It’s not often a sailor takes a season off then steps straight back in to win – especially not when it’s a European Championship. But that’s just what Cape 31 legend Russell Peters did, as Georgie Corlett-Pitt finds out…
H osted by the Royal Yacht Squadron, the inaugural Cape 31 Europeans were won by Russell Peters and his team on board
Fanatic. It was an impressive win in an event that attracted 22 entries – including from Ireland and the Netherlands. That this was the only Cape 31 event that Russell entered this season makes his win even more notable given it is currently the Solent’s hottest fleet.
Sizzling in fact, when you consider the UK race circuit was only established in 2021 and regular racers already number 20+. A mixture of pro and amateur sailors, the class holds equal allure to those from both small boat and big boat backgrounds.
As a strong supporter of the class since it was first introduced to the UK, Russell is no stranger to Cape 31 success, with overall season wins in both 2021 and 2022 (then sailing Squirt). And when it comes to high performance one-designs in general, Russell certainly has excellent form. He’s current RS Elite National Champion, has raced at the top of the J/70 class, not to mention numerous dinghy classes, and previously excelled on the Ultra 30 circuit for many years, twice winning the circuit overall. There’s no doubt precision sailing is his forte; with extensive top level team racing experience, Russell is renowned as a highly tactical sailor.
It’s no surprise then that he sums up the Cape 31 as a class that “perfectly suits my style of sailing”. He also describes the Mark Millsdesigned high performance one-design as “not dissimilar to an Ultra 30, with lots of boats converging at marks at high speed, although with only seven crew, not nine”.
But after sitting out most of the season, he also acknowledges that it’s a class that’s hard to do well in, and admits that doing so takes a significant commitment of both time and money, particularly considering the influx of pro sailors to the fleet.
It was with that in mind that Russell had initially only intended to run a two-year campaign with a crew of friends and family, and therefore – in theory at least – had stepped away from the class for 2023; he’d even sold both of his Cape 31s at the end of 2022. In practice, however, FOMO got the better of him and by mid-sea
