J World Alumni dominate Cowes Week!

2008 saw the first J/80 one design class in Cowes week, and what a great entry! 23 boats entered to provide very close and competitive racing. Navigation, boat handling and tactics were all put to the test in a week that saw winds from 5 knots up to 32 knots!

The racing featured everything from close tactical racing up the island shore, to great downwind sleigh rides with boat speeds up to 16 knots. The racing was very close, with the top 5 boats regularly finishing within boats lengths of each other after 2 hours racing.

J/80 regulars such as John Fowler on Jugular Vein, Rob Fox on Jevan, James Sullivan on Jin Palace all showed great pace at different times during the week. Arnaud Rousseeu and Victor Gibon from Le Havre in Brittany also brought a very competitive team across the channel to compete in their 2nd Cowes week in a row. Adding to the mix were 2 chartered UKSA boats which were again very quick and certainly knew their way around the Solent.

However, the week was dominated by Savage Sailing Team with 6 straight wins, meaning that with two discards they could sit out the final 2 races. Seb Ripard on Againstmalaria.com came with members of his World Championship crew, and Marcus Stone and James Dyer on Rose & Thistle had some very good imported talent from Cardiff. These 2 boats pushed Savage Sailing hard throughout the week to gain 2nd & 3rd respectively, but ultimately there was a very clear winner.

Chris Savage, Liz Savage, Ben Walker and Richard Hughes have now been together for 4 years, and the team work certainly showed with great awareness of wind, navigation, boat speed and tactics. Once the J/80 class was sewn up, attention then turned to whether these results would be good enough to win them White Group overall comprising nearly 500 boats. By the last race, the leading Squib sailor was the only person who could beat them, and did come very close placing 3rd by under a minute, but ultimately the overall prize went to Savage Sailing Team. Seb Ripard won the Skandia Young Skippers trophy.

With the J/80 class on the increase throughout the country, and especially in the Solent, the numbers are expected to increase for Cowes 2009.

from the J80 UK class website