Solent Super Series 2025 - Round 1 at Cowes
by Mark Angell 14 Oct 21:33 AEDT
11-12 October 2025
Start line - Solent Super Series round 1 at Cowes © Patrick Condy / PKC Media
This past weekend saw the first round of the Solent Super Series, now in its third year. The four round, max four crew format, will visit Yarmouth and Lymington before finishing with the final round in Gosport in late November. Nine of the Eleven entered teams got the series under way after a short 'AP' for a large container ship passing through the Solent, Race one was a 13nm round the cans course utilising the boats sail inventories in the light ENE wind.
The Sun Fast 3300 Lord of the Dance led from the outset, closely shadowed by the Royal Ocean Racing Club's 'Griffin' youth team sailing their Sun Fast 3600, Game On added to the challenge with a navigational error costing them dearly, they made a valiant effort to catch up, and did make some progress through the fleet, however, after nearly three hours of racing Lord of the Dance crossed the line, four and a half minutes ahead of Hair of the Dog and only 5 seconds on IRC corrected time. Griffin was third a further six mins back.
The slightly shorter planned second race of the day was abandoned in the start sequence as the strong ebb tide, and off/on/off nature of the wind meant competitors were struggling to cross the start line. With that, the fleet was sent in to Cowes Harbour for early showers at their respective berths in Shepards Wharf Marina.
The Saturday evening at the Solent Super Series features a welcome (ashore) drink, followed by dinner - for the Cowes round welcome drinks were hosted by Series partner Musto in their store on Cowes High Street, where, with a beer in hand the teams got a chance to try on the latest kit, and find out about the features of the new additions to the range.
A new feature for 2025 is a prize draw at each round, with 3 fantastic prizes on offer, Hair of the Dog was drawn out of the hat to win a full set Musto snug fleeces for the crew. Lord of the Dance took home a voucher for a bottle of wine at the next round's dinner and Panther received a Winning Tides Cowes Superzoom tide flow book.
Sunday started on schedule with 8 - 10kts of wind, once again from a North Easterly direction - Race 2 set the fleet off on a short beat with the flooding tide, followed by a nice long downwind leg against the tide past Gurnard to East Lepe, before heading back East to East Ryde Middle. Unity Sailing's Sun Fast 3600 One Way skippered by Cal Finlayson took the top spot, just 7 seconds separating them from Griffin on corrected time.
Race 3 quickly followed for a shorter, 90 minute windward leeward format, 4 leg race, Griffin shot out the blocks but showed particularly good downwind speed winning race 3 by 18 seconds, ahead of the JPK 10.30 Insert Coin and in 3rd place continuing their run of form, Lord of the Dance.
With a 3, 2, 1 scorecard the young Griffin Team won Round 1 with Lord of the Dance in second, One Way completed the podium in 3rd place.
Griffin Skipper Albert Barber commented "This weekend was a great start to the Solent Super Series, we had an awesome time racing short-handed inshore. Onboard Griffin we valued the change of pace from our offshore fully crewed [8 crew] youth team where we all met, to this dynamic reduced crew format.
The committee and events team were well organised and adapted well to the conditions, allowing as much racing as possible.
A particular highlight was all coming ashore for an enjoyable evening together with all the teams. Thank you for a great start to the series, See you all very soon!
Thanks to our sponsors of Round One - Musto and Cowes Harbour Commission.
Round Two will see the fleet heading to the West with the Port of Yarmouth playing hosts to the Solent Super Series fleet who are looking forward to another weekend of great racing and an entertaining social event, with more prizes to be drawn from the Solent Super Series Prize Bag.
Find the results, race tracking and images over on www.SolentSuperSeries.com