Tight racing in AAM Cowes Week

Its a bit late to be blogging about Cowes Week.. however, late is better than never! Cowes Week was an opportunity to take a few people out sailing and to get some good exposure for the International Paint brand into the South Coast Yachting scene. However, with our crew changing daily, consistency might have been our down fall! Another worry was having up to 6 people onboard! I am used to three maximum and even that feels crowded! I was also keen to have everyone involved in the working of the boat. There is, in my opinion, nothing worse than being "rail meat" so everyone was to be involved in the maneoveres and sailing, even if I did hog the helm for most of the time!

Placed in IRC 2 for the regatta, we were never going to be competitive, but we would certainly have some fun racing against the four Artemis Academy Figaros who were also competing. I was a little daunted to say the least, fully crewed inshore racing is something I still feel fairly inexperienced at, my tactics are usually based over thousands of miles and changing weather systems, not wind changes and tidal strengths across the width of the Solent. I had also never raced against other Figaros before, and I was hoping that I wasn’t about to learn that I have been sailing my boat slowly over the last few years.

Needless to say, I need more confidence in myself as we led not only the Figaros, but the entire fleet over the line on the first day. And so it continued, with all the Figaros fairly well matched throughout the week. We won the race to the finish twice, came last once and finished mid fleet several times. The crew dynamic worked well onboard too, particularly when every member of the team was keen to get involved, get sails set quickly and more importantly, be competitive against the other Artemis boats. We didn’t encounter too much drama over the week. We were rammed astern on one day’s start, had too close a starboard encounter with Figaros on two occasions, enjoyed surfing speeds of 18knots on the windier days and at one point had difficulty keeping all of our crew onboard! Needless to say by the eighth day of racing I was absolutely shattered!

It was great to get so many of my supporters of the last few years involved too, particularly Brian of Kiwi Marine from whom I learnt a great deal, Tony Gill of Grapefruit Graphics who has been a stalwart on the graphics front, and Chris Hollliman from Henri Lloyd. I'd also like to thank regular crew members Tom Kiddle, who was a hero on mainsheet all week, and who shall be remembered particularly for his critical mid tack ease as we come onto port and hard to sharpishly bear away from an Artermis Figaro and not be swept onto Lymington Bank buoy! Also, Matthew Lingley of course (used!) and Kate Moss who should seriously consider some sort of yachtie catering business if things at International Paint don't work out.

Fully crewed racing provided 4 hours of concentrated, focused and analytical sailing through a minefield of yachts, shallows, ships and buoys that left me drained but jubilant at the end of the day. Long distance offshore is always going to be the focus for me, with the TwoStar in June 2012, but I have to admit that I enjoyed Cowes Week a lot more than I had expected to! I expect to be there again next year!