(Cowes, IOW, England)- Aberdeen Asset Management Cowes Week simply had an epic week, bashing and crashing around the buoys on the Solent in winds ranging from 10 to 30+ knots, with boats literally flying downhill under spinnakers at 20+ knot boat-speeds! It was the "thrilla from Manila" reincarnate on the famous Royal Yacht Squadron starting line. The competitors played "rope-a-dope" with each other, battling for advantage on every gybe and tack, trying to avoid spinnaker wraps, launching crews overboard (by mistake), or "shrimping" spinnakers for the umpteenth time!
The big battle for supremacy on the Solent was seen in the huge IRC 2 Class. Sailing like maniacs and trumping the J-Team clean sweep of IRC 2 was the J/111 SMHOKIN JOE sailed by Duncan McDonald & Phil Thomas- they put on an amazing performance and a remarkable display of boat-handling in the demanding conditions-- perhaps an outgrowth of having sailed outrageously high-performance dinghies called International 14s and winning a few Worlds, to boot. Never far from throwing a punch back at them was Ian Matthew's beautifully sailed J/122 JINJA, garnering a few wins during the week on their way to second in class. Paul Hey's J/111 JENGA VII was third (read more about their experience below in the J/Community section). Fifth was the Dutch J/111 J-XCENTRIC sailed by John van der Starre & Robin Verhoef-- they were part of the J/111 clean sweep of the podium on Thursday's epic, "blowing dogs off chains" race around the cans.
For SHMOKIN JOE J/111 co-owner Duncan McDonald- former I-14 World Champion pictured at right- it was a tough week. Wednesday's strong wind resulted in a few problems aboard the "Joe" with Duncan suffering an injury as a result of a heroic maneuver. According to Dr McDonald he had to save two holes discovered in the mainsail from getting worse. “We were sailing downwind in pretty fresh conditions and discovered these two holes in the main. Naturally I didn’t want the whole mainsail to explode when we gybed so I made every effort in the world to stop the mainsail hitting the spreaders. While doing that my leg got taken away by the traveller block that whipped across the boat.”McDonald’s leg was in a poor state when he arrived back on shore, with a cuts and grazes to the knee, and swollen ankle, but he assured us he was going to be fine. “Actually I am not so worried about the scrapes but the internal injuries in my ankle. I put a lot of ice on it and rested it when we got in so I am hoping it will be okay to continue racing. Although I have to say it is slightly worrying. It is not broken it is just going to be a soft tissue injury. Phil Thomas my co-owner has had a look and we’ve come to the conclusion it’s just a sprain, so we just need to strap it up, take lots of pain killers.”
The good news, in this bizarre situation is, McDonald managed to save the main. “If I hadn’t, and the holes had increased it probably would have shredded and we wouldn’t have finished the race.”
Chatting about the new J/111 class, which seems to have turned a few heads on the race course this week, McDonald concluded. “We’ve had our boat for two months and all I can say it is a great boat. In every condition we’ve raced it, it has been great fun, fast, enjoyable to sail and I think the J/111 is a fantastic class.”
Wednesday summary:
As to the conditions for Cowes Week, after a strong start on Sunday through Tuesday (as reported last week), Wednesday saw more high adrenaline racing in strong winds and bright sun- a sailing photographers dream come true! The Solent was sandwiched between areas of high and low pressure and as the day progressed, the wind began a relentless non-stop upwards trend that lasted for five hours, peaking with mean speeds of 25 knots and gusts well over 30 through the afternoon. It was another day of hard, wet beats to windward, followed by high speed downwind blasts that had competitors grinning from ear to ear as they came ashore. Unsurprisingly, there was also a lot of gear damage, including three J/109s, among them William Edwards’ SARDONYX and Robert Stiles’ DIAMOND JEM, who retired with broken rigs.
Thursday summary:
The big winds continued, powering the biggest J's to blistering speeds approaching 25 knots. Most dayboat classes were set short courses that ensured they had finished racing before gusts to 38 knots were encountered in the afternoon. Pip Tyler’s J/105 NIELSON REDEYE was fifth, his team’s best result so far in IRC Class 4. “We’ve had another really fantastic day,” he said after stepping ashore. “We were cautious and didn’t use the spinnaker, but we still hit more than 16 knots. It was a perfect length of race and everyone had massive great grins on their faces as we flew down the big waves in the western Solent.”
Friday summary:
The penultimate day of the event was a more gentle day than those earlier in the week, starting with bright sun and a gentle breeze that built to 15-18 knots. It also saw incredibly tight racing across dozens of classes. The top of Class 2 turned into a super-tight battle between three fast J's. The start of the day saw Duncan McDonald and Phil Thomas’s new J/111 Shmokin’ Joe on 10 points, Ian Matthews’ J/122 JINJA on 11 and another J/111, Paul Heys’ JENGA 7, on 12 points. These three boats took the top three places in the class in Friday's race, in exactly that order on corrected time!
Saturday summary:A blanket of cloud over Cowes in the morning quickly gave way to bright sun and a rapidly increasing wind. Weather forecasters outlined several possibilities for Saturday, but the most likely scenario prevailed-- the initial south-westerly wind of 10-14 knots building to a west-south-westerly of 13-19 knots by midday, with gusts adding as much as 40 per cent to the base wind speed.
“It’s the first time I can remember such a consistently breezy Cowes Week,” said CEO Stuart Quarrie “It’s certainly the first one with an average windspeed over 20 knots, but the feedback we’ve had so far was that it’s been one of the best Cowes Weeks ever.”
Sailing photo credits- Rick Tomlinson- http://www.rick-tomlinson.com
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