North Sails Cowes Week 2026 - Day 7
by Cowes Week Ltd 9 Aug 10:21 NZST
1-7 August 2026
There are many faces to a typical day at Cowes Week. Wet and windy. Wet and windless. Sunny and windless. Sunny and a perfect breeze.
The organisers of North Sails Cowes Week 2026 must have had a direct line to somebody with a lot of influence because the bright sunny conditions of Friday delivered a reasonably early sea breeze and every class got some fantastic racing in to end the regatta ahead of the now well-established - and slightly chaotic! - prize-giving.
Cowes Week is a highlight of many people's racing year and the enthusiasm and passion of everybody in the room comes to the fore. The organisers started races for 43 different classes all of whom had a chance of getting onto the podium for getting into the top three and in total 153 trophies were awarded including for a number of special categories as well as regular classes.
If Thursday was Moving Day, then Friday was all about the winners. It would be difficult to start without mentioning the overall winners, Phil Lawrence, Nick Froud and David King on the XOD Lone Star.
When you're racing in an extremely competitive class of 60 boats, it's almost impossible to find the consistency necessary to win overall but somehow these three did just that. In Phil Lawrence's own words: "We were just blisteringly fast all week." A fantastic result for the Lymington crew and for Lawrence, who has been at the front of numerous fleets over five decades of competitive sailing.
In the Black Group Ben Rogers' Contessa 32 Solan Goose was tied with Sam Laidlaw and his crew on quarter tonner BLT. Ultimately Solan Goose took Black Group overall based on who did better in Friday's final race. Close. Very close.
The group of clubs that organises the racing, the Cowes Combined Clubs, put up a new trophy for this special year, the Bicentenary Gold Cup, to celebrate the event's 200th anniversary. The winner was Contessa 33 High Spirit sailed in the Club Cruiser D class by Andy Maskell. The Bicentenary Gold Cup counted only for the first three days' results so every single one of the 641 entrants, some of whom finished racing before the full seven days were up, were in a chance to win the trophy.
At the prize-giving the young German crew on Stoertebeker sailing in IRC Class Zero were recognised as being on the top training boat for young sailors as well as winning the Sustainability Award for the most carbon free miles sailed. Sailing the boat from Kiel in Germany was a mighty fine effort, with the return journey ahead of them starting on Saturday morning now that racing is complete.
There were plenty of familiar names on the winners' board, but the Newcomers Trophy went to Christopher Bake on his beautiful classic Anteren racing in IRC Class Five.
The Solent Team Trophy for best performance by a team of three representing a yacht club looked like it was heading to the Royal Yacht Squadron in midweek but by close of play Friday night Cowes Corinthian Yacht Club took the trophy to their base at the southern end of Cowes High Street.
There were lots of new classes racing at North Sails Cowes Week. The RS21 class, a lightweight asymmetric modern planing boat was won by Crispin Winser's White Oryx. Meanwhile the evergreen and highly competitive Folkboats were back as a class for the first time in 50 years. A traditional clinker design that definitely doesn't plane but delivers brilliant racing for the 25 competitors, the class was won by Cy Grisley and Simon Evans on Gybe N'.
The juxtaposition of these, the RS21 and the Folkboat classes, highlights the amazing diversity of boats racing at North Sails Cowes Week. From Richard Patrick's Performance Cruiser A Dusty P to Richard Loftus's elegant Swan 65 Desperado which was second after Dusty P in the Performance Cruiser Class overall the racing at North Sails Cowes Week is always competitive no matter the size or the complexity of the boats doing the racing.
So seven days of racing drew to a close. Some of the smaller boats lost out on a day's racing on Wednesday due to strong winds but the 200th Cowes Week regatta was a fantastic week both on the water and ashore for the more than 5000 sailors taking part.
North Sails Cowes Week 2027 will take place from Saturday 31st July to Friday 6th August.
Event website: www.cowesweek.co.uk