Adecco Maxi OD - Cowes Week Event Day 1

BACK TO SQUARE ONE FOR SKANDIA

COWES-Ludde Ingvall and the crew of Skandia (EUR) returned to their winning ways on the opening day of the Cowes Week event, the sixth in the Adecco World Championship of the Maxi-One-Design class. They did so in a commanding manner, winning the six-hour long race by a little more than six minutes.

It was a typical Cowes Week style course for maxi yachts, taking them out of the Eastern Solent to a double triangle in Hayling Bay, using navigation marks and then back into the Solent for a finish off the Royal Yacht Squadron line. The light easterly breezes, which became softer once the boats were clear of the Solent, made it a fairly prolonged affair.

Ingvall always choses his crew with care, and for Cowes Week he has made no exception, adding Eddie Warwick to the line-up to provide local knowledge. Warwick is an Etchells sailor who has raced frequently at an international level with Robbie Doyle, Ingvall's tactician, and they were exchanging information regularly in the back of the boat.

Warwick provided the insight to take Skandia to the Isle of Wight side of the Solent on the long beat out to the Spithead Forts, and it was the paying strategy. The others were generally spread out across the Solent and Skandia gained a lead of 2:40 by the first turning mark, the Horse Elbow buoy. The Came Le Defi Bouygues Telecom - Transiciel, steered by Jimmy Pahun (FRA) ten seconds ahead of Guido Maisto's Seac Banche (ITA), in turn a further ten seconds ahead of Ross Field's RF Yachting (NZL).

It was from there to Bembridge Ledge buoy that the outcome of the race was largely settled. The breeze was fitful and to use the words of Kelvin Rawlings, a crew member of Geoff Meek's Rainbow Magic (RSA), 'There was pressure on the left,' he said, indicating that there was more wind on that side of the three and a half mile leg, and added ruefully, 'and we went to the right.'

Hans Bouscholte (BEL) went left, picked up that extra pressure and moved into second place from fifth, followed by Gunnar Krantz in Team Henri-Lloyd (SWE) who had been last to round the first buoy. While Seac Banche lost ground during the race, the general order was maintained so that at the Outer Nab, the most distant mark on the course, the order was EUR, BEL, FRA, SWE, NZL, SUI, ITA, RSA.

At Lucas, the last mark on the run home to the Royal Yacht Squadron finish line, Team Henri-Lloyd had a collision with RF Yachting, acknowledged her error and took a 2% time penalty. On this race, that amounted to seven minutes and this dropped her from her finishing place of third to seventh. There is an outstanding protest from RF Yachting that the damage justified a disqualification, and this will be heard by an International Jury tonight.

Race one: Amended finishing order (subject to protest):

1. EUR  Skandia  Ludde Ingvall
2. BEL  Synphony  Hans Bouscholte
3. FRA  Le Defi Bouygues Telecom - Transiciel  Jimmy Pahun
4. NZL  RF Yachting  Ross Field
5. SUI  Alinghimax  Ernesto Bertarelli
6. ITA  Seac Banche  Guido Maisto 
7. SWE  Team Henri-Lloyd  Gunnar Krantz (+ 2% penalty)
8. RSA  Rainbow Magic  Geoff Meek