The 194th running of Cowes Week, the UK’s biggest annual regatta, was dominated by strong breeze conditions. With two days of racing lost, and gusty conditions of over 20 knots for much of the event, it turned into a no-discard series with the overall winners decided on a testing final day of much lighter winds and strong spring tides in the Solent.
While numbers were down on previous years, particularly in the bigger boat fleets, the 24-strong Cape 31 class delivered a show for spectators and photographers, enjoying some full-power asymmetric reaching. At the other end of the performance scale, a new Weekend Warriors Cup was created for the Club Cruiser Division, for boats that are true cruiser-racers.
Winners of White Group overall as top keelboat were Mark Downer and family sailing the Redwing Enigma. Their superb series, with a scoreline that included four 1sts and one 2nd place, also saw them deemed overall winners of Cowes Week 2023.
The victory was hard earned for Downer, who’s been racing at Cowes Week for 24 years and this year was competing with his wife Jo and son Alex: “We have been competing for 24 years and have never even won our class. It feels as though we have been the bridesmaid for so long and now, we finally get to wear white!” he said.
“We’ve been competing in the Redwing for three years starting with 3rd place then 2nd and now finally 1st place. It feels absolutely amazing.
“It has been a tricky week and losing two days of sailing was especially hard, but we knew that it was make or break today and we just feel so happy that it’s finally our time.”
The Black Group overall win went to local talent Jo Richards and his experienced team of David Rickard, Duncan De Boltz and Sophie Warren on Woof, a unique modified H-Boat built in 1972. They took the group win by a narrow margin from Per Roman’s JPK 1180 Garm.
This is Richards’ third Black Group win at Cowes Week. He said: “We are absolutely delighted to win Black Group again. It was, however, a tough week and exceptionally tiring with the big winds throughout. We were actually rather grateful for the odd day off this week.
“Today was tricky and we had a bit of a battle on, so had to be ultra conservative at the start given the fact there were no discards. The key was to keep in the pressure and be on the right tacks because it was very shifty, and it was easy to lose out by being in the wrong place.”
