Paul Cayar
Rob Weiland
Fundamental changes
There are many international regattas but arguably the two best known in western Europe with big boats in the mix are Cowes Week and the Copa del Rey in Palma. The Copa del Rey just had its 40th edition while Cowes Week goes back over 200 years! Everything about Cowes Week is superlative
with around 40 starts each day off the Royal Yacht Squadron line, as well as committee boat lines, around 500 participating boats (about half the number of the top years and still substantially down from pre-Covid), its classic trophies, its twist and turn Solent con- ditions and, last but not least, its parties, balls, dinners, concerts and the closing fireworks. At the Copa del Rey the racing is just as serious but comparatively
modest in numbers with between 120 and 150 boats competing. The whole event, bar a few attempts in the past to include a festival site in a nearby Palma park, is based at the Real Club Náutico de Palma where any sailor always feels truly welcome, including myself for nearly 40 years now, whether at the first visit or my most recent one this August. The Copa del Rey or King’s Cup is just that. There the King of
Spain joins the racing as much as his official activities allow him to and he hands out the trophies, all of them, in great style. Patient, with a word of praise for everyone, always while posing for photos… and yet more photos. Hard to label any event as best, but for the foreign entries the Copa del Rey represents the Spain we love and why we travel there so often. I raced quite a number of times at both, from the 1970s at Cowes
and from the late ’80s at Palma, always competing in the corrected time classes. Over the years we had IOR, IMS, ORC and for a short stint a local Spanish system, but always with all the debate and frustration that come with handicap racing. But what is becoming more and more obvious is that today ‘we’, or better said ‘they’, whether in Cowes or Palma, no longer race new or even recent boats and increasingly rarely big boats from 50ft up, let alone Maxis. In the 1970s and ’80s, whether we raced in rating bands accom-
modating IOR Half Tonners, Three Quarter tonners, One Tonners or anything further up in size (often labelled Admiral’s Cup-sized
28 SEAHORSE
boats) between 36 and 54ft, I hardly ever sailed on a boat that was more than 10 years old – and more frequently they were new or just two or three years old, as were the boats we raced against. Most too were custom built. Those 40 to 50-boat starts in the
late ’70s to early ’80s were great. It seems incredible today, but the start of the 1979 Fastnet featured 68 boats in each of IOR classes IV and V, 64 yachts in IOR III, 53 boats in IOR II, 66 in IOR I… And then 14 Maxis in IOR 0!! Going through the top three entries in the eight IRC classes in
this year’s Cowes Week, of the 24 boats there are just four with an age date younger than 10 years: Tschüss (Fast 40, 2016), Fargo (IC37, 2021), Yes! (JPK, 2016) and Leon(J112, 2021). Then further checking all of the 111 boats across the eight IRC classes just 19 were launched in the past 10 years. Especially in the smaller boat fleets (IRC 5, 6 and 7) there were no boats newer than 10 years and quite a number were over 30 years old… about 50, in fact! It would be (too) easy to conclude that it takes an ‘old’ boat to
do well in IRC, and that this triggers so many ‘ageing craft’ competing in what is arguably the UK’s premier competition? Then in IRC 0, where one traditionally would assume that serious money is being spent, five of the seven boats taking part were younger than 10 years, two of them IC37 one-design production boats. Observations relating to why the fleet is ageing and shrinking,
both in numbers as well as in overall length, can be many and varied, but they often revolve around the costs and complexities of modern yacht racing. I guess the fact that also in IRC 0 an older boat won, the 2009 GP42 Dark ’n Stormy, does not encourage you to spend a lot of money building a new boat. IRC 0 this year had one 46ft boat, Van Uden, a Ker 46. Then
a few at 42ft and a few at 37ft. In IRC 1 there was the Belgian First 47.7 Moanaand in IRC 2 the Swan 48 Sleeper X. If I am not mistaken these were the largest yachts to grace the Solent this Cowes Week. I know in Fastnet years the story of boat size will be different.
The Fastnet attracts a good number of big boats and some of these will then race at Cowes for the odd day or two. But not as many as previously since this great race is finishing in Cherbourg… especially as it is now taking place ahead of Cowes Week. Switching to the Copa del Rey, which in past years was raced
PAUL TODD/DPPI
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