Racing tips from top Cowes Week sailors

Get some top advice from three hugely successful Aberdeen Asset Management Cowes Week stalwarts with more than half a century of combined experience.

Graham Bailey is one of Cowes Week’s most successful long-term competitors. He's had 19 class wins, plus one Black Group and two White Group overall wins. An impressive record!

“Leave your mooring in good time but not too early. Study the starts before yours from a distance, but you can only learn from those starting up to 30 minutes earlier, since the tide is in constant flux.

“Write the course down correctly and work our a system to check and double check so any navigational error is a matter for shared responsibility.

“As a general rule, sail the course, not the fleet. You may need to engage in boat to boat combat at times but keep the big picture in mind and be prepared to be brave if you think the fleet is getting it wrong.

Local sailor Kevin Downer advises:

“Don’t celebrate your first race win! That’s what we did one year after winning our first race and were absolutely gutted when we were ninth the following day – it may have cost us winning White Group overall.”

Colin Simonds was selected for the 1980 Olympic sailing team (although didn't take part as a result of the RYA Council's decision to acquiesce to the then government's request to boycott the Moscow games) and is a past winner of the SB20 (formerly SB3) Nationals:

“You can expect to get into trouble at times, but keep thinking and working – at Cowes there are as many ways out of trouble as ways into it. In the SB20 we’ve had top five results even after being worse than 40th an hour into the race. On one race some years back Ben Ainslie got past us an hour after the start, but we hung on and won by going a slightly different route. Above all, keep focused and have fun!”

By Rupert Holmes.

Read the full article here.

Photo: Rick Tomlinson / CWL

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