Cowes Week Report from With Alacrity

2006 Cowes Week was being described as a classic by radio commentators before the end of the week, if by this they mean lots of wind on very long Solent courses then it certainly was. On several days the races lasted more than 4 hours (one race had 22 rounding marks!) and the wind was frequently blowing 25+ knots.

Once again the level of competition in the Sigma 38 fleet was a definite step up from last year, we raced against Mefisto and Rapscallion for the first time and they were both sailed very well to finish 2^nd and 3^rd overall just one point apart. Pavlova III made a welcome return and had certainly upped their game helped by a new suit of sails to finish 4^th overall. Red Macaw, 2004 Cowes week winners, made the long trip from the East coast but despite recording 1^st and 2^nd on Sunday and Monday were dogged by equipment failure, a disqualification and running aground on the Bramble bank whilst in the top 3 on Thursday – I hope they will be back again soon because they surely deserved better than this out of the week.

The Project’s campaign stuttered on the first weekend recording a DSQ for a port/starboard incident and a 3^rd but their quality shone through as they won every remaining race from Monday to Friday. We managed to sail alongside them a few times early on in the races and they do seem to have the whole package; good boat speed, excellent boat handling, tactically manage to be consistently in the right position and ability to sniff out the windshifts that much better than anyone else – well done to them.

One of the features of Cowes week is the apparent fetish for downwind starts and downwind finishes on the Royal Yacht Squadron line. I’m sure this is just to create a spectacle of boats sailing in close proximity with spinnakers flying and certainly succeeds in getting the adrenaline pumping. On Monday we were heading towards the finish with kites flying watching in trepidation as the windspeed touched 30 knots, but grinning inanely every time the boatspeed climbed over 11 knots down the waves. It doesn’t half focus the mind on avoiding a broach as you sail through the moored boats 4 boatlengths from the shore though!

On Tuesday we had a downwind start in 25 knots of wind and after 1.5 miles 8 boats arrived at the leeward mark at the same time with us on the inside, unfortunately we were half a boat length off having an overlap so instead of rounding in the top three we had to sail around the outside to round in 10^th.

On Wednesday we had another downwind start in slightly less wind and after 3 miles most of the fleet was spread out line abreast doing 7 knots. This time we managed to sail high on starboard into more tide and gybed onto port to cross the fleet just a few boat lengths ahead to round the leeward mark in 2^nd place behind Mefisto.

On With Alacrity with another crew that had not sailed together before we struggled with boat handling in the big winds early in the week. More worryingly though our upwind boatspeed was desparate until we eventually raked the new mast back an extra 3 cm to make the forestay close to class maximum which made an enormous difference (kicking myself for not doing this at Cork but somehow we convinced ourselves that the new mast was different and needed less rake….eh??). Anyway we sailed much better towards the end of the week with results in the top 4 until Friday when we were DSQ after a protest for water at a mark incident. We were absolutely certain we had an inside overlap but unfortunately we couldn’t convince the protest committee - grrrrr.

It was a great weeks sailing though and many thanks to Nigel and Karen on Persephone for organizing the Sigma City moorings in Cowes, arranging for us to be fed so well at the Sigma 38 barbeque on Tuesday (enormous Cumberland sausages, ribs and barbecued salmon!) as well as the entertainment with the daily prizes at the sail for gold bar.