ahead of Richard Newsom’s J/105 Javelin and Libby Finch, Jack & Joe Banks and Penny Jeffcoate’s J/92 Nightjar.
Further West’s performance also saw skipper Joshua Waha scoop the Musto Young Skipper Trophy, while Finch, who is the first ever female helm of the Cowes RNLI lifeboat, was awarded the Cowes Week Women’s Day trophy.
Tottenham teenagers Kai Hockley and Jessye Opoku-ware, who were racing Flip Flop, a borrowed Flying 15, this week, are joint winners of the Cowes Week Youth Trophy. Hockley has been selected by Sir Ben Ainslie to join the development programmes of his youth programmes and has been a paid team member of the Emirates GBR shore team since January. “His team mate Jessye is the biggest unsung hero of the Scaramouche project,” says Jon Holt of Greig City Academy. “His sailing is exceptional, he has enabled everyone else to have their success and has been the consistent factor holding the team together. None of the success of his team mates would have happened without Jessye.”
The Etchells fleet consistently enjoys very close racing of a high standard. However, this year one boat has stood out ahead of the rest: Joshua Beadsworth, Andy Beadsworth, Ethan Rhodes & Hayden Sewell’s No Dramas. They finished the Regatta counting a straight run of race wins, having discarded a third place in Wednesday’s race.
Nevertheless, competition for the remaining podium places remained intense, with several boats having a mathematical chance at the start of the final race. A disappointing ninth place today for Camereon Yates’ youth team on Sumo saw them drop to fourth, while a fourth for Shaun Frohlich’s Exabyte lifted him to second overall, a comfortable seven points ahead of Rob Tyrwhitt-Drake’s Desperate.
The Under 25 Trophy, sponsored by Montgomery Estate Management, was won by the tightest of margins – less than half a point – by George Bell’s Contessa 32 Mary Rose Tudor, who also took third overall in the Contessa 32 class. Ruby Sunderland’s Sonar Cowes Match Race 1 took the runner’s up spot in the Under 25 rankings, having celebrated her 17th birthday during the Regatta.
The Jones family’s J/122 Jellybaby from Cork has been consistently at the front of IRC Class 2, slipping up only with a second place in Race 2 and an OCS the following day. A fourth place in today’s race was sufficient to secure overall victory in class, four points ahead of another J/122 Team Bulldog’s Bulldog, while Ed Bell’s JPK11.80 Dawn Treader was third, a further five points behind.
Jellybaby’s performance also earned them the Newcomer’s Trophy, a comfortable margin ahead of Willem Ellemeet’s Dutch Dufour 40 Flying Dolphin, who put in a very commendable performance to take third place overall in IRC Class 3, behind Yes! and Leon.
Russell Mead’s Shearwater ll won the Victory class, which celebrates its 90th anniversary this year, with a day to spare. However, there was the tightest of battles for second place. Nick Benham, Ian Perryman & Clive Good’s Zada, and Jim Downing’s Ziva finished the week tied on 17 points, with the tie break going in Zada’s favour, while Duncan Evan’s Peregrine took fourth on 18 points.
Only three points separated the top three boats in the XOD fleet at the start of the final day. Today’s race didn’t change the overall standings, but a win for John Tremlett, Tim Copsey and Fraser Graham Astralita, ahead of Richard Faulkner’s Swallow, along with a fourth place for Roger Yeoman’s Xcitation, cemented these boat’s podium positions, with 10, 13 and 16 points respectively.