The event was smaller this year like many others but the feedback we have had is that it was a successful regatta on and off the water, with a great bonus of getting five days of racing in reasonably steady south westerlies, a bit spiky on Monday and Tuesday and champagne sailing on the Friday. If you enjoyed the event, please do recommend it to others.

We are most grateful to those that donated to our two official charities UKSA and Autism on the Water and we have raised £2,000 which will be split between them.

UKSA

UKSA asked me to share the following link with you, which is a recent case study from a school group they welcomed. I urge you all to watch it and think about how you, your company, your networks can help them as they continue with their mission to fund more children and young people from diverse and disadvantaged backgrounds to have an adventure on the water through to training for a career at sea, than ever before. You can get in touch with Amy to have a chat about how you can work together by emailing her on amy.sweeting@uksa.org.

Autism on the Water 

‘On behalf of everyone within Autism on the Water I would like to thank the entire team of the Royal London Yacht Club for their incredible support and generosity to the charity during Cowes Classics Week. It was such a sincere honour for us to have been picked as one of the charities for the event and we are very grateful. We are extremely pleased to have been able to have our boat in Cowes and open it to the public which received a fantastic number of visitors from the island and most of them on the autistic spectrum. It was also great to have got one of our volunteers who is autistic out on a Daring on Tuesday of the event. He very much enjoyed it and has kept the contact details for future opportunities.’

The Week

On the shoreside the week cracked off on Sunday with Cowes Classics Day with sixty classic cars, two buses, Major Mick doing his charity row down from the Folly and our flagship for the event the lovely motor yacht Lilian on Trinity Landing round from the Thames all attracting a lot of interest. Lilian was joined during the week by the 1880s Oyster Smack Alberta from the East Coast.

The four race circuits were kindly sponsored again this year by GJW Direct Insurance and we were pleased to see that Carole Thomas and colleagues were able to join us for some of the social events.

Tim Jeffries once again took lots of great photos afloat and ashore with some drone shots which can be viewed on the daily galleries on the regatta website and if you would like copies in high resolution please do contact him on superyachtshots@aol.com

David Gower kindly donated a new trophy for the youngest average age crew which was won by Henry Rochford, Harriet Watkins and Harriet Askew racing Classic Yacht Division 3 ‘Ipqu-Aya’ with an average age of 21 years and 4 months.

We have decided to award the Spirit of Cowes Classics Week trophy, kindly donated by Ratsey and Lapthorn, to the crew of the Classic Yacht Division 2 ‘Janessa’ sailed by William Amherst and his young crew, his son Jack and two friends aged on average under 21. Not only is this the spirit of this Corinthian event but it is the future of it, and we hope to see more young people joining us in the years ahead. The trophy will be presented at the RLYC prize giving on the 12 November.

We were able to get a full social programme in this year with Evelyn Partnership kindly sponsoring the tea and cake which was enjoyed daily by over 300, and the Prize Giving Sussex fizz reception and high tea enjoyed by around 200, with Alex Valvassura from Evelyn presenting the prizes.

On the Thursday we enjoyed the Champagne reception at the Royal Yacht Squadron attended by over 300 kindly sponsored by Fawley Waterside with Chief Executive Aldred Drummond giving us an inspirational talk about this exciting and forward-thinking project This was followed by the Regatta Dinner at the Royal London Yacht Club with wine kindly provided by Luis Canas.

We are most grateful to all our sponsors whose details are set out below. 

And finally, I would like to thank our 80 plus volunteers for their time and expertise, we could not do it without you.

We will be having a class representatives meeting by Zoom PM on the 12 November so please provide them with your comments good and bad so that we can improve the event for next year. Classic yachts et al on the shoreline start please give your feedback direct to sailing@rlyc.org.uk and if anybody would like to represent the shoreline group, we would be very pleased to see them at the meeting.

The dates for next year are the 8 to 14 July 2023 with Cowes Classics Day on Sunday 9 July and racing from Monday 10 July to Friday 14 July.

I wish you good sailing for the rest of the season and look forward to seeing you at Cowes Classics Week in 2023.