COWES WEEKSALES of coffee soared on the morning of the third day of Cowes Week, while competitors waited on shore for a sea breeze to fill in.
The west-south-westerly winds of the first two days of Cowes Week gave way to a light northerly gradient wind overnight. With the thin layer of cloud forecast to clear, the prospects were for a mostly sunny day.
The first start on the Squadron line at 1.30pm was for the Laser SB3 class.
With the tide starting to ebb at the inshore end of the line, and the fleet heading eastwards, the outer end of the line was favoured. With one minute to go, the boats closest to the line were heading away in a cautious start, with the fleet unwilling to risk being swept downwind and downtide of the line.
Andrew Vernon's Epitomy was first away, followed by Jeremy Waitt's crew from the Royal Hospital School on Pelican Racing 8, and Colin Simonds' Doolalli. The wind increased for the start, and with spinnakers hoisted the fleet quickly cleared the line.
Both Black and White Group classes adopted a five-minute starting sequence, so IRC Class 0 started at the same time as the SB3s, but were heading west, all with Code Zero sails set.
Sir Peter Ogden's Mini Maxi Jethou, the largest boat at the regatta, pulled out a clear lead immediately after the start.
In her wake three 52-footers — the TP52s Pace and Rio, and Sam Laidlaw's Farr 52 Bob — were neck-and-neck alongside each other. Rio was to leeward, but managed to sail through the lee of her rivals a few minutes into the race.
Jethou continued to extend her lead, taking line honours a clear 10 minutes ahead of Johnny Vincent's Pace, and winning on corrected time. Bob finished fourth on the water, but beat Rio into third place on handicap by a comfortable 12 minutes.
Five minutes after the SB3 and Class 0 starts the wind was still holding up for the Longtze class, with Swiss sailor Jarmo Wieland's Shensu pulling well ahead of her rivals, and holding the lead at the finish.
In IRC 1 veteran Dutch racer Piet Vroon's Tonnerre de Breskens had a cracking start, quickly pulling 5-6 lengths ahead of the rest of the fleet.
The two 12-Metres, however, quickly caught up with the Dutch boat, with Richard Matthews' Crusader to leeward of Richard Rankin's Italia. As they moved into the shallow water on the north shore the 12-Metres bore away towards the first mark, Salt Mead, hoisting their (symmetric) spinnakers, while Tonnere peeled to a larger asymmetric spinnaker.
David Frank's J/125 Strait Dealer took a different strategy to many others in the fleet.
They recovered from an indifferent start, sailing lower, faster and a shorter distance towards the mark off the Island shore. Initially this looked like a winning move, but they fell into a hole of very light wind off the Island shore, while the wind held up further north.
The Dragons started in a very light breeze.
Julia Bailey's Aimee was again ahead at the start and was first to get her spinnaker drawing. In contrast to the previous two days of racing, when starts to the west against the tide resulted in the fleets mingling in tight bunches and plenty of boat-on-boat action when short tacking, today the fleets quickly became stretched out across the course.
Just ten minutes after their start, for instance, the 18 J/80s were spread over a distance of half a mile. Ahead of them the Etchells were struggling to make progress towards West Ryde Middle, their first mark, with the front-runners carefully watching their drift angles as the tide carried them ever faster to the east.
With the wind reducing further, Black Group starts on the RYS line were again postponed after the Sigma 38 start at 1.50pm and White Group race officials were forced to follow suit just before the RS Elite start at 2.05pm. By now, spinnakers had collapsed on the north shore, but a light and fitful south-westerly could be seen moving up the western Solent.
With insufficient wind to drive the remaining boats over the increasingly strong west-going tide, and time running out, the difficult decision was made to abandon the starts for the remaining classes — Squibs, Mermaids and Victorys.
At the same time the remaining Black Group boats, including Quarter Tonners and IRC Classes 5-7 were returning to harbour, their starts also having been abandoned.