Behind the scenes at CCC

Ed Gorman visits the Royal Yacht Squadron to see how Cowes Week races are run

One of the amazing feats in world sailing is the annual trick pulled off by race officers at Skandia Life Cowes Week in setting courses for 1,000 yachts which start in sequence but almost always end up racing simultaneously.

This would be difficult anywhere but it could hardly be more tricky than on the Solent where land encroaches on all sides, where shallows and rocks lurk in awkward places and where tide and wind conditions can make a nonsense of even the most carefully laid plans.

You could not set down a method of devising courses for so many boats on so complex a stretch of water from scratch - it just wouldn't work. Instead race officers who work on this most demanding aspect of race management during the regatta, rely on years of accumulated experience and systems which have gradually evolved in the light of changing circumstances.

During a visit to the Platform on the battlements of Cowes Castle this week - the home of the Royal Yacht Squadron - one was struck by the cool and calm atmosphere among the 80-strong race management team made up of officers from the Royal Thames, the Royal London and Royal Southampton Yacht Clubs, as they worked their way through 35 start sequences without any major hitches.

The front line teams - the line officers and their assistants, the time keepers, gunnery officers, and boat spotters - make up the staff working outside on the battlements while other groups, including the course setters, work behind them inside the covered area originally built for a visit of Queen Victoria to the Squadron. (Being a woman, she was not allowed into the Castle itself).

The aim of the course setters is, within reason, to try to give all classes proper racing with true windward and downwind legs. At the same time they try to ensure that the bigger boats in the so-called Black Group do not head for the same marks as the smaller White Group yachts which are made up of day-boat racing yachts.





The main tool for the course setters is a simplified large-scale chart of the Solent with pins in it representing each of the navigation buoys which the fleets use as turning marks. The charts have a movable arrow on a compass rose to denote wind direction and a series of information sheets pinned to them, giving essential detail about tidal flows and depths.

There are also critically important sheets with graphs describing the relative performance of the various classes which make up the Cowes Week fleet in any given wind condition. For example, the big boats in Class 0 can travel up to 36 miles in a Force 6, while the International Etchells could go as far as 15 miles in the same conditions. The chunky and slow X-One Designs, meanwhile, might make just nine miles.

The key ingredient on the chart, however, is the string. Exiting from a hole at the start line off the Royal Yacht Squadron, the string can be pulled out to the equivalent length of the course required on any given day for each fleet. So, if the Darings for example, are going 10 miles, the equivalent length of string is pulled out and then twisted round the various pins representing each mark as their course is laid out, hopefully with true windward and leeward legs.

By the end of the starting sequence the two charts - one for the White Group, one for the Black - are criss-crossed with variously coloured strings representing the courses for all 35 fleets. The courses are then fed into a computer program which predicts how long it will take each class to reach each mark and also what their finishing time is likely to be. This helps avoid clashes between boats of different classes at mark roundings and helps to stagger finishing times to make them manageable for race officers on the battlements and on the White Link barge.





Working with the course setters is a meteorologist who prepares detailed forecasts for the Solent which are continually updated and which enable the setters to make changes as and when conditions require them. At Cowes Week, course changes mid-way through races are not practicable but courses are often shortened if the wind dies or builds over sensible limits.

In the hot seat on the course-setting side for the White Group during the first three days of this year's regatta was Derek Hodd, the treasurer of the Royal London Yacht Club, who has raced Darings and often sails aboard the J-39, Jackdaw. "The challenge for us is to integrate the two charts - for the White and Black Groups - using two teams of course setters," he explained. "What we try to do is avoid the two groups coverging on the same marks because, generally speaking, big and little boats don't mix very well together."

Hodd got fully involved in this aspect of race management at Cowes after reading an article some years ago in which Dennis Conner complained he had been sent on a "donkey course" when racing an Etchell at the regatta. Despite the inevitable grumbles from skippers every year who complain about being sent on "reach-arounds" at Cowes Week, Hodd believes there is no reason why every fleet should not enjoy good racing every day.

But he also accepts that the sheer size of the event can lead to compromises and that wind conditions can alter, turning beats into fetches and so on. "People come to Cowes for good courses, but they know there are compromises," he said. "We try to give them testing courses - they are here to race and the tougher it is, the better. I believe this is the secret of keeping Cowes in its premier position - to keep giving them wonderful courses and, of course, plenty of beer."