Cowes week proposed change

[flaming]

Email from Cowes week proposes a change to the week for Black Group, dropping the 1st saturday from the series to make it easier for boats and people to make it over to Cowes without having to take Friday off. White group would stay as is..

It has long been difficult for some of our competitors, who don't live on the Solent shores to get to Cowes for a 1030 Saturday morning start and day 1 of Cowes Week. Not so difficult if it's just for the weekend but if you are moving the family down for the week and trying to book into accommodation the Saturday start can be very challenging. This is particularly so for bigger black group boats. In addition accommodation bookings almost always start on the Saturday. We have recently had another wave of suggestions that we start the black group on Sunday to deal with this problem and we are therefore writing to try to gauge the strength of feeling and viewpoint on this. We would still plan to start White group on Saturday for a full Cowes Week day. This suits the mini-series of the J70 and SB20 and fits in with the historic race formats for some of the other one-design classes. We would also run racing for the black group but on a more relaxed basis so for those people who want a practice day it would be ideal and for those people new to Cowes Week it would be an opportunity to race before the full Monty kicks off on Sunday morning. For the avoidance of doubt, black group racing on the first Saturday in this scenario would not count towards Cowes Week's overall points trophies. We have a sponsor who we hope will shortly sign to support an opening party on the Saturday night, so our expectation is that everybody would still be in Cowes by Saturday afternoon. We think that postponing the official start of Cowes Week for black group by one day would get considerable support but we'd like to know what you think. Please could you respond to the attached questionnaire indicating which way you would like to see us move. In 2021 we plan to try to make up races for some classes if we lose them to poor wind conditions. It would mean two races a day in that scenario and it would not be possible for all classes every year but we would like to try to make sure that everybody gets more than enough racing. If we did that the races would not be windward / leeward. The ethos of Cowes is challenging, regatta racing, and that's what we would stick with. No decision has yet been reached but we would appreciate your feedback as a Cowes Week competitor. Please answer 3 short questions here.​

If you have strong feelings about this, can I suggest answering their questionnaire or maybe sending Lawrence an email?