British Classic Week Day 4
by Helen Porter 10 Jul 2025 19:46 BST
6-11 July 2025
It was a classic Solent day in Cowes for day 4 of British Classic Week with hot temperatures, sunshine and no breeze in the morning before the sea breeze kicked in from the west and it was time to go racing.
Race four, sponsored by OneSails GBR, saw classes 1, 2, and 3 start together off the Royal Yacht Squadron (RYS) inner line to the west in glorious sunshine and 10-12 knots.
Onlookers on the shore were treated to fast-paced action as most of the yachts started on starboard and almost immediately had to tack off out of the shore on to port into the oncoming starboard tackers. Once clear of the shore, yachts made the most of the west-going tide and beat out into the central Solent for the long leg up to Power Byrne. Tacking around Powder Byrne to port, it was a tight reach south west to Solent Bank.
With a strong west-going tide, tacticians had to carefully judge the port rounding of Solent Bank to avoid being swept down onto the mark as they hoisted spinnakers, gybed and set off for the mainland shore to get out of the tide.
Rounding West Lepe to starboard, the yachts beat back upwind to Hamstead Ledge, before a beautiful long run close inshore out of the tide passing Monex Marine and Polly's Challenge and on to finish at the RYS line.
Meanwhile, classes 4 and 5 also started together on the RYS inner line, taking a similar first leg beat with the tide to the west to Craftinsure. Rounding Craftinsure to port and tucking themselves inshore as soon as possible, classes 4 and 5 took Gurnard Ledge to starboard, again judging the strong west-going tide carefully upon rounding.
A beat to Salt Mead preceded a champagne sailing downwind leg inshore back to the RYS line, passing Monex Marine and Polly's Challenge and their way.
The winners of Race 4 sponsored by OneSails GBR were Spirit R52 Flight of Durgan in Class 1, 10Metre Bojar in Class 2, Laurent Giles designed Whooper took Class 3, West Solent One Design Enchanted won Class 4, and Timoa made it a clean sweep with her fourth class win of the week in Class 5.
For results go to www.britishclassicweek.co.uk