Skandia Life Cowes Week 2001 - Day 1

by Dick Johnson on 5 Aug 2001 With the weather gods smiling down on the Solent, Skandia Life Cowes Week got away to a cracking start with winds of force three to four increasing throughout the day to four to five and the forecast rain staying almost entirely
away.

Fort the first time ever, over 1000 boats – 1001 to be exact – came to the various start lines, with the majority of the
boats starting from the Royal Yacht Squadron line on the entrance to the Medina river, the remaining group of five
classes starting on a committee boat line off Lee on the Solent, and the Farr 40s having their own windward leeward
races in a similar part of the eastern Solent

All the race committees set similar courses, starting the boats to the west, then bringing them east to finish sailing
to windward across the finish line.

First away, sailing for the Queen’s Cup (Victoria that is) were Class 0 and Class 1, sailing the same course, though
starting ten minutes apart. Hardly a surprise, Mike Slade’s 90ft Skandia Life Leopard jumped into an immediate lead,
heading for the Island shore hounded by Richard Matthews’ newly refurbished White Crusader 12 Metre. The
Australian visitor to Class 0, Grant Wharington’s Wild Thing, took her green hull to the mainland shore with the
majority of the fleet to dodge the tide and it would only be at the finish line that the right decision would be seen.

Class 1 followed swiftly with a big fleet mainly opting for the mainland.

As the classes got away, the tide slackened and made it simpler to choose the right course – right down the middle
with the tide under you. The only class to manage to need a general recall were the Dragons in the white group, who
upset the race Officers by crowding over the line early. With the decoupled starting system, the Black group were
able to keep to the timetable, counting down through the classes to the smallest boats – class 8.

Classes 3 and 9, the Sigma 38s and 33s, plus the Mumm 30s started from the committee boat line, though two
overseas visitors, one German and one Dutch – no names to prevent embarrassment – started on time, on the wrong
line and must have wondered why they were surrounded by Class 10 and not their compatriots . . .

There were some casualties in the rising wind, with Bolero, Steve Oliver in Class 6, being first home with the mast in
two pieces – “it just snapped in two” was his comment. Following Steve were a motley collection of boats with a
selection of ills that included torn mainsails, torn jibs and spinnakers inexorably wrapped around forestays.

After a long race in Class 2, the handicap win went to David Walters’ Jackdaw, fittingly on the day, as it was the
boat’s 10th birthday to the minute, the now venerable J39 won by a handy two minutes and 45 seconds.

Skandia Life Leopard stormed across the line to finish the race for the Queen’s Cup – while also causing £5000 of
damage to a Mumm 30, which chanced her arm on port tack against the speedy Leopard and lost. But while she
might have been almost an hour ahead of Michael White’s On a High, after the computers had done their stuff, it was
the new Jason Ker 11.3 metre that came out ahead on handicap by over four minutes. In 3rd it was Kit Hobday and
Tim Louis’ Bear of Britain, steered by rising star Mark Campbell James and manned – and girled – by a team of
young sailors mainly drawn from the East Coast.

In the small boat handicap classes – as in the bigger ones – new sails pay dividends and while it could be said that
the conditions were her favourite, John McIntosh’s Dynamite was the three-minute winner in Class 5. In Class 8 it
took a new boat – well, new to Skandia Life Cowes Week – that took the honours, Tiggy, a South Coast One Design
(SCOD) sailed by the Reverend John Morris RN. Tiggy won by 8 minutes from her sister SCOD Spirit of Morningside,
R. Stevenson, and was also the first boat across the line – quite something for the venerable SCOD.

Spare a thought for Tsunami, Roger and Liz Swinney, who came 2nd in Class 6 today, but had to watch as their boat
was sunk by a Red Jet ferry leaving Cowes in the evening. This is the second boat that Roger and Liz have seen at
the bottom of Cowes Harbour. Sometimes it’s just not your day.

Class 9 was dominated by the storming Cork 1720s, another design that revels in the windy and bumpy conditions,
though the sight of the week had to be the four diminutive RS K6s which were spending more time under the water
than above it but seemed to creating plenty of exciting sailing for their three crew members. More domination in the
Contessa 32 class from Ray Rouse and co in Blanco who took the class by a handsome three minutes from South
Haze, messers Holloway, Paton and Paton.

While the majority of the Cowes classes were storming round the Solent on conventional Cowes courses, the
competitive fleet of Farr 40s were zipping up and down windward leeward courses – three of them. To say that the
racing was dominated by one boat might be an understatement, but James Richardson’s Barking Mad showed a
clean pair of heels to the rest of the fleet, taking all three races from any permutation of Warlord VI, Philip Tollhurst,
Game On, John Oswald, GBR25 Mark Heeley, Hurricane III Ken Bruneflod and 2XL David Murrin.

In the small boat fleets, the Hunter 707s form one of the biggest classes, with over 40 boats and as a result the start
line was busy if not frenetic. Last year’s winner Charlie Fish, Ian May, was one of a bunch of boats over the line,
leaving the race to Impulse Bob Cage followed by the consistent Emu Excursion (Nick Wood) down from the East
Coast.

Leading the Dragon fleet for a long time was the teak decked Hestia from Holland sailed by Frank van Beuningen, but
at the finish line they had dropped to 8th, leaving Eric Williams and Frantic to cross first.

Everyone wants to know how the hotly contested X-One Design class has fared, but today it was no surprise that
Stuart Jardine in Lone Star was the overall winner by almost three minutes from Athena (MJ, MW and P Flanders).
Stuart Jardine’s twin brother Adrian, sailing Lucrezia followed his brother in 8th, no disgrace in this fleet of over 60
boats.

A superb start to the week’s racing, more boats than ever, more big boats than ever, more wind than last year, more
everything – what more could you want for Skandia Life Cowes Week 2001.

Results (top ten from each class):

Queens Cup (IRC Class 0 & 1)
1, On A High (Michael S White)
2, I-Site (David Brown)
3, Bear Of Britain (Kit Hobday & Tim Louis)
4, Loco (David Lowe)
5, Fair Do'S V