Yachts & Yachting – August 2019

Above

The J/70s will

continue to

enjoy windward-

leeward courses

Left

Cowes Week

director

Laurence Mead

Mead was a sailmaker before an

international corporate career and

his extensive time on the water has

encompassed championships ranging

from 505s and Etchells to the Admiral’s

Cup and more. He describes himself

as a traditionalist and says: “I want the

cannons going at the Castle, I want all

the boats nishing o the green with

spinnakers up...Cowes Week should

be something dierent. It shouldn’t

be windward-leewards, it shouldn’t be

easy racing. It’s meant to test all the

skills. Like with short-handed racing,

you should come back at the end of

the week having done everything:

beating against the tide along the beach,

running against the tide, running with

the tide, running starts, everything.”

Nevertheless, classes such as J/70s

and SB20s, which have for many years

enjoyed an element of windward-

leeward racing, will continue to do so.

“We’re saying to them, if you’ve got a big

enough eet, and you’ve got a specialist

enough boat, like a J70, we will try to

adapt around you a little bit, and you

adapt around us a little bit,” says Mead.

“For example, we will start the J/70s

at the Royal Yacht Squadron and they

will race to the Hillhead plateau [east of

Brambles Bank], then have a windward-

leeward, and then back to Cowes.”

10 WAYS TO WIN

COWES WEEK

1. DAILY PREPARATION
   With Cowes Week also being a big
   event for partying it can be tempting
   to take a slightly casual approach to
   the racing. However, that will never get
   you to the head of the eet – the top
   teams always do everything correctly,
   from the moment they wake up until
   the time they have signed o, packed
   the boat up and repaired any damage.
   Equally, before the rst day, read the
   Sailing Instructions and check each
   others’ understanding. e same applies
   to exclusion zones, the penalty system
   and the procedure for general recalls.
   At the start of every day it makes
   sense if each person has the same job.
   is makes the tasks, even those as
   mundane as collecting lunch, easier
   to manage. is in turn means there’s
   more time available to analyse the

FEATURE COWES WEEK PREVIEW

ALL PHOTOS: ED WHITING/FROM THE BLUE

W

inning your

class at Cowes

Week remains

a considerable

achievement, but

the prospect of this is by no means the

only factor that attracts competitors.

Cowes Week director Laurence Mead

says the event should be “Corinthian,

inclusive, international, fun, sociable,

world-class racing” and he identies

nine key “ethoses” for the event. Among

these is the belief that a win at Cowes

Week should remain a pinnacle of

anyone’s season – the regatta should

be competitive and hard-fought. At

the same time the wind angle variety

will always be a key element of this

multi-class Solent event and under

Mead’s leadership additional eort is

going into improving course-setting.

22 Yachts & Yachting August 2019 yachtsandyachting.co.uk