Report 44Cup World Championship Cowes

RC44 World Championship Cowes 9 – 13 August 2023, United Kingdom

At first glance, sailing on an RC44 monohull yacht is more leisurely than on a GC32 foiling catamaran. However, this does not mean that it is any less demanding to sail at the front. Because even in the 44Cup, every centimetre is hard-fought. Even minimal mistakes in tactics or manoeuvres are uncompromisingly exploited in the absolutely top-class field of competitors and have fatal consequences. 

This year, we started in Cowes for the second World Championship in the RC44 class. Last year’s World Championship in Slovenia was also our premiere with the new “Black Star”. Shortly before, we had been able to sail our new RC44 yacht on the Solent off Cowes for the very first time, after it had just been completed by our boat captain Chris Noble. 

So we knew that this year in the 44Cup World’s at Cowes, we were not only in for another high calibre and ambitious line-up, but also remarkable conditions: The Solent is challenging to sail because of the currents and the various sandbanks. In addition to the changing and sometimes strong tides, the water depth must also be constantly kept in mind. The icing on the cake was the “British Summer” at some races, which made the rain together with the strong winds feel like hail at times. Sailing on the “Costa del Solent” – an intense nature experience. 

But the 44Cup Cowes was not only an extraordinary experience because of the Solent: With the Royal Yacht Squadron, the traditional British sailing club was the organiser of this regatta, which at that time hosted the first America’s Cup. Among other things, the Royal Yacht Squadron did the RC44 class the honour of firing the time-honoured fortress guns as the starting gun for the 44Cup World’s 2023 Cowes.

Almost everything done right

The Black Star Sailing Team went to the start with the declared goal of sailing as consistently as possible. We wanted to avoid the up-and-down of past regattas as much as possible. It is better to sail consistently in the middle of the field than to be right at the front and then be at the back again. 

In the first two days, we were able to implement our goals quite well. With quite constant results in the midfield, we were able to visibly improve compared to the last event and place ourselves in the middle. After the first two days of the regatta, the points gap between first and eighth place was just eight points!  

For Saturday, the weather forecast was for a change for the worse with a lot of wind. So we prepared ourselves accordingly already on Friday evening. Tougher battens were prepared, the yacht and the sails were checked again in detail in order to reduce the time needed for this in the morning. Even before setting sail, the strong wind trim was done to be able to hoist the sails as quickly as possible in order to gain some time for us. Time that we needed to overcome the difficult conditions for us so that we could keep up with the more experienced teams. With the strong winds, we headed briskly towards the start line. We were able to do some manoeuvres in advance, sailed a few downwind and upwind courses to get the feel for the boat trim and speed.  

At the first start, the wind was already around 20 knots. We got a good start and were the third boat to round the top mark. Under spinaker, we partly roared to the next turning mark with more than 22 knots of boat speed. However, in one manoeuvre the seemingly inevitable happened: We heeled too much, the yacht went off course and was no longer under control for a moment. This mishap cost us several places. 

Even though we always learn from our mistakes immediately and try to improve the procedures between the races in discussions, we were not able to achieve the consistency of the previous days on Saturday after this setback. On the last day of the regatta, the wind conditions were more moderate than on Saturday and we managed to sail in the field again. Despite a pleasing third place’ in the last race, we could no longer improve our ranking. 

Nevertheless, once again we take a lot of positive things with us. Setbacks show weaknesses more clearly than some analysis, and so we can now set about eliminating these gaps. Our learning curve is still pointing upwards, even if the improvement steps are getting smaller and more and more hidden in the details. 

We are quite satisfied with our performance at the RC44 World Championship Cowes 2023, because in the targeted midfield the small mistakes are already having a clear effect and our consistency shown over large parts is the only thing that takes us away from the end of the ranking. 

At this point we would like to thank all our fans, supporters and sponsors who support us and spur us on to become better and better.