The Cowes Torquay Cowes and Cowes Poole Cowes courses have been shortened for Sunday’s racing, with organisers citing a storm warning covering the sea areas White and Portland and a Force 8 gale warning at Plymouth.
The Cowes Torquay Cowes (CTC) will now run around the Poole 100 course, in place of the usual 181-nautical-mile route to Torbay and back. The Cowes Poole Cowes (CPC) will run around the Solent instead of its usual course towards Bournemouth Bay.
Martin Raby, Cowes Officer of the Day:
It’s been a very difficult decision to make. Working with my team, along with the safety officer and my chief timekeeper and with the assistants down in Torquay we have taken the decision to amend both race courses. I’ve been looking at the Met office forecasts and been speaking with the Coast Guard. There is a gale warning at Plymouth, Force 8, imminent and we’ve had a storm warning since yesterday afternoon for the sea areas of White and Portland. So it’s not safe for anybody to go racing on the full course and it’s unfair for us to ask any of the safety crews to go out there for several hours in those conditions. I cannot, in my heart, phone up the Coast Guard and say, please help us with a racing incident when there’s a storm warning already out there. So we have taken the difficult decision to run the CTC around the Poole 100 course and we will run the CPC around the Solent, and then everyone will get a good safe weekend.
What the New Course Looks Like
Miles Jennings, Team Silverline:
We were kind of expecting that it would be a short course based on the information we had about the number of safety boats. It’s about the ability of a safety boat to either take a tow or, you know, retrieve an injured crewman so I’m not surprised at that at all. But yeah, the course has changed slightly from the rough weather course that was posted, but essentially it’s running down the Solent and then essentially two laps of Poole before we head back to North Head, and then back up the Solent.
Rob Lockyer, Good Boy Vodka:
It’s 100% the right decision. Absolutely. It doesn’t change our game plan at all as we will do the same that we would do in any other race. We gonna go out and try and win it. Okay, it looks like two laps of the Poole Bay 100 course but I don’t think this is gonna be easy. People think it’s just a short little race. It’s nasty out there right now. Really nasty. By far, the nastiest I’ve ever thought of going out in a boat in it.
Sea State and Tactics
Drew Langdon, Silverline:
My thoughts on this new course, whilst it’s shorter and it’s more inland, it’s still pretty much open to the southwest, which is where the wind is going to be blowing from. There’s some very big tides at the minute, so the nice thing is you’re gonna get all the sea states, whereas going down to Torquay, you’d have a couple of hours into a head sea and then come back with the following sea. Tomorrow, we’re gonna get a mixture of beam sea, plus head sea which is going to be quite technical to deal with, and require a lot of changes set up as you’re going around the course, which should be fun. I’ve shifted some fuel around, so I’ve loaded the front of the boat up. We are planning for something quite nasty out there.
Dropped a Class on Safety Grounds
Dean Stoneman, Lightning Strikes:
I think it’s going to be a survival race, even though it has been shortened at the end of day, still going to be rough out there. It’s going to be a challenge for everyone to get round the course. I’m a bit disappointed really because we obviously put bigger engines in the boat to try and go for the outright win. But due to safety, they’ve asked me to go drop my boat from 120 class into a 100 mile an hour class because of the canopies on the boat. I don’t think it’s going to make any difference though because it can be so rough out there.
A lot of hard work’s gone into the boat. We put additional fuel tanks in, bigger engines, more power. But yeah, you know, it is what it is. We put 100s of hours into the boat to get it ready for the CTC. It’s gonna be bloody rough tomorrow but I’m gonna push, obviously, to try and win outright with a boat in a lower class.
Racing is still due to start from Cowes on Sunday morning. The Beaverbrook Trophy still goes to the overall CTC winner, whichever course is run.
If it happened in powerboat racing during the last forty years the chances are that Chris Davies was there either photographing it or writing about it.
During that time, he has travelled the globe covering both offshore and circuit racing for series promotors, race teams, PR companies, and a whole raft of publications.
