Cowes Week 2025 Day 3 - Weekend warriors and inspiring figures
by Gael Pawson 5 Aug 06:56 NZST
2-8 August 2025
Leon, IRC 2 - Cowes Week 2025 Day 3 © Paul Wyeth / CWL
With the decision to abandon racing for the day taken on Sunday evening, many crews took the opportunity to rest and gear themselves up for the rest of the week.
A few keen souls also made the most of the gusty, stormy conditions. A couple of the Cape 31s went out for a morning practice, with a blown-out spinnaker the reward for their efforts, just in case anyone was doubting the race committee's decision.
Olympic gold medal-winning kitesurfer Ellie Aldridge took a break from the Cape 31 Fargo, which she is racing on all week. Instead, she donned her wetsuit and gave spectators an entertaining wingfoiling display in front of the Royal Yacht Squadron. Joining her in the display was champion pro kitesurfer Tom Court.
Class detail
The Weekend Warrior Trophy was introduced two years ago for the top Club Cruiser entering for just the first three days of Cowes Week. It aims to encourage those who prefer a long weekend, rather than a full week of racing.
This year's trophy was awarded to Geoffrey Yeowart's Arc En Ciel, counting a second and a sixth, ahead of Simon Grigg and Anne Jackson's Arcadian. Both boats have been racing in Club Cruiser C, where the length and style of courses is aimed to reflect a slightly less intense racing experience.
Today was Charity Day. Sailing is such a brilliant vehicle for so much charity work, and there are various organisations that use the sport and Cowes Week as a great way to help all kinds of disabled or disadvantaged groups.
The official Cowes Week charities this year are the RNLI and Autism on the Water, which provides free of charge sailing for autistic people and their families.
Autism on the Water director, Murray MacDonald is also the skipper of AOTW, the charity's Hunter Impala 28, which is competing in IRC6 all week. 'I'm autistic myself and sailing's really helped me with confidence, problem solving and social skills, which are three skills people with autism struggle with in everyday life.'
Eilidh Johnston is one of the crew on AOTW and is also autistic, she says: 'Sailing has changed how I look at things, I've gained so much confidence. I find being on land and everything that goes on and living in a city, is just so stressful and it's loud and it's a lot and as soon as I got on the water... it was absolutely freeing, the sound of the water and the waves and the ropes and just everything that's going. I love it and I just feel such a comfort.'
The Andrew Cassell Foundation has four boats competing in the Sonar class all week. The Sonars have a healthy entry of 15 boats this year. Leading after two days of racing is Richard Bailey's Bertie with two wins, Cowes Match Racing Blue is second and ACF Dolphin third.
Skipper of ACF Dolphin, Matt Grier is also Project Director at ACF. He explains how Cowes Week works for them: 'We train every other weekend from October all the way through, building up new people our aim is to get them sailing, racing independently, so Cowes Week is a celebration of how well the guys have done.
The charity is growing and has more local sailors than ever, with an extra boat entered this year. Disabilities range from amputees to autism, cerebral palsy, visual and hearing impairments.
Matt is racing with Lizzie Kitchen, who is blind and deaf, on ACF Dolphin: 'We're struggling in the breeze as we're three-up, but we're managing to hang in there. Lizzie's hearing aid decided to fail halfway round the racecourse yesterday, so we were struggling with communication, but we're doing ok.
'We had some absolute cracking runs with the spinnakers up! I was very nervous to see two beats over the Brambles Bank, just because of the sea states, but the angles were good.
'We were third from the third mark right to the final mark - there were a lot of marks yesterday! The long slog home on the final beat was where we lost it, we were really struggling. Then I did that daft thing of going to the Island shore, so we let Jenny XXX past.
'We've got some top people in these boats now, including Dave Heritage who has jumped into Bertie this week. The top five boats are really competitive. I think it's going to be about who makes the least mistakes.'
The charity Stride Forward supports people who experience life-changing injuries to help empower them to take their lives forwards in new positive directions. Olympic sailor Stuart Childerley sustained serious injuries after a road bike accident four years ago. He's competing on Stride Forward, initially racing a Sun Fast 3200 competing in IRC3 before being forced to change boats for day two.
After his accident, Stuart feared he would never get back to a high level of racing, but he's found a new perspective this week. The majority of Stride Forward's crew are inexperienced at sailing, and many have life-changing injuries. With just a couple of days of training, the team finished 7th in IRC3 in the first day's racing, but this was marred by a collision. Ashore it became evident the boat needed serious repairs, but thanks to incredible input from the sailing community including Unity Racing and LV Yachting, the team was back on the startline yesterday morning - this time in a SunFast 3300, sailing in IRC2.
Racing in a new boat in a very competitive class presented a real challenge, but they finished 6th, beating their sister ship in the process. Stuart described the challenges of the day: 'We had the change of boat, and when we eventually left the dock, we had 16-20 knots westerly. We reefed and sailed with our number four, had a good start and then gradually worked through the race in terms of looking ahead more and more. We had a bit of a logistical issue as on the old boat we could get people across the coach roof when tacking, on this new boat, that wasn't possible.
'It was predominantly upwind downwind course, most of the upwind was against the tide, so it was a lot of tacking up the shore. It felt a long and torturous race in some respects. The difference in class 2 and 3 was quite obvious.
'To begin with we didn't use the spinnaker, but we ended up sailing back with the spinnaker up and a couple of guys on the boat joined the 15-knot club when a gust picked us up. By the end of the day everyone was pretty shattered, but there were some really big smiles on everyone's faces. The satisfaction and the personal achievement at the end of the race is huge, you can see it on our crew's faces. It really is so special it is very different to any other opportunity that they're experienced. To me, it really highlights that racing boats shouldn't be afraid of taking on crew with physical limitations.'
The sailing community was also there when Scaramouche Sailing Trust's Flying Fifteen, Scaramouche, sailed by Jessye Opoku-Ware and Corneille LePrince blew out their spinnaker whilst in second place yesterday. Not only are they racing on a boat donated to them by Cape 31, Bullit's, owner Julian Metherell, but they were invited to the North Sails loft in Fareham to get a new spinnaker to replace the shredded one.
The Trust was founded to support the Greig City Academy Sailing Programme, which takes inner city children sailing, helping them to broaden their horizons, giving them much needed life skills and brighter futures. The Trust's Etchells team on Palaver is also having a good week, they finished second yesterday on a donated boat with massively discounted North Sails. The charity also has a mixed team racing on the German Frers-designed Scaramouche in Club Cruiser C which is sitting a respectable mid fleet after two days of racing.
Tomorrow
The forecast for tomorrow is windy and sunny promising a great day of racing. It's also Women's Day. As ever there are plenty of female skippers and crews competing across all the fleets, so the day is a chance to highlight some of their experiences and achievements.