Cowes Week

[BlueChip]

On Sunday we sat on Cowes Green watching the racing. I have never done this before but it was great fun. They had a commentary over the loadspeakers given by some guy out on a rib with a headset transmitter, he was very knowledgable and really funny, he made sense of what was going on and generally did an excellent job of pointing out the classes, leaders, finishers and people doing silly things.

Two things stick out in my mind, first there is a submerged rock just off the green, we saw at least 5 boats get stuck on it as they cheated the tide on their downwind spinnaker run to the finish, as soon as they pulled one boat off there was another coming along to give more entertainment - then there was the start line off the squadron where the the smaller boats, Squibs, Victory and the like were still having their starts at the same time as the larger boats who were finishing under spinnaker downwind - chaos is not the word for it, and just to add to the fun a Bavaria towing a dinghy completely oblivious to what was going on, sailed right across the line at the same time.

It was a day I shall remember for a long time, I haven't laughed so much for ages. My only regret is I didn't have my camera with me.

 

[Stemar]

Cowes Green was probably the only safe place in the Solent /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[mtettmar]

We were out there in the thick of it racing in IRC 5 div. Due to almost no wind early on Sunday morning they set some very short courses. Just before the start the wind picked up and I think they probably regretted their decision because everything was happening at once. Our race was only 9.5 miles long and lasted less than 2 hours.

It wasn't just bavarias getting in the middle of everything. Some pillock in a ~40 foot power cruiser carved right through the middle of the fleet yards in front of us right passed the start line less than 5 minutes before the start. Several hundred yachts all desperately trying to stay the right side of the line with a strong ebb tide and a light wind trying to push them over it and some inconsiderate fool carves up the fleet at over 7 knots creating a huge wake. Why!? Quite unhelpful - caused many of us to go backwards!

Entertaining though.
Marcus