Cowes Week 2026 - Thurs 6th - Day 6

10-12 knots of West North West winds todays with a 3 knot tide over the line against us, meant for a tricky start.  Much thought went into it and we got away on the pin end furthest away from the beach in the tide but with potentially a longer tack to take advantage of the soft wind.  The tactic worked well and we were going nicely and popped out in front of most of the fleet as they tacked out from beach to where we were.

Happy days, we are in this now, what can possibly go wrong?

As the faster boats tacked out, they went underneath us, or behind us which meant they tacked up wind of us back onto the same direction of sailing as us.  They were then able to go past us as they are generally larger and quicker and as they went passed, they deflect the wind from our sails and slowed us down, this coincided with a drop in wind speed so even when they were clear of us and we had some wind again, we could never get our water speed back.   However hard we tried to trim the sails or sail the boat, we were standing still in the tide.  It was as if Aquila did not want to play today, too tired from a weeks work and thought “sod this, I’m done!”

Such a shame as were catching boats that started 10 minutes ahead of us when the wind started to play games and Aquila run out of puff.

3 dejected crew, one dejected boat and an hour later we retired.  Couldn’t take any more pain.

1 hour of sailing, half a mile sailed, Retired.

Forecast for tomorrow is even less wind so maybe this could be the last play of the week which has made us a bit sad.  We shall see.

Thought for the day - Any joker can sail a boat in strong winds, the real skill is sailing one in light winds.