A busy day in the repair shops

Exciting first day for the sports boat classes at Skandia Life Cowes Week

The first day's wind for the start of Cowes week brought an average 15 knots with up to 28 knot gusts and courses running tight reaches made it an exciting and eventful day for the sports boats classes.

The Melges got away to a clean start with only one boat recalled while the rest of the fleet headed to the favoured island shore with one boat hugging a little too close and touching the bottom for a short time. Roberts Smith's Henri Lloyd Rapid Breathing later retired due to a baton trying to escape its place in the mainsail.

Almost immediately after crossing the finish line in third place Colin Bishop and Neil Harrison's Fiver lost their rig and were escorted back to Hamble.

The Hunter 707 class being the largest fleet next to the X boats had a thrilling time. Mark Asquith on last year's winner Charlie Fish said "it was a mad day and seriously good fun. We blew our mainsail out fairly early but carried on only to find that we were over the line after we had completed the race."

Nick Roberts of Three Little Pigs and Andrew Aldwinckle of Doh! described their day: "it was a perfect day with great courses and superb screaming reaches down long down wind legs. We hope the race committee keeps up the good work so that the fleet continue to have this much excitement throughout the week".

The brand new hull no 1 J/109 Judgement Day had a disappointing first race ever. Sian Robson of Tangent Yachting said: "we had a superb start and the boat was just loving the breeze today, but the we were just too shy on the reaches and shredded two kites on the first run".

Julian Grindall's J-Go had a storming day: they crossed the finish line second to the excessively fast Richards 36 Full Pelt. Julian said: " fantastic day, we took the Island shore at the start and it paid off. It was a long four mile beat and we rounded the windward mark fourth and just picked our way through the rest of the fleet. It was awesome sailing , during one downwind leg we held 13 knots for over three minutes. We took first place overall today with a 15 minute lead".

So in all the courses for these fast and fun sports classes todays racing was a success and also for the sail makers who will be earning their money this week.