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17:49 Friday 14 Aug 2015 Sue Pelling/CWLDaring sailors win White Group overall – Giles Peckham and team on Dauntless clinch the title with five wins

Team Dauntless sail to victory with a class win and White Group overall – photo Rick Tomlinson

Giles Peckham and team on Dauntless (Daring), have been announced overall winners of White Group. With an impressive scoreline that includes five first places in class, Team Dauntless are worthy winners of White Group for the second time. They last won it in 2011.

Although from the score-sheet they appear to have wiped the board, competition in the Daring class was far from plain sailing this week with Jeremy Preston and team on Defender, always ready to outfox the winners given the slightest opportunity. Preston and team were the only ones to break Peckham’s total domination with their race win on Thursday.

Peckham and team including Jane Peckham, Milo Carver, and Richard Romer-Lee won White Group with clear advantage over John and Rupert Mander on the Flying 15 – Men Behaving Badly. Commenting on his win as he stepped ashore, Peckham said: “It is immensely satisfying, we bring together our ‘A’ team for Cowes Week every year. We know each other really well and work well as a team. We each have a lot of responsibility on the boat and between us we make all the decisions.

“Spinnaker trim was very important today, it was just all about keeping clear air, and we fought really hard for that.

“The conditions this week were tricky and the last couple of days the wind has been very fickle which added to the challenge. Yesterday I think we lost the race though probably because of my bad start after a good night at the Royal London ball.”