Cowes tidbits

We talk to the crew of Skandia Courage who had Star World champion Steve Mitchell sailing with them

One of the five Skandia-sponsored boats has had the benefit of having star crew members Steve Mitchell and Iain Percy among their number.

The renamed Skandia Courage is a Sonata, whose crew have won sponsorship to take part in Skandia Cowes Week.

"We are part of the Skandia squad for 2003, we entered a competition last year to win well this (points to jacket) and, well we won!" says crewman Charlie Russell who is sailing on board with brother Charlie. "We had to fill in which award we were going for, courage or commitment etc and why we were going for it… I filled in courage, I’m not sure, maybe should have been commitment. But you have gotta be courageous to sail with Charlie…" pitches in his brother.

"We get our berthing fees paid for, entry fees paid for, a new spinnaker which is aMAzing… kit and champagne, which is excellent, oh and shoes which is really cool," continues Russell. But it is not all freebies.

"For two days during the week we have Iain Percy and Steve Mitchell who are sailing the Star in the Olympics, Steve was on today and Iain on Saturday. But we were OCS on that day… we don’t talk about that day. We found out this morning that because of the abandonment yesterday today was the first race to count." Despite returning to restart, they still failed to cross the line properly.

Significant about this team is their age. The average is just 17. "Steph, who didn’t race today is 15. Tom is 17, so is Alexander. I’m 19 and Ed’s 19 as well," says Charlie Russell. "Ed drives, but I tell him where to go."

The crew do most of their sailing out of Hamble. "We’ve known each other about 10 years - we all learnt to sail together at the Royal Southern, so we’ve grown up together. We bought the boat after we won the competition…"

Despite the crew having done at least five Cowes Weeks, this is the first time they have sailed 'without adults'. "It’s a bit of a learning curve, we’re out on our own, we’ve never done a Cowes week on our own, we’ve always had parents and people around. We’re even living on our own, In a caravan park in East Cowes…"

Mitchell who has been on board today has been trimming and doing main. How useful was he? "Yeah just a bit, if nothing else he weighs a lot… we are learning a huge amount, both from Iain and Steve."

So you didn’t win 5 star accommodation with the competition? "We were really hoping for it."

Skandia Courage finished fourth today. "Hopefully someone was over the line at the start so we might have got top three. We sailed really well - we had a few gear failures during the race and we lost loads of places and we managed to claw our way back to fourth. On the final 200 yards we took three places. We went inside and they went out so we had better breeze and a better angle so we just snuck in."

Steve Mitchell, the Star World Champion, gave his take on how it had gone today. "It was fantastic - just really good fun going out and sailing with the guys on the boat. Four young guys, bought the boat themselves, not the newest boat in the world, managed to blag some sails off people, new spinnaker and just loving the week… They're good… enthusiastic, keen to learn and they will be fine. We had a bit of a problem coming off the start line today when the jib sheet broke. But we fixed it quickly and got back up there quickly."

Mitchell's involvement with the Skandia program is due to the company's sponsorship of his and Iain Percy's Star campaign. "One of the things that we do for Skandia is to come to Cowes and go on each squad boat for a day. Iain’s out on a Folkboat today. Each morning we give them a coaching session on, say, sail trimming or getting the boat feeling right, starting, mark rounding – something they can take away and build on in the future. This is the biggest week of the year for them - if they can learn stuff at the same time then… fantastic."