Sailing supremos John Bertrand and Grant Wharington confirmed for Cowes

by Peta Stuart-Hunt on 11 Jun 2004 To kick-start Skandia’s 10th Anniversary as title sponsor of the world’s longest-running and largest sailing regatta, Skandia Cowes Week (7-14 August), Skandia will be joined by Australian sailing supremos John Bertrand and Grant Wharington at this year’s Event.

John, currently ranked World No. 2 in the Etchells class will act as an Ambassador for Skandia’s twinned event, Skandia Geelong Week, taking place from 21-26 January 2005.

Grant Wharington is the hard-to-beat skipper of the Skandia Maxi Wild Thing. And the best news of all? The five lucky teams who are shortly to be announced as this year’s Skandia Squad, will benefit from John and Grant’s enormous wisdom and sailing experience as they help coach the Squad members at Skandia Cowes Week 2004.


It’s still relatively early days but Cowes Combined Clubs (CCC), the Regatta organisers, report that they’re receiving a ‘healthy’ number of European and international entries but point out that NORMAL ENTRIES CLOSE at 17:00 hrs on Monday 21 June 2004 after which date the late entry fee is applicable – for details see the Notice of Regatta – online at www.cowesweek.co.uk

Some Entry News

Iain Hall’s Schock 40 Wraith heads for UK waters and Skandia Cowes Week
With a crew manifest that includes Dave Ullman, Tom Schock, the designer, Matt Brown and Tom Paulling, Iain Hall’s Schock 40 Wraith, built in the US, is hoping to attract a lot of attention at Skandia Cowes Week.

She will be the first Schock 40 to be seen in European waters and Iain reckons that her black hull and black sails will create a ‘suitably menacing’ sight on the Solent this August. Wraith has recently left the US, bound for the Panama Canal, and she’ll be delivered to Hamble Yacht Services at the end of June for commissioning. Thence follows some shakedown sailing before the full crew complement merge at the beginning of August for a
serious workup.

Meanwhile, Peter Ogden’s new Swan 601, Spirit of Jethou, will have her first regatta outing at this year’s Skandia Cowes Week and Mervyn Gutteridge’s Moose on the Loose, the only J90 in Europe, is described on the entry form as ‘very very wet, and very very fast downwind’.

Full Pelt X/Jo Richards – the 10th in line of Full Pelts owned by Stephen Fein and designed, built and managed by Jo Richards will be undertaking one of her first major competitive outings at Skandia Cowes Week. She’s 36ft and weighs in at 1700kg – and she’s been rated 1.704, the highest IRC rating currently issued and more than the MaxZ86's (1.648). The new boat has a 800kg canting keel and will field a crew of six. Full Pelt is of Carbon/Nomex construction - SP Materials, built by an ex-GBR build squad, carbon mast, future fibres composite rigging, and UK/McWilliam sails. She has impressive power-to-weight ratios - in excess of a 49'er, so the aim is that upwind planing is possible. Full Pelt X is competing in the Round the Island Race, at Cork Week and Skandia Cowes Week.

…& the Russians are coming!

A team of 11 Russian yachtsmen are competing on the IMX 45 Follow Me, representing the Regional Social Organization 'Sport Club UTS”.

On the Multihull front

This year sees the first-ever Multihull Class being catered for at Skandia Cowes Week and one interesting entry that has come to light is that of the 10.9m Wingover from Brian Wilkinson who is preparing for the 2005 Single Handed Transatlantic Race.

Brian Wilkinson acquired Wingover in 1999. She was built in 1992 in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) and is a heavily modified Lock Crowther design. The design name, Twiggy, was the name given to Ian Johnstone and Kathy Hawkins Twiggy tri which sailed from Australia to take part in the 1982 Ostar and Round Britain Race. Designed to a 31ft x 30 ft platform, the design generates extreme righting moment and has proved a popular production design in Australia.

Wingover is the only boat of its type north of the Equator. In her modified form, she is in some respects, a half scale ORMA class trimaran with a rotating wingmast and water ballasting and with these features incorporated in the boat during the 4-year build, her design was clearly ahead of her time. Originally designed for the Jester Class of the OSTAR race, Twiggy’s have established a strong pedigree for offshore and ocean racing.

New Supporting Sponsor signs up for Skandia Cowes Week MOBi-lert Intelligent Man Overboard Monitoring Technology

The innovative MOBi-lert system monitors each member of a boat's crew and sounds an instant alarm when someone falls or is knocked overboard.

Each person wears an active pendant that constantly transmits to the central monitoring console giving its status. Should the transmission cease the console will sound the alarm giving instant notification of someone falling overboard. Linked to either its own or the vessel's existing GPS, the system will show the course and distance back to the MOB.

The unique benefit of MOBi-lert is that it is failsafe! If one of the pendants has a low battery or develops a fault the system will automatically be aware and warn the skipper and the rest of the crew.

Mark Pallister, Managing Director of MOBi-lert said, 'We are delighted to be supporting Skandia Cowes Week. There is no better event at which to introduce our leading edge, Intelligent Man Overboard Monitoring Technology to the yachting world. Even in my hometown of Perth, Australia, Skandia Cowes Week is regarded as the best and finest regatta in the world so what a place to start!'

Get your entry in!

Watch out! Watch out! The Weakest Link’s about!

Anne Robinson's acid delivery and her verbal put-downs have given her a reputation as the rudest person on television. 'You’re a coward, aren’t you?'; 'We’re not fainting with admiration here'; 'pathetic'; 'appalling'; 'shameful'; 'stupid.' - just some of Anne's choicer phrases!

On Wednesday August 11th, a team from the BBC TV Quiz Show ‘The Weakest Link’, hosted by Anne Robinson, is coming to Skandia Cowes Week in search of new victims! The Weakest Link researchers will be based at the Sail 4 Cancer marquee in Cowes Yacht Haven between 11am and 1pm and will spend the rest of the day out and about canvassing spectators, competitors, organisers…in fact anyone and everyone…to ask if they would be interested in being considered for the 6th series.

Cowes Combined Clubs – It’s 40 years old this year
but what’s it all about?

The Cowes Week regatta may be 178 years old this year but it’s only in recent times (40 years this year) that the Week has become an integrated series of races organised by a single body. During the post-war era, each day of racing was run by a different Cowes or Solent mainland club. Every club printed their own sailing instructions and ran their own programme for the day. By 1964 however, the clubs had realised that there were significant benefits in having one central body coordinate the racing. They agreed to combine resources and establish the Cowes Combined Clubs (CCC) to run the regatta as a single organisation.

Today, CCC is a limited company and has 10 member clubs. On each day, an individual club presents its own prizes but the race teams are arranged on what has become known as the 'triumvirate' system - three combined teams of race officers drawn from the various clubs. Representatives from each club form the CCC Committee, chaired by Peter Ralls, that meets four times a year to plan the racing programme and to decide how the available funds from sponsorship and entry fees are to be spent.

Meanwhile, the huge administrative and logistical operation behind the successful event is managed by a full-time team led by CCC Director Stuart Quarrie. Stuart deals with every aspect of the regatta organisation and, during the event itself, co-ordinates the activities of well over 100 people working behind the scenes to ensure that the racing, results, information room, protests and media centre all run as