News - 2013

17:49 Friday 9 Aug 2013 Sue Pelling/CWLWinners' quotes from Day 7 of Aberdeen Asset Management Cowes Week

Adam Gosling and team on Yes!, winner of Black Group overall – photo – Rick Tomlinson/CWL

Winner of Black Group overall, and IRC Class 4

Corby 36, Yes!

Adam Gosling

“We won Black Group before in a Corby 29. I appreciate you are only suppose to win Black Group once in your life, but hey. Both have been in Corby designs, so John Corby, who was on board this week, is extremely happy.

“We’ve had a great week on this 18-year-old boat which is the old Mustang Sally built by John using a team from the Three Crowns pub. She’s now come back to Cowes and I bought here at Easter. We made a list of things we were going to keep including the hull, deck, keel, rudder and winches, and that was about it. John has done a complete refit over three months.

“She's a great boat to sail and, together with a good crew, we’ve had some very competitive racing this week. Black Group is always a difficult one to win because you can only control your own class. We’d won our own class overall yesterday and went out today knowing fool well we had to come first in our class again to ensure a win in Black Group overall. And we did.”

GC32, Spax Solution, today’s winner of GC32 class

Hugh Styles

“We had a great day on the water, first time at Cowes for the boat and everyone on board was really excited about competing in the biggest regatta in the world. Sailing was superb racing in the western Solent blasting up and down and I think we topped 21kts, which is the top speed of the boat ever. Top wind speed was about 16-17kts.”

Sunsail F40, overall winner, First Sailing

David Vines, skipper.

“The boat is sailed this week by a bunch of Slovaks and Croatians who are here to experience Cowes. They did it last year and have come back with a vengeance this year. They own a fleet of matched 45 footers in Split so they are used to racing. It has been quite an important week with VIps onboard including a Government Minister – Minister for Energy.

“These boats are very much nicer than the previous Sunsail boats. They are slightly dumbed down with roller reefing, but they are a good matched fleet so there is always fantastic racing in this class."

Thomas Valasek, first mate, from Slovenia

“The team worked wonderfully together both on and off the water. The top five or six boats have been neck and neck all week. The first race of the series we were first by two seconds. We will certainly be back next year because we have fallen in love with it.”